Denial of Request

Unreasonable refusal of repeated requests for a single cell and allocation of cellmates who have been offered inducements to harm me.

On 05 Mar 24 I was transferred from B DN to HDU4 under false pretenses; staff claimed my foot was infected and constituted a danger to other prisoners. The fact that I was placed in a two-person cell on arrival on HDU shows DCS knew my foot presented no risk. My foot has now completely healed without further treatment with antibiotics and therefore could not have been infected as claimed at the time of transfer to HDU4. There was an ulterior motive for the transfer.

In HDU4 my requests for a single cell have been repeatedly denied. I was critically told I was 'in the queue' but on 18 Oct 24, Zulian (manager) stated I 'will not be leaving this unit' (HDU4 has no single cells). My last request for a single cell via email on 11 Nov 24 was responded to on 10 Dec 24 with 'not at this time'. There is at least one HDU with multiple single cells. There are regular movements of prisoners in and out of HDU. In the 10 months I have been in HDU4 there would have been many opportunities to move me into a single cell.

The reason for my transfer to HDU4 has proved to be sinister.

Most prisoners in HDU4 are in their 80's and half use walking frames or wheelchairs. Occasionally young prisoners with psychiatric illness are placed in the unit. In May 24 I was allocated CM as cellmate. At 28 years old and 85 kg he stood out was being much younger, fitter and stronger than any other prisoner in the unit, with no evidence of psychiatric illness. Within days of CM's departure the post-operative wound on my foot, which had almost closed, started oozing a bloodstained serous discharge. I have no deep-pain sensation on my feet and am a sound sleeper; stabbing me in the foot while I am asleep would not wake me. Fortunately after about two months, the oozing stopped and the wound closed.

In Sep 24 CM returned to HDU4 and was initially celled up with another prisoner. Once allocated to a cell, prisoners are not moved unless they request it. However, two weeks after return CM was moved into my cell. I suspected he had tried to get my wound reinfected the last time we were celled up and did not want him as a cell mate. Unit officers told me his move into my cell was a 'manager's decision' and refused to move him. It is highly unusual for managers to get involved with where prisoners are placed in a unit. This is almost always left to the unit officers. So why did the manager direct that CM be moved into my cell?

As cellmates we would both sleep during lunchtime lock-up. I would lie with my feet in the relatively protected end of the bed with my shoes on and laced up so as to make it difficult to access my feet without waking me. Not long as he was celled up with me for the second time, I awoke before afternoon unlock to find him sitting at his bench close to the head of my bed and my mattress pulled off the base by one to two feet, possibly to make my foot more accessible. Again unit officers refused to move him even though they regularly move prisoners for reasons as minor as disagreement about what to watch on TV.

In the week leading to Christmas CM took to sleeping all day, a change from his usual pattern. This meant he would be awake at night when I was sound asleep. In the same period my eyes became very watery and my vision blurred to the point where I couldn't read fine print; I was unable to do my usual crosswords as I couldn't read the small crossword numbers at all. After a few days I decided to bandage my head to make it difficult to access my eyes without waking me. The next day my eyes were must less water and my vision improved. The next night again I bandaged my head but awoke at 5:41 to find the bandages had been party pulled back over my head leaving my eyes exposed. The bandages were tightly and carefully applied. There is no way they could have worked their way over my head during normal movements of sleep.

CM and I have no history. We have never had any serious disagreements. There is no basis for any animosity between us. Why would he want to harm me? He is facing a 15-year sentence for arson and rape and may be receptive to offers of sentence reduction as inducement. as a former psychiatrist I saw no evidence of psychiatric illness in the time we were celled up. When he returned to HDU4 he had scratched his left to give the impression he 'self-harmed'; it seemed like a lame attempt to justify his presence in HDU4. He was also over familiar with prison officers engaging even the male officers in social chitchat and using the emergency intercom for minor queries, something officers would not tolerate from ordinary prisoners.

In BDN informers and DCS agents would be quickly sniffed out and forced to leave the unit. In HDU4 frail elderly prisonders do not have the capacity to confront a fit, strong 28-year old.

This is occurring on a background of escalating actions against my interests. The treatment I received for a foot infection is one example. In Jun 23 a foot ulcer became infected again. In RAH I was told the infection had got into the bone and that effectice treatment would require surgery. The surgeon cut off all of the toes on my right foot making no attempt to preserve the skin from around the toes to serve as flaps for closing the wound and leaving a large open wound susceptible to re-infection. The surgeon then directed that gauze swabs be placed on the wound under the dressing; every time the dressing was changed tissue which had grown into the gauze swabs would be ripped out sending the healing process back to square one. I remained febrile throughout the admission; the amputation had not removed the source of infection. Back in gaol I continued to wake up at three to four am with my clothes and sheets drenched in sweat. Each week there was more and more discharge from the wound. After about a month a new nurse-practitioner changed my antibiotic to flucloxacillin. In three days I stopped having night sweats and within a week the amount of discharge from the wound was much less. However, two weeks after she started the flucloxacillin the new nuse-practitionier stopped it claiming she now thought my wound was not infected (despite highly elevated ESR and CRP showing I had a serious infection somewhere). She would not explain why she had started the flucloxacillin two weeks previously or account for the high ESR and CRP. The doctor who had ordered the ESR and CRP said he had discussed my case with the surgeon and now 'understood' that the wound was not infected. Documents obtained under F.O.I. revealed an MRI performed on the eve of the surgery showed no bone involvement; the amputation was therefore unnecessary. The reason I was not responding was not because the infection had got into the bone but because the antibiotics used were not effective against one of the infecting organisms. The only reason I'm still alive is because a new nurse-practitioner didn't know I wasn't meant to be getting the right antibiotic. Furthermore, photos taken of the wound around this time were shown to the surgeon who claimed he could see the wound was 'necrotic'. Necrosis means gangrene for which the only treatment is surgery. Thanks to my medical training I knew the wound was not necrotic and I refused surgical intervention. I was told a guardianship order would be sought on the basis that I was endangering my life by making bad decisions about my treatment because of 'delusions' A guardianship order would give the doctors the power to amputate the foot against my will. To help this application some officers falsely claimed my foot had a foul smell and tried to coerce me into attending the infirmary. When I refused I was taken to G Div. (punishment unit) where officers eventually dragged me into a wheelchair and forcibly wheeled me into the infirmiary. Eventually the application for a guardianship order was withdrawn. My foot has healed without further surgery proved it could not have been 'necrotic' as claimed by the surgeon in Sep 23. If I'd gone along with the surgeon I would have had my foot (as well as my toes) amputated unnecessarily. Fortunately I was on flucloxacillin long enough for the infection to clear.

In all circumstances there are reasonable grounds for believing that I was transferred to HDU4 to pave the way for allocating me cellmates who had been offered inducements to harm me by inducing a medical condition as as a wound or eye infection; this would force me to seek medical intervention and give prison doctors the opportunity to apply for another guardianship order to enable them to carry out interventions against my will. I narrowly avoided dying of sepsis and having my foot amputated unnecessarily in the hands of the Prison Health Service in 2023.

I need to be placed in a single cell to avoid such a fate. I am in no danger from ordinary prisoners while out and about. I do not need to be in 'protection'.

I already earned the privilege of a single cell in 2022 after spending more than three months in a three-person cell in E DN and two months in a two-person cell in B DN. I had been in single cells in B DN for about 18 months prior to transfer to HDU4 and have done nothing to forgeit this privilege - committed no offences, breached no rules and met all the prison requirements e.g. in relation to cleanliness, orderliness and behaviour.