Restraint failings still not adequately addressed 20 years after Gareth Myatt’s death

Gareth, aged 15, had been in and out of care five times between the ages of 11 and 14. He was small for his age, weighing just 6½ stone and being less than five feet tall. His mother recounted the racist abuse he endured from primary school onwards; she believed the police targeted him because of the colour of his skin.

He was detained in G4S-run Rainsbrook secure training centre for stealing a bottle of beer, assaulting a member of staff in his children’s home (his mother told me he was cornered by staff and pushed past to get away) and not complying fully with the non-custodial programme ordered after previous convictions for petty offending.

Just three days into his sentence, on a Monday evening, Gareth was ordered to his cell for refusing to clean a sandwich toaster which other children had also used. Another child had volunteered to clean it, which should have been the end of the matter. But two officers proceeded to remove possessions from his cell (a common prison punishment) – a magazine, paper and pencils. When one of them snatched a piece of paper which had Gareth’s mum’s new mobile number on it, events escalated. The officer, weighing 14 stone and standing 6 feet tall, said Gareth had threatened him with a raised fist. This led him to ‘envelop’ Gareth and push him onto his bed. With two other colleagues, the officer then pushed Gareth’s head and upper body down to his thighs and knees, ignoring his cries that he couldn’t breathe. Gareth was pronounced dead on arrival at the local hospital in Coventry.

One of the officers sought damages from the Ministry of Justice for post-traumatic stress disorder. This was refused in the Court of Appeal which observed: “If the officers had been dealing with a large and violent youth whose release, if he was not in truth in distress, might have enabled him to attack them, one could at least have understood their reluctance to release him. But this was an undersized, underweight 15-year-old who had done no more than show his fist to an officer twice his size – an officer who, moreover, had provoked him into doing it by a pointless and insensitive act.”

The inquest jury found a catalogue of serious child protection failures (though they weren’t described in these terms) – inadequate assessment of the restraint technique used on Gareth; inadequate response to prior incidents where children’s lives and safety were endangered during restraint; inadequate investigations of children’s complaints; and inadequate monitoring of what was happening to children. Two of the coroner’s 34 recommendations issued in July 2007 are fundamental safeguards but they remain unfulfilled.

The coroner wanted a system established whereby children would get the chance after each incident of restraint to give their perspective of what had happened to them. At first, the Youth Justice Board (which then had oversight of children’s custodial institutions) resisted, stating this would not be possible due to the poor literacy of imprisoned children. Most children in custody have primary school-aged reading and writing skills. Then an independent children’s rights and advocacy service was commissioned. I remember being in a meeting with senior officials from the Youth Justice Board discussing the importance of children being proactively offered help from an advocate after each restraint, so they could give their version of events and be informed of their rights and the role of local authority child protection investigations.

Some years later, the serious case review report into another G4S-run secure training centre (where abuse was only finally confronted after an undercover Panorama investigation) noted the advocacy service was no longer (since July 2017) contracted “to be physically present to offer advocacy if a young person has previously been restrained”. The dangers were obvious: after a first incident of restraint, the advocacy safeguard was watered down.

I had understood that the Ministry of Justice (now in charge of children’s custodial institutions) had subsequently rectified this arrangement so that every child would be seen by an advocate following each incident of restraint. Yet recently I learned this selective procedure remains in place in at least one child prison, if not all of them.

The coroner also recommended that everybody with a monitoring role should be given a copy of the restraint training manual or similar document. This has still not happened. In 2010, the Information Commissioner’s Office ordered the publication of the manual then in use, in a freedom of information (FOI) challenge brought by the Children’s Rights Alliance for England. Two years later, a new manual appeared which government refused to disclose. Legal action failed to bring transparency. The Court of Appeal accepted the government’s position that disclosure would threaten security across the penal estate because adult prisoners would use published material on restraint methods to develop counter measures (even though their practical experience of restraint already gives this opportunity, should they be so inclined).

In February, government policy finally banned pain-inducing restraint techniques in child prisons. But the revised policy allows severe pain to be inflicted through the use of "emergency intervention techniques" and "personal safety and breakaway techniques". I submitted an FOI request asking for a brief description of each of these. The Ministry of Justice has refused to provide even this. Who knows whether they are aware of "action 17" of the coroner’s report issued all those years ago.

When I met Gareth’s mum, she told me he loved watching the Simpsons and South Park and riding his bike. He was also a keen chess player; his board was still set up in corner of the living room. Gareth’s mum told me, “there was never any justice, I feel like I’ve failed, you know. I feel like I’ve failed as Gaz’s mum to get justice”.

Prisons are inherently harmful; they are not fit for children and several years ago the government committed to phase them out. While we await their closure once and for all, basic safeguards must be put in place. Justice – treating children with respect, decency and fairness, and putting wrongs right – should be at the heart of our child protection system. For every child.

• Carolyne Willow is director of Article 39