Mid North Coast Correctional Centre prison guard left burnt, tortured and 'spiralling' in pain

When one correctional officer first became a prison guard, he thought he could make a difference in a community he loved that was beleaguered by poverty and generational trauma.

“I believed that if I could change the life of one person then perhaps the cycle of poverty and abuse in one family could be broken,” the man told a court on Wednesday.

“How naive and idealistic I was.”

The officer and his colleague, both of whom cannot be named for legal reasons, were attacked by a pair of prisoners at the Mid North Coast Correctional Centre near Kempsey on December 19, 2020.

While his colleague escaped with several stab wounds, the other man was tied up in the officers’ station with a skipping rope before being beaten, stabbed with a shiv and chemically burned by a hospital-grade disinfectant, Fincol.

It was six hours before the hostage situation ended when negotiators agreed to consider the two inmates for a buprenorphine injection program.

Corrective Services NSW later pleaded guilty to breaches of the Work Health and Safety Act, admitting policy failures led to the violent incident.

The breaches included guards not being required to enter and exit the officers’ station through an airlock, which would isolate them from inmates, and a failure to ensure chemicals like Fincol were securely stored.

In a lengthy victim impact statement read to the NSW District Court, the officer described the long aftermath of the incident, which left him with permanent loss of feeling in his feet and hands, partial blindness and major burns on his body.

“I once believed that scars were tattoos that told better stories,” the officer wrote.

“The scars that cover my body tell a different story: one of abuse and trauma and events beyond my control.”

The constant, writhing pain from his injuries made it impossible for him to touch anyone else and severely impacted the lives of his friends, family and partner.

“The actions of others have sent both of our lives’ trajectories spiralling into a place no one should have to tread,” he said.

“Every day I deal with a mind-boggling sense of betrayal ... the people I trusted should not have had that trust.”

Judge Wendy Strathdee was visibly emotional when reading the statement and thanked the officer for his bravery.

“I’m so grateful and moved by the fact that you were able to so eloquently present the dreadful situation you find yourself in,” she said.

The judge also commended Corrective Services NSW, which largely accepted there were faults in health and safety systems.

The state agency says policies are now in place to avoid a repeat of the situation.

The ambush was headed by an inmate, who cannot be named for legal reasons, who was serving a 27-year prison sentence for the brutal stabbing murder of Queanbeyan service station attendant Zeeshan Akbar in 2017.

The now-24-year-old teamed up with fellow inmate Noel Barrett, 27, to ambush the guards.

The judge did not set a date for Corrective Services NSW’s sentence.