was displaying some odd behaviour [but] she did not fulfil any diagnostic criteria for a mental illness.”
Anna was returned to prison. From her point of view she had, once more, escaped.
I asked Debbie Kilroy, the remarkable founder of a Brisbane women’s prison support network called
Sisters Inside, whether she was surprised by Dr Schneider’s assessment. She almost laughed.
Prisoners were almost never assigned the rare treasure of a psychiatric bed. Prisons were full of
people far more mentally disturbed than Anna. The worst cases were taken to a place where Anna
never went, the prison’s Crisis Support Unit. To reveal to me the kind of cases housed there, she told
me the story of a woman who had slashed her abdomen in order to remove her bowel.
What was going on in Anna’s mind during her time in the Brisbane jail? She was obviously distressed
about her imprisonment, explaining to anyone who would listen that she had done nothing wrong. She
was even more obviously distressed about being sent to the punishment cells of the Detention Unit.
Prison notes record her there as tearful, aggressive and bewildered. There is clear evidence that while
she was in the Brisbane prison Anna was fully aware of her true identity. On one occasion she told a
fellow inmate, in strictest confidence, that her name was Cornelia Rau. It must have been obvious to
her that in order to be released all she had to do was tell the authorities her true name. But, as she
understood, to reveal her identity would lead her back to mental hospital and to a life of medicalisation.
It was to avoid precisely such a fate that, some months before, she had made her carefully planned
escape from Sydney.
In some ways it is more difficult to reconstruct the thinking of Anna’s case officer during her six-month
imprisonment in Brisbane, Ben Stonely, than it is to reconstruct hers. Virtually all the clearly written
instructions for the protection of unlawful non-citizens in a situation like Anna’s were ignored.
According to the Migration Series Instruction 244, because of the risks to the “personal security” of
unlawful non-citizens if detained in a jail, such detention was to be regarded as “a last resort”, used
only “until alternative arrangements are made”. There is absolutely no evidence that these instructions
were even understood, let alone followed. Anna Brotmeyer alias Schmidt languished in the Brisbane
prison for a full six months, altogether undisturbed. The same instruction makes clear that it is the duty
of the DIMIA officer in charge of a detainee’s case to maintain weekly contact with the prison and to
visit the detainee at least once a month. There is no written record to show that Stonely spoke to the
prison about Anna at all. Mick Palmer concluded that Stonely was not even aware that Anna had been
placed in the Detention Unit on five separate occasions. Between the date of her admission and the
date of her removal, Stonely visited Anna only three times.
There was in fact an even more serious dereliction of duty than this. Migration Instruction Series 234
requires that “officers should regularly review the need for continued detention, and for maintaining the
form of detention”. Throughout the period of Anna’s six-month incarceration in Brisbane her case was
never reviewed. After the initial imprisonment, Stonely never again considered whether Anna’s
detention was necessary. According to Palmer, the case never even came to the attention of his direct
superior. On one occasion, on July 19, it did come, as a matter of routine after the lapse of 30 days, to
the so-called Detention Review Committee in Canberra. Palmer was again astonished when he
learned that, despite its name, it was not at all the purpose of this committee to decide whether
continued detention was lawful or appropriate, much less whether it was humane or just. The
committee’s job was merely to discover why deportation had not yet occurred.
The only interest DIMIA showed in Anna’s case was over the question of her identity and the
circumstances preventing her deportation. Yet even interest in this was half-hearted at best. Although
a woman who had not been charged with committing a crime was languishing in prison, it took Stonely
three weeks before he got round to making contact with the Queensland Police Missing Persons Unit,
and ten weeks before he brought the case to the attention of the DIMIA officer at the Australian
embassy in Berlin, requesting that they approach the German government for any information it might
have on the whereabouts of a missing German citizen named either Anna Brotmeyer or Anna Schmidt.
He never stirred his stumps with requests for information from other Queensland government
agencies.
As early as April 2004 checks had revealed that no Anna Brotmeyer or Schmidt had entered Australia.
By July checks had revealed that Germany had no record of any Anna Brotmeyer or Anna Schmidt
unaccounted for. Everyone who was interested knew that Anna was extremely unwell. Everyone who
spoke with her knew that her command of English was excellent. And yet the thought that she might
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