Disturbing footage taken by former youth justice officer Conan Zamolo has been tendered to the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory.
In a video filmed by Zamolo, who worked at Don Dale Youth Detention Centre from October 2012 to December 2014, he asked detainees: "Which one of you boys wants to suck my dick?"
To one inmate Zamolo said: "Come suck my dick you little cunt".
"Come suck my dick you little cunt" former Don Dale Detention Centre Youth Justice Officer Conan Zamolo to a group… https://t.co/7bPWIEg0PJ
On Monday Zamolo told the royal commission: “I had a good relationship with the kids. That’s how they talk to each other. I assumed they’d take it as a joke.”
This SnapChat video of a child urinating, also filmed by Zamolo, was tendered to the royal commission.
"Oi, what are you doing you little gay dog?" Former Don Dale worker Conan Zamolo filming a detainee while he urinat… https://t.co/7mJwCly2c0
"Oi, what are you doing you little gay dog?" Zamolo can be heard asking the child.
Another video tendered to the inquiry showed a child being goaded into eating what is believed to be bird faeces.
Former Don Dale Detention Centre Youth Justice Officer Conan Zamol "mucking around" as he goads detainee into eatin… https://t.co/W4rAZMbmjw
"Did you think about the health consequences for that child, of eating faeces?" Peggy Dwyer of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency asked Zamolo, who replied "Nah".
Dwyer: "When the child was eating the substance he was eating, it occurred to you that it might be faeces?"
Zamolo responded: "We didn't know what it was. It was just all for the camera, all for the joke."
Zamolo said he posted the video "only on SnapChat" and that he never posted footage of children on any other form of social media.
"I can see now how it was all very inappropriate," he said.
Zamolo was also questioned about an incident in which he took the hands of a female detainee and used them to slap her face.
"We were just being playful, I wasn't really slapping her, I was barely even touching her," Zamolo said. "She was laughing, by the way."
Last week an Aboriginal man testified about his experiences in the Northern Territory's youth justice system. He said a guard threatened to have prisoners rape him when he was placed briefly into an adult prison as a 17-year-old.
“At the prison one of the guards asked me when I would turn 18,” he said. “When I told him, he said, ‘Oh, so you’ll get transferred back here soon; good, I’ll get some of the guys to rape you when you get back’.”