Girl in Australian detention since birth suffers mental problems

SYDNEY - Australia's treatment of asylum-seekers is under scrutiny again following revelations about a three-year-old girl who is suffering from serious mental health problems after spending her entire life in mandatory detention.

Professional advice that Naomi Leong, a Malaysian, should be allowed out to visit a local playgroup for two hours once a week has gone unheeded.

Of the 74 children being held in immigration detention centres around the country, she has been incarcerated the longest.

Her case was uncovered by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which reported that Naomi - once an alert and extrovert little girl - was now profoundly disturbed.

"She's in a very anxious and distressed state," Dr Michael Dudley, a child pyschiatrist who visited her in Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre, told the ABC.

"She's banging her head against the wall, she's gazing into the distance at times, she's mute, unresponsive, listless."

Dr Dudley wrote to immigration authorities two months ago recommending that Naomi, who turned three yesterday, be allowed to visit the playgroup to mix with children of her own age. But permission has yet to be granted.

Naomi's mother, Virginia Leong, was two months pregnant when she was arrested while trying to leave Australia without the correct papers.

The little girl was born at Villawood and has never experienced life outside those walls.

According to Dr Dudley, she suffers from severe separation anxiety.

"She wants to lie in her mum's arms and be nursed all the time," he said. "She watches her mum like a hawk."

Refugee campaigners say she has bruises from banging her head against the wall.

Dr Dudley said Naomi needed to be in a place where she had a chance to develop normally.

"She's been brought up in prison, in a highly abnormal environment with highly distressed people. It's not an environment conducive to child development."

In a separate case, the government was condemned yesterday by a Federal Court judge for its treatment of two mentally disturbed Iranian asylum-seekers.

Justice Paul Finn said authorities had breached their duty of care by refusing to transfer the men to a psychiatric hospital.

He found "culpable neglect" of one man, who claimed he was treated "like an animal" and who repeatedly mutilated himself with a razor blade. Both men have been incarcerated in a detention centre in South Australia for several years.

- INDEPENDENT