‘Stripped, caged and water tortured’: Female medic’s claim over ADF resistance to interrogation training abuse

Warning: Distressing content. This article contains detailed descriptions of torture and physical abuse.

Rachel sat in a hall at a Queensland military base with her notebook open when chaos erupted.

She had been waiting for what she believed would be medical theory lessons when a group of men burst into the room with weapons and dogs “yelling and screaming at us to get down on the ground”.

“They were simulating the shock and awe of capture,” she said.

Within moments, Rachel and her colleagues were blindfolded, handcuffed and loaded on to a bus.

Instead of routine pre-deployment training, they were subjected to Resistance to Interrogation training, designed to prepare soldiers for capture and interrogation by hostile forces.

About 30 soldiers were subjected to the exercise. Of them, Rachel was the only woman.

Rachel, not her real name, joined the Australian Regular Army in the mid-1990s after finishing school and enlisted in the Medical Corps.

By all accounts, she was a capable and resilient soldier.

In the early 2000s she was posted to Sydney and it was while serving there that she was selected to deploy to the Middle East in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Prior to deploying, she was subjected to RTI training.

“We were sent to Brisbane under the impression that we were to participate in medical evacuation training,” she recalls.

Rachel said participants believed they were attending a classroom-based lesson, not a field exercise involving simulated capture, near-nudity or stress positions.

“Although there were rumours RTI may occur at some stage, we were not notified,” she said.

“We didn’t receive a formal brief and I didn’t sign a consent form.”

Capture

“Upon arrival in Brisbane, we were sitting in a hall waiting for a lesson. I was ready with my notebook,” Rachel said.

That was when the doors flew open and men – from the Intelligence Corps with support from Brisbane’s 6RAR – “captured” the group.

They were forced on to the ground, blindfolded and handcuffed.

They were then put on a bus to the Defence Intelligence Training Centre at Canungra in the Gold Coast hinterland.

When they arrived, they were ordered to lie on the ground before being blasted with a fire hose.

Rachel realised their RTI training was underway.

“It was absolutely terrifying,” she said.

“We knew if we didn’t pass, we wouldn’t be allowed to deploy.”

At Canungra, Rachel was separated from her colleagues for “processing”, which involved being stripped down to her underwear.

As she had not been warned she would undertake RTI training that day, she was dressed for classroom lessons.

“I was very embarrassed because I was wearing a G-string and a sports bra,” she said.

“A man with a clipboard circled me and critiqued my body (saying) words to the effect of ‘well, she obviously doesn’t go to the gym’.

“The language they used was vile. The whole process was designed to strip dignity and degrade me.”

Stress positions

After processing, Rachel was taken to a tent where – handcuffed – she was seated on a sharp plastic shower mat that “felt like a grate”.

“I was seated in a cross-legged stress position with my back straight, and my arms out in front of me, with one hand holding a Styrofoam cup,” she said.

“I was carrying a pre-existing injury in my neck … the stress position caused agonising pain in my neck and back.”

The position exposed her genital area.

“I was embarrassed and discreetly tried to move my hospital gown to cover myself,” she said.

“I was slapped over the head and told ‘don’t you move, you stupid bitch,’ which is when I realised they were watching.”

Humiliation

There had been no briefing or medical assessment prior to the training, so Rachel had not brought her oral contraceptive pill.

“As a result of not taking the pill, along with the stress my body was under, I began to bleed with my period,” she said.

“I was given pads but was not allowed to go to the toilet unsupervised or take the blindfold off.

“I had to put a pad inside my G-string, blindfolded, with people watching me.”

She was forced to stay awake.

“If I started to doze off, a guard came and hit me around the head,” she said.

“I hallucinated that everyone around me was in sleeping bags or eating, and that I was the only one left sitting there.”

At one stage Rachel heard her colleagues telling the interrogators to let her go.

“I believe the guards or interrogators wanted to prove a point … so they put me into a military-style dog cage which was sitting in a trailer full of water,” she said.

“They turned on the tap so the water level gradually rose up to my chin.

“I was terrified because I was still blindfolded and could feel the water rising.

“I found out later that my colleagues … were forced to walk past me so that they could witness what was happening to me.”

Interrogations

Rachel’s ordeal continued.

She was repeatedly interrogated while seated cross-legged on the floor.

“The interrogator made me believe that because I wouldn’t provide information, that I was the only one who was still being held hostage and that everybody else had been released,” she said.

After “30 to 40 hours”, the exercise suddenly ended.

“We were told that we ‘got off easy’ compared to the Special Forces members who had to do 72 hours or more,” she said.

Aftermath

By the end of the training, Rachel felt “shattered, demoralised and humiliated”.

“Following the training, my male colleagues referred to me in derogatory nicknames, in reference to my underwear during the training,” she said.

“I don’t know how many people saw me in that vulnerable state.

“I didn’t know who had done what to me, so I didn’t know who I could trust.”

Following RTI, Rachel served another 12 years in the ADF.

“My understanding was that if I did not complete the training, I would not deploy, and my career would be negatively impacted,” she said. “The training had no benefit for us. We just gained shared trauma.”

After 16 years of service, Rachel was medically discharged.

“Prior to my discharge, I was diagnosed with major depression, anxiety and PTSD,” she said.

“The events of RTI are contributors to the cause of these conditions.”

Evidence

For two decades Rachel was unaware that the training had been filmed.

“I find this completely mortifying,” she said.

“It is a gross violation of my personal integrity and privacy.

“The knowledge that this imagery can be used for training purposes is completely crushing.”

Rachel, now in her late-40s, says she feels let down by the institution she served for most of her adult life.

“I feel that they subjected us to the RTI training for fun, in an effort to prove that they could do the same training that the SAS did, to gain credibility within the special forces realm and with no thought about the lasting impact,” she said.

“It should never have happened.”

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