The Ashley Youth Detention Centre (AYDC) Class Action

A ‘Class Action’ is a special kind of court procedure in which one or more named people – the Lead Plaintiffs – are permitted by the Court to bring a case on their own behalf and also on behalf of a wider group of people.

The wider group of people are called Class Members or Group Members.

The Class Action procedure allows a group of victims to combine their claims to fight for compensation for all of them. The stress of litigation is reduced for the Class Members, and it also offers the benefit of “strength in numbers”. If the Class Action succeeds in winning compensation, some of the compensation can be used to share the costs of the litigation across all the successful Class Members.

The Class Action procedure is also more efficient for the Court, because the legal and factual questions that are ‘common’ to all the claims only need to be determined once, rather than separately for each individual claim. After the common questions are resolved, the Court has procedures for dealing with any remaining individual issues affecting particular Class Members.

The end result is that the Class Action will eventually resolve all the claims of all the Class Members. In particular, if a Class Member is entitled to compensation, the Class Action procedure will result in payment of that compensation.

The Class Action is run for the benefit of all the Class Members, but it is the Lead Plaintiffs who give instructions to the lawyers in relation to the running of the case.

For a person to know whether they are a member of a class in a Class Action, they need to find out how the Class Members are defined in the case.

The current set of Class Members in the AYDC Class Action are the persons named in a confidential list that has been filed in the Court. If you are a Class Member, you will already have been contacted by Angela Sdrinis Legal.

If you are not sure whether you are a Class Member you can contact Angela Sdrinis Legal on (03) 9491 6050 or contact us via the form below.

If you are not a Class Member but you would like to join the Class Action, you can register by completing the online registration form below.

When you register, we will contact you with more information about joining the class.

The people who are likely to be able to join the AYDC Class Action are anyone who:

• was detained as a child in the AYDC at any time between 2 September 1961 and 11 August 2022 and

• suffered, witnessed, were threatened with, or apprehended an imminent risk of sexual abuse, serious physical abuse or psychological abuse while in detention at AYDC.

If after discussion with us you decide you are eligible to join and want to join the Class Action, Angela Sdrinis Legal will apply to the Supreme Court to get you added as a Class Member in the Class Action.

The AYDC Class Action aims to use this powerful legal process to make the Tasmanian Government pay compensation to detainees who were seriously abused while in detention at AYDC.

The payment of compensation will not be a perfect solution to the harm that the abuse caused to detainees, but it will go some way toward recognising that what happened was very wrong. If compensation is paid, you may be able to use that money for something important in your life that would not be possible without it.

To join the Class Action, please fill in the registration form below.

As a first step, we will organise an appointment for you to discuss your options and determine if you might be able to join the AYDC Class Action.

If you are eligible and want to join the Class Action, we will then work with you to prepare a statement about your experiences at AYDC. We understand this can be difficult and we will make this process as comfortable as possible.

The Class Action is being run on a “no win, no fee” basis. This means you do not have to pay anything up front.

All the legal costs of the Class Action will be covered by Angela Sdrinis Legal, unless and until there is a successful outcome. “Successful outcome” means a judgment from the Court, or an out-of-court settlement with the Government, that requires some payment to be made in respect of the class members.

If there is a successful outcome, the Lead Plaintiffs and Angela Sdrinis Legal will ask the Court to decide what legal costs are reasonable, and then to pay those reasonable costs out of the compensation due to Class Members before paying the balance to the Class Members.

The costs that the Court will be asked to approve and pay from Class Members’ compensation amount will include:

• the reasonable fees and expenses of the law firm;

• reasonable barristers’ fees, and court fees;

• any legal costs that the lead plaintiffs might have been ordered to pay to the defendant, if there were mini-hearings (‘applications’) during the running of the Class Action that resulted in ‘costs orders’ being made against the plaintiffs; and

• an ‘uplift’ that the lawyers are allowed to charge for running the Class Action on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis. The uplift is calculated as an additional 25% of the legal costs that the Court otherwise approves as reasonable.

Courts in class actions usually make these costs-sharing orders so that successful Class Members contribute to the overall costs in proportions reflecting the amount of compensation is that assessed to be payable to each of them. This is called a ‘pro rata’ allocation. The precise sharing arrangement will be decided by the Court if the class action is successful, and the test the Court applies is to ask what is ‘fair and reasonable’, in the judge’s opinion, in all the circumstances.

In summary, then, the only cost for Class Members in a Class Action is the potential cost of having a portion of their compensation used to pay a share of the costs incurred in winning that compensation.

You only become a Class Member by giving us instructions to name you as a Class Member in the confidential list filed in the Supreme Court.

If you like, you can change your mind. The Court rules for Class Actions require that, later in the Class Action, all the Class Members will be given a chance to “opt out” and cease to be Class Members.

If you think you might want to opt out then you can contact Angela Sdrinis Legal or get your own independent legal advice.

The amount of compensation money for each Class Member is likely to be based on each Class Member’s individual experiences and circumstances.

It is not possible to say how much each Class Member will be paid if the AYDC Class Action is successful.

It is likely that the amount of compensation money for Class Members will be determined by a formula that will be approved by the court.

If the amount of compensation money is based on your individual circumstances, the amount you will be entitled to will depend on a number of factors, such as your mental health, the abuse you suffered, and personal history.

Again, all these things are subject to the supervision of the Court, and the primary test the Court applies in deciding the proper course is to ask what is ‘fair and reasonable having regard to the interests of the Class Members as a whole’.

Class Actions can take a few years to resolve. There are many factors that influence the time they take, such as the attitude of the defendant, the number of documents that the lawyers must work through, difficulties that the plaintiffs confront to tell their story etc.

The National Redress Scheme (NRS) is a Commonwealth Government-funded compensation scheme. It is separate from, and very different to, the AYDC Class Action.

If a person has suffered sexual abuse in an institution, the NRS scheme may be available as a means of compensation.

Under the NRS, eligible claimants can access the following benefits:

• a payment of up to $150,000.00 (depending on the type of abuse you suffered and the severity of that abuse according to NRS criteria)

• access to counselling & psychological assistance from a service provider arranged through the NRS. If for some reason you are in a jurisdiction which has opted not to participate in NRS, a payment of $5000 for your psychological treatment can be made; and

• a written apology and/or direct personal response from the institution responsible for the abuse.

If you would like to pursue NRS, Angela Sdrinis Legal can refer you to a specialised service that can assist you with an application.

It is important to understand that you can only make one application under the NRS for the abuse you suffered. If you accept an offer of money from NRS you cannot receive any other kind of payment for that abuse, for example from the AYDC Class Action.

If you are already a Class Member in the AYDC Class Action but you have made, or plan to make, an application to the NRS, please contact us immediately so that we can discuss with you any impact it might have on your ability to make a claim in the Class Action.

The Commission of Inquiry is a State government-funded investigation into the handling of complaints of child sexual abuse in Tasmanian institutions.

Only part of the Inquiry relates to the AYDC. The Inquiry is separate to the AYDC Class Action but it will cover many similar issues.

The purpose of the Commission is to discover what went wrong in Tasmanian institutions regarding the handling of reports of sexual abuse, and what can be done to fix it for the future. The Inquiry will not require compensation to be paid by the Government for what happened in the past.

The Commission will be conducting public hearings relating to AYDC on 18th – 26th August 2022 at the Mövenpick Hotel Hobart, in the ‘Kannenner Room’, located at 28 Elizabeth Street, Hobart.