Confidence in staff at Mount Eden

Press, 15 August 1984, Page 8

Confidence in staff at Mount Eden

PA Wellington The Secretary for Justice, Mr Jim Callahan, yesterday defended Mount Eden prison staff against allegations of brutality and psychological torture of prisoners. The allegations were made by an unidentified former officer. The former officer told an Auckland newspaper of homosexual rapes, bashings by guards, and corruption in Mount Eden.

Mr Callahan said that the allegations, if they were true and could be substantiated, should have been made to the department before now.

However, they still could be made to the inquiry by a District Court judge into the treatment of remand inmates, and facilities, he said.

Mr Callahan said that to describe New Zealand’s justice system as corrupt, or to claim that brutality and psychological torture went on at the prison without one shred of substantiating evidence, raised the question of the accuser’s credibility. “Allegations like this do not reflect the well evidenced integrity and humanitarian attitude of, prison officers,” he said. “I have confidence in the staff at Mount Eden.”

A former prison officer has broken a seven-year silence and. told how his colleagues subjected a convicted molester to nightly

beatings. The officer, who worked at Mount Eden for three years in the late 19705, said fellow guards used to beat the sex offender with rolledup wet towels and rope to get him to admit his crimes. A prisoner will be transferred from Mount Eden today after the discovery of a plot by other inmates to

kill him. I Details of the death plot > were passed on to prison I officiate for investigation. Sources said that three inmates planned to kill the i prisoner, aged 26, in a knife i attack this week after a dispute over money. The inmate is serving a i one-year term for burglary, receiving, and drug of- > fences.