Secret police files: Broome Hospital senior doctor describes alcohol abuse in The Kimberley as ‘genocide’

A senior Kimberley doctor who has witnessed the devastation caused by alcohol abuse in Aboriginal communities said Government inaction on stopping the rivers of grog was “aiding and abetting genocide”. The explosive testimony by former Broome Hospital senior medical officer Sue Phillips is part of a secret police dossier on alcohol-fuelled crime, violence, abuse and suicides in the Kimberley obtained by The West Australian. The exhaustive report was compiled under former police commissioner Chris Dawson, who is now WA Governor, in October 2020 for the Director of Liquor Licensing in a bid to have full-strength takeaway alcohol banned in the region. The contents of the documents have long been speculated about but remained top secret until they were revealed to The West Australian this week. The dossier includes numerous witness statements provided to police from frontline health, social and education workers outlining in graphic detail the social devastation caused by widespread alcohol abuse. “Much of the evidence is confronting,” the report says. “The statements evidence a community in despair who have succumbed to living with demoralising societal issues; such issues that would ordinarily be associated with third-world standards. “The interviewees are in a unique position to provide valuable first-hand experience as to how alcohol abuse, and its accessibility, has indiscriminately harmed the region.” In her statement, provided in May 2019, Dr Phillips said the negative impact alcohol misuse had on Broome far outweighed any other recreational drugs, including methamphetamine. “The social impact for entire families — generations of families — is insidious and pervasive,” she said. “Alcohol is consumed in this community in significantly large quantities, across the majority of the population.” Dr Phillips said a large number of presentations to Broome Hospital emergency department, particularly after hours, were due to alcohol-fuelled injuries. These were mostly due to assaults or accidents caused by broken glass. Car crashes caused by drunk drivers in vehicles overloaded with passengers not wearing seatbelts were also a significant factor. However, she said her greater concern was the damage that a lifestyle of constant drinking was having on the next generation. Dr Phillips said that chronic alcohol abuse led to a life of unemployment, poverty and an inability of parents to care for their children. “The consequent need for children to be taken into care ... then adds to the cycle of emotional trauma for both the child and the alcoholic parents,” she said. Dr Phillips also said alcohol abuse made domestic violence-related attacks even more extreme. “The severity of injury to their loved ones is often overwhelming as a result of multiple blows with fists and feet and objects — all perpetrated while the offender is in an alcohol-fuelled rage,” she said. “The children of this community ... are often left to their own devices, often unfed, wandering the streets at night rather than be within striking distance of an alcohol-fuelled fight at home.” She said the issue was dramatically shortening people’s lives, recounting patients as young as 30 dying from liver disease. “We now have generations of adults with fetal alcohol syndrome who have no capacity to break out of this cycle, and who have alcohol drinking problems themselves, with poor coping skills and a low threshold for violence,” Dr Phillips said. “I cannot emphasise enough how strongly I feel that in doing nothing about the serious problem of alcohol issues in our community, the Government is simply aiding and abetting genocide.” Dr Phillips, now the regional medical director at WA Country Health Services, wrote in her statement that the views she expressed were personal and did not represent her employer. Police also obtained a witness statement from Kimberley regional paediatrician Anna Robson, who detailed the injuries she saw inflicted on children who had been in the care of drunk adults. “We see burns from stepping in campfires, accessing pots on ovens etc, cuts from broken glass,” she said. Dr Robson estimated 40 per cent of her child patients in Derby and Halls Creek had been exposed to alcohol in utero, but the extent of the exposure varied. “I have very alcohol-affected parents as a result of their own experience in utero. You have parents with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder,” she said. “This generation of parents some have less capacity to take care of their children ... so they will as a result of their alcohol-related brain injury ... may be more impulsive, have less capacity to think and plan and are more at risk of undertaking similar risk behaviours in pregnancy. “Unless something changes, the impacts are potentially exponential ... this effects not just the individual born and exposed to alcohol but their children and their children’s children consequent to epigenetics.” Thomas Gillard, Broome Hospital’s clinical nurse manager for the emergency and high dependency department, told police the facility dealt with a high volume of alcohol-related assaults and self-harms. He said a lot of assaults were family violence incidents that resulted in face and head injuries caused by fists, metal bars or broken bottles. “We get stabbings in the legs and arms more so than chest wounds fortunately,” Mr Gillard said. He said they could see up to eight self-harms or suicide attempts a day. “Alcohol is a major issue of self-harm presentations from minor lacerations up to legitimate attempts,” he said. Mr Gillard said the emergency department had issues with patients being aggressive to staff or other patients. On average, once a week an incident was so bad they had to call a “code black”, which requires the immediate responses of five specially trained staff. “Our staff are facing this constantly, feeling quite fatigued,” he said. “Quite burnt out ... 18 months to two years is an average turnover of our staff. Working here in Broome Hospital can be totally overwhelming.” Lifeline 13 11 14