leave, and because the only consequence of that trust was to deprive her of her liberty.
When Anna was moved into the Brisbane women’s prison she went, as did all new inmates, into a
medium-level security area known as Secure 1. It is possible to re-construct her behaviour and her
state of mind from the secret notes delivered to the Palmer inquiry by the Queensland government –
which I have been able to read – and, even more importantly, from the detailed eyewitness accounts of
three fellow prisoners whose testimony I have seen.
Anna struck all those who encountered her in prison as both troubled and extremely odd. She had two
main sources of entertainment. One was to pace around a tennis court, literally for hours on end.
Sometimes when she got into trouble with the guards they would forbid her going there. She would
then pace around the small enclosed prison yard, which drove her fellow inmates crazy. Anna’s other
source of entertainment was the daily newspaper, which she would pore over for hours. One of her
first serious run-ins with authority occurred when she refused to return to her area of the prison while
begging some prisoners in a separate section for a paper. Her cell was strewn with papers and
pictures she cut out, especially of members of the royal family. When the female guard most hostile to
her cleaned the papers out of her cell, Anna retrieved them from the bin. For her defiance, she was
locked in her cell.
Defiance was, in fact, extremely common. At the daily name call Anna would refuse to answer to the
name of Brotmeyer, insisting that her real name was Schmidt. To get her off the tennis court or into or
out of her cell, physical force was almost routinely applied. On one occasion she was chased off the
tennis court by a passing riot squad. On three occasions she was “breached” on disciplinary grounds.
The longer she was in prison the more time she spent in virtual solitary confinement in a Detention Unit
cell.
Anna’s relations with fellow prisoners were often tense. The most common complaints about Anna
concerned her bodily hygiene. She was incontinent, a clear warning sign of mental illness. After
several weeks in prison she began to refuse to shower. On June 4 a member of the nursing staff came
to Anna to discuss these delicate matters, without much noticeable effect. For some reason Anna
hoarded food in her cell. Once, putrid sandwich meat was discovered under her mattress. An even
greater threat arose when the prisoners observed the way she handled food during the period of her
menstruation. On September 19 she was returned for the fourth time to the punitive Detention Unit of
the prison for her protection. Anna was observed sobbing inconsolably, completely unaware of what
she had done to deserve treatment such as this.
Often Anna’s defiance of the prison guards would inconvenience her fellow inmates. She would, for
example, deny everyone access to the designated toilet cell by locking herself in. On occasions she
would stare vacantly at prisoners whom she sat near, or even follow them round obsessively. Her
mood would shift uncertainly from sweetness to ominous blackness. At best she irritated other
prisoners; at worst they felt unsettled or threatened by her presence. There were frequent scuffles
involving Anna. In her illness, she was simply incapable of gauging her effect on others or of
understanding the prison culture. As a consequence, she was at risk of serious harm. Among the
inmates there was talk of knifing her. In the environment into which she had been thrown, Anna clearly
needed physical protection. Luckily, one of her fellow inmates took Anna under her wing. She was
strongly encouraged to do so by the guards. As they explained, if anything untoward were to happen
to an immigration prisoner everyone would be “in deep shit”.
For the first four months of her imprisonment, the doctors and psychologists who examined her from
time to time thought Anna was behaving oddly but did not believe her to be mentally ill. It was only in
late July that her case was taken up by two sympathetic members of the Prison Mental Health Unit,
Tamara Smith and Robert Pedley. They concluded that Anna’s behaviour had deteriorated noticeably
since an earlier assessment of May 19. On August 10 Anna was seen by the visiting prison
psychiatrist, Dr Dominique Hannah. Anna’s behaviour seemed to her so bizarre that she thought it
likely she was suffering “psychotic disorder”. A thorough assessment at Princess Alexandra Hospital
was arranged. Accompanied by two immigration officers, Anna was involuntarily dispatched there
between August 20 and 26. She was seen by four separate psychiatrists. The doctors did not receive
prison file notes. Two were under the impression that following their assessment Anna would be
deported to Germany. During her time in hospital Anna remained “well groomed”. To try to avoid
medication she pretended to be pregnant. The final verdict came from a Dr Schneider: “Ms Brotmeyer
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