DONNAS:

I used to march back in the 80s, for black deaths in custody here in Melbourne.

Audio Excerpt - Gary Foley:

“What we’re saying here today and what’s very clear and what will be very clear to Bob Hawke and to people all over the world when they see their television screens tomorrow is that we have survived!”

DONNAS:

Walking the streets, marching for justice in this country to stop black deaths in custody in this country has done nothing. It's gotten worse.

If it doesn't stop now, it's never gonna stop and we're going to keep losing kids after kids, after kids. If we don't get justice now we’re never ever going to get it.

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ANGE

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

Donnas Kerr has spent her life fighting for Indigenous rights.

A member of the stolen generations, Donnas grew up seeing members of her family die in custody, and marching the streets for justice.

In 2022, she received a phone call about her own son, Joshua Kerr, who had died alone in a prison cell, after calling out for help.

Today, the mother and sister of Joshua Kerr, Donnas and Maggie, on their family’s tragedy - and why rates of Aboriginal deaths in custody aren’t getting any better.

It’s Tuesday, March 5.

And a warning - this episode contains content that some may find distressing.

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ANGE:

Donnas, you've spent the past few days at a coronial inquest into the death of your son, Joshua, while he was in custody. That's a place that no mother would ever want to be. And I really can't imagine what that kind of pain is like. I will ask how we got here in a moment, but I do want to first ask, what was your son Joshua like?

DONNAS:

Oh, he was a larrikin. Beautiful heart, beautiful soul. He would pull pranks on you. Oh, he’ll have a yarn with you then he’ll just have this smirk on his face and his laugh he had. And he’d just have everybody else cracking up laughing in the room. Yeah he was a beautiful kid.

MAGGIE:

He had a lot of hidden talents as well that we had no idea about growing up. Like, especially me and my sister. We came to find out that he had a great love for his art and his painting and drawings, and the way he would describe his feelings through his paintings was really a side that I never really saw of my brother growing up. But as soon as I saw the expression in his paintings and his love and his dedication and what his purpose was, he really did show us the great potential that he did have and possess.

ANGE:

What did you love about him as a mother?

DONNAS:

Oh I just loved him, he was so beautiful, he looked like a porcelain doll when he was a baby. Yeah people couldn't tell the difference whether he was a boy or a little girl. It was that cute.

ANGE:

I’m sure he liked that description.

DONNAS:

Yeah, he was just. Uncle Dicky, he goes what’s her name? and I said, no, Uncle Dicky that's a boy Josh. I said, His name’s Joshua. Yeah, he was just a lovable kid. You know he had a hard time in the system being put in, you know, Malmesbury, Parkville. The system had chains on him.

ANGE:

Can you tell me a bit more about that? Like what Joshua's upbringing was like and what it was like for you, too, when he was little.

DONNAS:

Well, I was part of the Stolen Generation, so I didn't get to raise my boy. So he was eight months. When I took him to back up. So I was actually living in Clifton Hill, I had a unit there but I didn’t really live in it. Because I resigned at Marge Tucker girls hostel. And then from there, when I did have Josh, I ended up at the Elizabeth Morgan shelter for women, a refuge. Yeah, I couldn't, I just couldn't look after him.

MAGGIE:

Because my mom, being a part of the system, growing up and actually being declared a state ward, they put the same statistics upon her and assumed that she would be like all the rest and just, you know, more or less leave us to the wolves because of that statistics that was there. And they just assumed that she would be very much a part of that.

ANGE:

And how did that system impact Josh's life?

MAGGIE:

It didn't really give him a good start off, I assume, from the experiences that he was exposed to. Like the first, first traumatic experience my brother ever had was when he was placed in care, and during the care, he had witnessed a suicide from one of our other family members, which very much did traumatise him in that sense, where he thought, If I'm placed in a, you know, with a family that is trusted to make sure that I'm going to have a, you know, a healthy upbringing, a good upbringing, it just traumatised him to think that his trust was very thin with a lot of people. And from the age of ten up until he was about 13, he just retaliated in a way which exposed all of his emotions and his pain.

From my mother's perspective, I can understand that it's, it was a great sacrifice that she could make in order to insure herself and to ensure Joshua, that he would have somewhat of a better upbringing than what she did. And that's where it became like a brick wall between them two, and their relationship, where they really did butt heads. And I guess that's how, yeah, everything has fallen into place and he has now become another victim to the system.

ANGE:

And how did you two, sort of, resolve that conflict?

DONNAS:

I told him, I said, if I didn’t love you son you wouldn’t know who I am today, you wouldn’t know your sisters. And I said, you know, I loved you to the day that I had to give you away. I said, it ripped my heart out of me. He had this sort of understanding. But then it was like, months later, he came back and he goes, mum I don’t blame you anymore. He could understand why, you know, I didn’t raise him.

ANGE:

And what was it like when he said that to you? That he understood?

DONNAS:

That was just like, wow. Wow.

I never thought I'd hear him say that because he was a wild kid. You know, he was a wild child. And for him to acknowledge that, and it was like there was some mutual understanding of, you know, there was a bond coming together as a mom and son.

ANGE:

Yeah.

DONNAS:

You know, slowly, it was coming slowly. That would have been done, I suppose, but the system took his life.

ANGE:

After the break - the unanswered questions around Joshua Kerr’s death in custody.

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ANGE:

Joshua Kerr had spent time in and out of prison for years. In July 2021, he was arrested again, this time for an aggravated carjacking, and sent to Port Phillip Prison in Victoria.

DONNAS:

I was actually told that he was only going to be in there for a couple of months then he was getting released. And in saying that he was going to be released to a rehab. But that didn’t happen.

ANGE:

Like many prisoners in Australia, Josh was held awaiting trial, but what his family believed would be a short stay in prison, ended up being a little over a year behind bars.

MAGGIE:

So yeah, he was on remand for the incidents that happened before his death. And that’s when they more or less when they just kept him waiting around in prison for a sentencing and, yeah, just during that time waiting I guess it took a toll upon his mental state because, here he was, assuming that he’s going to fall in line, a part of the statistics that are just going to wait around in the prison just to wait basically.

ANGE:

While he was in prison, Josh stayed in touch with his family, took courses, and was planning for the future.

DONNAS:

Yeah he did all the courses inside prison, his barista.

MAGGIE:

Barista, yeah, he was a qualified barista. So yeah.

DONNAS:

He goes mum, I’m going to own a coffee shop one day.

MAGGIE:

Yes

DONNAS:

I’ll have a coffee shop here and I’ll have all my art there, remember he said that?

MAGGIE:

So all of his successful things that he achieved in prison from the programs to the certificates, that’s the greater hope that he gave to himself while looking to future on the outside.

ANGE:

Josh’s plan to become a barista never happened.

On August 10, 2022, in an isolation cell, Josh lit a fire and was badly burnt.

After being taken to St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, Josh was returned to his cell. His family say he didn't receive adequate medical treatment, and was overdosing on methamphetamine.

On CCTV, prison officers saw Josh in his cell, calling out for help. He said: "I'm dying."

Nurses attended Josh’s cell 17 minutes after becoming unresponsive, but it was too late to help him. Joshua was dead, alone, on the floor of his cell.

MAGGIE:

I got informed by the police at 11:15 at night. I remember opening the door. And then I remember looking at my phone at the time and all of a sudden the police, there was two constables from the Northcote Department, and I remember her just stating, is Donnas Kerr here? we need to speak to her in regards to Joshua Kerr.

And then that's when she started to say that my brother had suffered a medical episode. And when she said those words, I was just in a state of mind, like, convinced is my brother still here? or is he gone? And then that's when she stated the words that from that medical episode, it resulted in his death.

DONNAS:

And at first, it didn't hit me. And then, she rang me back again, and she goes, are you right mum? and I go, yeah, I’m alright. so why, what's going on? Then, it hit me then and I said, it's Josh, isn't it? And she said, yeah, mum. And I said, when she told me, I thought he was on life support or something in hospital, and Maggie goes, “no mum, he’s gone.

ANGE:

A coronial inquest in Melbourne last month examined the circumstances of Joshua's death, and Donnas and Maggie spent three weeks sitting through it, hearing evidence and listening to expert witnesses. The inquest’s findings are yet to be released.

It sounds like there's many unanswered questions around his death, and hopefully you'll get some answers from the coronial inquest. I suppose that's, you know, we have to wait and see what happens from that. But I guess, to your understanding, how did Joshua die?

MAGGIE:

Well, my mum, she's not entirely aware of how my brother died, due to because I did see footage on how he died and the impact that it has left upon me has been very dramatic in other ways. The way he died, I didn't want my mum to see that footage whatsoever, to say the last moments of my brother dying like that. And now to know that my mum has some sort of an understandings on how my brother has passed away, yeah, I would never have wanted her to watch the video.

ANGE:

And Donnas, what do you hope will come from the coronial inquest? Answers, or what actions do you hope it might lead to?

DONNAS:

I just pray and hope for a victory. Because this is what this country needs. Its, no one's ever been held accountable for no black deaths in custody in this country and it's about bloody time. That would be the justice for my son, is to open that gate and say enough's enough.

Our kids in the system are dying. Not dying because they’re sick or they got a terminal illness. But people want to turn a blind eye on it. It’d be a different story if it was their son or daughter. You know, where is this country really going?

ANGE:

I wanted, Donnas, to ask when was the last time you saw Joshua and what was what that was like?

DONNAS:

It was good. It was good he gave me a big cuddle and he said, I love you mum. I said, I love you too, son. And he goes I’m coming home. he says. And I said yeah, we’ll be there waiting for you.

If you need support ‍13YARN is an Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders crisis support line. For mental health support, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today,

Walter Sofronoff did give the impression he was biassed during the inquiry into the trial of Bruce Lehrmann – by engaging in extensive text messaging with journalist Janet Albrectson at The Australian before and during the inquiry – according to the ACT supreme court.

The findings mean that while the majority of findings against the ACT’s top prosecutor Shane Drumgold will remain in place, the court did say one finding was unreasonable under the circumstances.

And Australia’s housing vacancy rate has hit a new all-time low of just 0.7%, according to a study by real estate website Domain.

The low vacancy rate is projected to ease in the year ahead, with projections more rental properties will come onto the market later this year.

I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back again tomorrow.

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