Death of Ms Dhu
Julieka Ivanna Dhu was a 22-year-old Australian Aboriginal woman who died in police custody in South Hedland, Western Australia, in 2014. On 2 August that year, police responded to a report that Dhu’s partner had violated an apprehended violence order. Upon arriving at their address, the officers arrested both Dhu and her partner after realising there was an outstanding arrest warrant for unpaid fines against Dhu. While in custody, Dhu complained of pain and was twice taken to the Hedland Health Campus hospital. Medical staff judged that her complaints were exaggerated and associated with drug withdrawal. On 4 August, she complained that she could no longer stand. Police officers, who accused her of faking her condition, handcuffed her
About Death of Ms Dhu in brief
Julieka Ivanna Dhu was a 22-year-old Australian Aboriginal woman who died in police custody in South Hedland, Western Australia, in 2014. On 2 August that year, police responded to a report that Dhu’s partner had violated an apprehended violence order. Upon arriving at their address, the officers arrested both Dhu and her partner after realising there was an outstanding arrest warrant for unpaid fines against Dhu. While in custody, Dhu complained of pain and was twice taken to the Hedland Health Campus hospital. Medical staff judged that her complaints were exaggerated and associated with drug withdrawal. On 4 August, she complained that she could no longer stand. Police officers, who accused her of faking her condition, handcuffed her, carried her to the back of their van and returned her to hospital; she was pronounced dead shortly after arrival. The official cause of death was an infection due to her partner’s breaking of her ribs three months earlier. An internal police investigation found that 11 officers had failed to comply with regulations or were otherwise guilty of misconduct. They were given written and oral warnings. A coronial inquest found that she had suffered ‘unprofessional and inhumane’ handling by police and ‘deficient’ treatment from hospital staff. It also established that police and hospital staff had been influenced by preconceived ideas about Aboriginal people. The inquest recommended that the justice system should stop imprisoning people for unpaid fine and introduce a Custody Notification Scheme.
After years of delays, a CNS was made operational in October 2019. In 1991, the Royal Commission into the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in Australia released a report into the deaths of Aboriginal people in custody. One of its recommendations was an end to issuing arrest warrants for unpaid debts. Another was the implementation of Custody Schemes in all Australian states and territories. At the time of Dhu’s death, all states and New South Wales were only the only state and Territory to have implemented a CNS. In September 2019, Attorney-General of Western Australia John Quigley introduced legislative amendments to cease jailing people in default of unpaid fines in September 2019. Dhu completed Year Eleven;: 5 according to her family, after leaving school, she seemed to associate ‘with a bad crowd’ and was a ‘wild child’ Dhu lived with her parents until they separated when she was three, after which she was mostly raised by her grandmother in Geraldton, though her parents remained in regular contact with her. In 2013, at age 21, she began a relationship with a 42- year-old man, Dion Ruffin, who had several children by previous partners and—unknown to Dhu—had criminal convictions for domestic violence. They lived together in a rented house in south Hedland. In July 2014, In July Dhuin had broken her ribs. Ruffin subsequently admitted, saying he struck her after she had stabbed him in the leg with a pair of scissors.
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This page is based on the article Death of Ms Dhu published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
