Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles is facing calls to act on the incarceration of Roseanne Fulton, a mentally impaired Indigneous woman languishing in a Kalgoorlie jail, despite never facing trial or being convicted of a crime.
Fulton has spent the past 18 months in a West Australian prison after she crashed a stolen car and was charged with driving offences. Born with foetal alcohol syndrome, Fulton, 24, was ruled by a magistrate to be unfit to plead or face trial.
Rejected for a place in an Alice Springs secure facility, Kwiyernpe House, designed for intellectually impaired people, Fulton has remained in prison in Kalgoorlie, hundreds of kilometres from her family and home in the Northern Territory.
“They’re leaving Roseanne in prison, neglected, forgotten and ignored. She is desperately sad and wants to return to the NT. She deserves care and kindness, not prison bars and more abuse,” Fulton’s legal guardian, former NT police officer Ian McKinlay, said.
He speaks to her daily by phone. “She’s just bewildered, she doesn’t know why she’s there and why she’s stayed so long,” McKinlay said.
She is one of at least 30 Aboriginal people in the same situation, according to the Aboriginal Disability Justice Campaign.
Since ABC’s Lateline program revealed the story, McKinlay has set up a petition demanding NT chief minister Adam Giles have Fulton moved to a supported care facility.
“The NT government has wiped their hands of her. Despite building a brand new facility to care for people like Roseanne, the NT government is refusing to offer her a secure care placement that would allow her release. But it seems they think it’ll save a few dollars keeping her in jail instead of in proper care,” McKinlay said.
The petition asks Giles and the NT government “to offer Roseanne a place in proper care rather than leaving her locked in a prison indefinitely”.
In Victoria and NSW, cases such as Fulton’s are offered disability services and specialist accommodation.
The NT corrections department and health department both declined to comment.
