A senate inquiry into the state of the Manus Island detention centre has heard two former employees of the Salvation Army were recruited for their position as support workers via Facebook and were given no training prior to arriving on the island.
Reports the ABC, Nicole Judge and Christopher Iocono answered a Salvation Army advertisement on the Macquarie University Facebook page and within days arrived at the detention centre to begin their posts. They were given no formal training and their only previous work experience was in the fast food and retail industries.
“I didn’t even hand in a resume or talk to them before I landed on the island for the first time,” recalled Mr Iocono. Despite their lack of training, Ms Young said they would try and counsel unhappy detainees, often having to talk them out of suicide. She said detainees told her “every day” they would prefer to die.
Ms Judge also claimed she had been told her phone calls and emails would be monitored and that she could face “criminal action” if she spoke out. “[We were told we] shouldn’t even speak to our own mother or father about what we’ve seen. I was told I couldn’t do that or I would be penalised or I would lose my job.”
Ms Judge also told the inquiry she was sexually harassed by other staff at the centre. “I took it to my management at some of the peak times, when I started to feel really overwhelmed and scared, and one of the managers said to me ‘well, what do you expect? This kind of stuff happens at bars all the time’,” she told the inquiry. “So I just had to go with it. I still wanted to work there and it was something I just had to put up with.”
The Salvation Army has denied the pair’s claims, saying there is no supporting evidence to corroborate their allegations. In regards to their purported lack of training, CEO of the Salvation Army’s Humanitarian Mission Services, Sharon Callister, said there was a distinction between roles that need specific training and general support staff.
“We did have a number of other roles, which were general support roles, and for those roles … being general and support, the kind of tasks that the staff would perform included rosters for telephone access, computer access, running the canteens. There were no specific requirements that were needed for their roles.”
The Senate inquiry is continuing.
