A Parkville youth justice worker who says he was choked by an inmate and had to hold together a colleague's slashed throat after an attack is suing the state for failing to provide a safe workplace.
Matthew Stamp, 47, who supervised young inmates for the Department of Health and Human Services for about two years, was allegedly "rugby-tackled" by an inmate at Parkville Youth Justice Precinct in January 2013, the Supreme Court heard on Tuesday.
Mr Stamp – whose leg was injured in the attack and who was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder – said there was a lack of consequences for inmates who attacked staff.
The case could raise further questions about the conditions at the Parkville youth justice precinct, which has been at the centre of controversy since riots there and at Malmsbury over the past year.
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Mr Stamp was also allegedly involved in other previous violent incidents including:
- Four inmates held a fellow youth justice worker hostage and cut him in the scalp, face and throat with a makeshift knife in June 2012, the court heard. Mr Stamp had to hold the edges of the victim's neck wound together to slow the blood flow until paramedics arrived. Mr Stamp's lawyer, Craig Harrison, QC, said his client and another colleague were not invited to debriefs or given time off after the incident. While the items used to make the knife were removed, he said no other improvements were made to improve safety.
- In October 2012, an inmate allegedly got on top of Mr Stamp and began to choke him, after the guard tried to shepherd him down a corridor. Police officers standing nearby did not immediately respond and Mr Stamp "thought he was going to die", Mr Harrison said, until the inmate was pulled off him.
Mr Harrison said the state could do more to reduce attacks in youth justice facilities, where many inmates suffered acquired brain injuries, and others were affected by long-term substance abuse.
This could include better managing risks of assaults, within a workplace culture where violence against workers was considered "just part of the job".
David Curtain, QC, for the state, said Mr Stamp had been "trained extensively" for about five weeks before he began his job in 2011, and was given regular updates and physical training on strategies to avoid violence.
"He knew before he took the job that he was at risk of being attacked by a prisoner on a constant basis," Mr Curtain said.
He said it was "hard to imagine how one could anticipate that there would be an assault and do a risk assessment of that assault ... when you're handling a prisoner," he said.
A day before an inmate allegedly tackled Mr Stamp from behind in January 2013, they had been involved in another conflict.
The inmate had threatened Mr Stamp, telling him he "was dead" as they struggled over a saline solution the inmate was spraying on people around him.
Mr Curtain told the court that "getting assaulted is part and parcel of the job", and that Mr Stamp had pre-existing psychiatric issues.
"We say that a person doing the job [Mr Stamp] was employed to do should have been able to do that without any psychiatric reaction," Mr Curtain said.
Mr Harrison said that his client had suffered mental health problems following the attack, having been hospitalised after he tried to take his own life.
Mr Stamp, who resigned a day after the incident and is unemployed, said in court documents he can no longer perform the same line of work.
He says he suffers stress, anxiety, depression and adjustment disorder, and is claiming past and future loss of his earnings.
Mr Stamp raised with his supervisor concerns about an increase in violent incidents as early as September 2011, after a co-worker's eyes were gouged, the court heard.
He told his supervisor that he was concerned about a lack of consequences for inmates involved in attacks on staff "meaning that there was no effective discouragement for the clients to modify or address their behaviours," Mr Harrison said.
Apart from temporarily introducing a mindfulness program for workers, and a special emergency response team, he said nothing more changed.
The trial continues.
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