ionigeria.com Nigerian Newspaper
A two-week-old baby reportedly died after staff in an Australian jail refused to provide care – because she was ‘not an inmate’.
The tragedy happened in August last year inside the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre’s dedicated ‘Mothers and Children Units’.
Inmates told Daily Mail Australia that prison staff at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre’s dedicated ‘Mothers and Children Units’ refused to help the 14-day-old girl.
The maximum security prison – which is home to various high profile prisoners, including the ‘black widow’ killer Robyn Lindholm – allows children to live with their mum until they are six.
But prisoners say the night-time tragedy saw staff fail to help the youngster, while one inmate tried in vain to resuscitate it.
Multiple sources have told Daily Mail Australia the tragedy occurred during the night when staffing was at a minimum.
Prisoners in the dedicated unit were asleep when they awoke to haunting screams from the young mother.
One inmate allegedly saw the motionless child on a couch with the hysterical mother crying for help.
A call was made to prison staff, who did not attend the unit for up to 15 minutes, it has been alleged.
Another young mum in the unit, who had no CPR training, desperately tried to revive the baby, but was unsuccessful.
When guards arrived, they immediately called a ‘code black’ for the prison’s nurse, but made no attempt to resuscitate the little girl themselves.
Daily Mail Australia has been told it took the nurse a further 10-15 minutes before she arrived, by which time the baby was likely already dead.
But mothers inside the jail were stunned when the nurse refused to even touch the child, telling them she was not allowed to because the baby was ‘not an inmate’.
Prisoners were placed into lockdown for four days after the tragedy while police and prison authorities tried to piece together what had happened.
It is understood the mother of the child was a young Vietnamese woman, with very little local support.
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