Imprisoned mentally ill woman sparks outcry

Australian immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has defended the detention of a mentally ill Australian woman for 10 months, saying the department did all it could to care for her.

Cornelia Rau, a 39-year-old permanent resident who came to Australia when she was 18 months old, was released from South Australia's Baxter immigration centre yesterday.

Refugee advocates say Ms Rau was locked in solitary confinement for up to 20 hours a day for about two months.

Asylum Seeker Resource Centre spokeswoman Pamela Curr said a psychiatrist had not visited the Baxter centre since November last year.

The next psychiatrist's visit is scheduled for next Saturday.

Ms Rau, who went missing from the psychiatric ward of Manly Hospital in Sydney in March last year, was listed as a missing person in NSW in August.

An Aboriginal community in far north Queensland found her and reported her to police in March 2004.

The Immigration Department claims Ms Rau responded to questioning in German and had no identification papers.

She spent some time imprisoned in Brisbane before being moved to Baxter.

The former Qantas flight attendant is now sedated in hospital in Adelaide.

The room in which she spent some time at Baxter had no privacy and was monitored 24 hours a day, Ms Curr said.

"There's no privacy and the lights are on 24 hours a day," Ms Curr said.

Adelaide lawyer Claire O'Conner said Ms Rau could sue the immigration department for false imprisonment.

Ms O'Conner is representing three Iranian people imprisoned at Baxter in the Federal Court in their bid to receive an independent psychiatric assessment and be moved to a mental health facility,

Ms Rau's family is concerned her mental condition may have deteriorated while she was imprisoned.

"There are a lot of unanswered questions about what exactly unfolded. Unfortunately Cornelia can't tell us this," Ms Rau's sister, Christine Rau, told Sky News.

"She's out of touch with reality. She's giving the nurses an alias -- Anna Schmidt.

"She's very determined to use that person. She's even put on a German accent, which she doesn't normally have and a consultant psychiatrist is constantly trying to talk to her."

Senator Vanstone refused to front the media today, but defended the department's actions in a statement.

Ms Rau had received a psychiatric assessment which found she was not mentally ill, Senator Vanstone said.

"From the moment she came into immigration detention she was provided with medical care, including psychiatric care which ultimately led to her admission to a psychiatric facility in Brisbane for assessment," she said.

"This found that, while having some behavioural problems, she did not meet the criteria for a mental illness."

The Australian Greens and the Democrats have called for an inquiry into the matter.

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle questioned how an assessment had found Ms Rau to be mentally fit when she had been hospitalised previously for her condition.

"Then why was she registered in a psychiatric ward in Manly?" Senator Nettle said.

"I haven't heard anything from the minister that they are going to make changes to the procedures to ensure that this doesn't happen again," she told AAP.

South Australian Premier Mike Rann said the coordination between state bodies and federal agencies had failed.

"If this person was listed as a missing person then clearly the systems aren't working. The systems aren't working between the states ... and the commonwealth," Mr Rann told Sky News.

- AAP