catching up with Cornelia
While in the Brisbane Women’s Correction unit (and according to one commentator she spent more time there than at Baxter) she spent a week in a psychiatric facility where she was assessed as not insane, or apparently not seriously so.
Here’s another pertinent comment - ‘Ms Rau presented apparently as a visa over-stayer. It seems odd - since as I understand it, most of these people when detected are not detained but just sent back. My suspicion is that the cops had no idea what to do with her, and the whole thing snowballed from there.’
So that might explain why she was in this Women’s Correction unit, but is it common for visa-stayers to be locked up in gaol, before going to trial, or before being deported, or while their claims are checked out?
The Age on February 9 reports a claim by lawyer Claire O’Conner that Baxter detention centre didn’t receive a visit from a psychiatrist for some three months last year. This article is important in itself in shedding light on the appalling treatment of asylum seekers in these centres, but it doesn’t help me in determining the precise date Rao was incarcerated there. Another Age article of the same day indicates that Rao was still in Brisbane in May, This article mainly deals with the government’s resistance to a public enquiry despite the entreaties by Rao’s family and by the German government (Rao is in fact a German national, resident in Australia since the age of eighteen months). Vanstone is claiming that a non-public enquiry is needed ‘to protect Rao’s privacy’ and to prevent those in detention and their advocates from taking advantage of the case. Mustn’t allow humanity to prevail.
This article also states, by the by, that Rao was still incarcerated in Brisbane in June.
Rao’s mental problems seem to have been associated with a cult known as Kenja Communications, to which no doubt we’ll return.
The SMH, also on Feb 9, ran a story of one Terry Hagerty, who befriended Rao and hatched a plan with her to escape from Manly Hospital in Sydney. According to him, she did a runner the day before. This was presumably around March 2004, ten months before she was identified in Baxter. So the picture becomes a bit clearer. Manley police were notified of her disappearance (she apparently took a day’s leave and didn’t return), and they in turn notified her family.
An article in The Australian, also Feb 9, a big day for this story, concerns a six-day psychiatric assessment at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandria Hospital (the week in a psychiatric facility previously mentioned) in August last year. Cornelia’s sister questions how the psychiatrists could have come up with their verdict, that she was not a person requiring acute medical care, since by that time she would’ve been off medication for some months (since March in fact). This article is the most useful yet in terms of timeline. It mentions that she was incarcerated in BWCC four months earlier, that’s to say in April 2004, and that she was transferred to Baxter two months later, ie in October. So, some six months in BWCC, possibly on no charge whatsoever, then three or four months in Baxter, god knows why.
Here’s another pertinent comment - ‘Ms Rau presented apparently as a visa over-stayer. It seems odd - since as I understand it, most of these people when detected are not detained but just sent back. My suspicion is that the cops had no idea what to do with her, and the whole thing snowballed from there.’
So that might explain why she was in this Women’s Correction unit, but is it common for visa-stayers to be locked up in gaol, before going to trial, or before being deported, or while their claims are checked out?
The Age on February 9 reports a claim by lawyer Claire O’Conner that Baxter detention centre didn’t receive a visit from a psychiatrist for some three months last year. This article is important in itself in shedding light on the appalling treatment of asylum seekers in these centres, but it doesn’t help me in determining the precise date Rao was incarcerated there. Another Age article of the same day indicates that Rao was still in Brisbane in May, This article mainly deals with the government’s resistance to a public enquiry despite the entreaties by Rao’s family and by the German government (Rao is in fact a German national, resident in Australia since the age of eighteen months). Vanstone is claiming that a non-public enquiry is needed ‘to protect Rao’s privacy’ and to prevent those in detention and their advocates from taking advantage of the case. Mustn’t allow humanity to prevail.
This article also states, by the by, that Rao was still incarcerated in Brisbane in June.
Rao’s mental problems seem to have been associated with a cult known as Kenja Communications, to which no doubt we’ll return.
The SMH, also on Feb 9, ran a story of one Terry Hagerty, who befriended Rao and hatched a plan with her to escape from Manly Hospital in Sydney. According to him, she did a runner the day before. This was presumably around March 2004, ten months before she was identified in Baxter. So the picture becomes a bit clearer. Manley police were notified of her disappearance (she apparently took a day’s leave and didn’t return), and they in turn notified her family.
An article in The Australian, also Feb 9, a big day for this story, concerns a six-day psychiatric assessment at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandria Hospital (the week in a psychiatric facility previously mentioned) in August last year. Cornelia’s sister questions how the psychiatrists could have come up with their verdict, that she was not a person requiring acute medical care, since by that time she would’ve been off medication for some months (since March in fact). This article is the most useful yet in terms of timeline. It mentions that she was incarcerated in BWCC four months earlier, that’s to say in April 2004, and that she was transferred to Baxter two months later, ie in October. So, some six months in BWCC, possibly on no charge whatsoever, then three or four months in Baxter, god knows why.
posted by Stewart at 6:55 pm
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