Children as young as 10 are being held in police watch houses alongside convicted paedophiles in Queensland because the state's youth detention centres are full.
The extraordinary facts came to light during an investigation by the ABC's Four Corners program which has obtained hundreds of documents detailing cases of children enduring lengthy periods in adult holding cells.
'I've seen a convicted paedophile adjacent to cells where children are being held,' said Queensland public guardian Natalie Siegel-Brown in an interview for the program which is set to air on Monday.
Ms Siegel-Brown expressed grave concerns about children being 'held like caged animals' in police watch houses intended for adult offenders, often for weeks at a time.
'We have significant numbers of kids, from traumatised backgrounds, held like caged animals in concrete pens,' she told the ABC.
Ms Siegel Brown cited one particularly alarming case where a girl was accidentally put in with two alleged male sex offenders.
Four Corners has obtained 516 files, including reports to Ms Siegel-Brown's office, about the treatment of children in Queensland's criminal justice system.
They detail how kids as young as 10 have been held in watch houses, sometimes in isolation, sometimes in so-called suicide smocks.
More than 70 files related to children who spent 10 or more days in adult watch houses. Two children were held for 33 days or more.
An adult watch-house inmate gives a Hitler salute. Children are being housed alongside adults in police watch houses because of overcrowding in juvenile detention centres
One was an Aboriginal boy who had been deemed permanently unfit to plead and assessed as having the cognitive function of a child aged younger than six.
In another case, a girl was put into a pod with two alleged male sex offenders at the Brisbane City Watch House.
At the same watch house, a different girl was held 25 days, during which time she discovered she was about 11 weeks pregnant. She was later transferred to a youth detention centre.
One human rights advocate told the ABC that the watch houses were where the most dangerous adults in Australia go including murderers and pedophiles, Four Corners said on its website.
Queensland's youth detention centres are full after state government reforms in February 2018 changed the rules so that 17-year-olds are dealt with in the youth justice system, not the adult
