Dylan Voller

Footage of Voller shackled to a restraining chair within the adult Alice Springs correctional center was featured on the ABC TV program Four Corners' episode "Australia's Shame" in July 2016.^[4] It prompted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to announce a royal commission into the treatment of youth in the child protection and youth detention systems in the Northern Territory.^[5] Mistreatment in youth detention had been widely reported prior to the Four Corners report.^[6][7][8]

He has publicly apologised for his crimes.^[1]

Voller gave limited evidence at the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory in December 2016.^[9]

He was released from prison in February 2017^[10] and has been advocating for improved conditions for youth in detention.^[11]

In 2017 it was discovered that Voller's confidential files were dumped at the Alice Springs rubbish tip.^[12] Footage of Voller was posted on Facebook on a Fairfax media account and derogatory comments were made on the post by others.^[13][14] Voller subsequently sued Fairfax media for defamation.^[15][14] Social Media Consultant Ryan Shelley testified as an expert witness and illustrated that it was within Fairfax media's power to remove the defamatory comments.^[13][16] The Judge ruled that Fairfax media's failure to remove the comments was grounds to hold Fairfax liable for defamation.^[14][17]

In September 2021, the Australian High Court ruled that media companies could be held liable for allegedly defamatory material posted to their social media pages.^[18] Voller's case returned to the lower court for determination. This area of law is currently being reviewed by the Attorneys-General of the Federal government and each State and Territory.^[19] In response to the decision in Voller's case, the Federal Government has drafted the Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill. Which if enacted will clarify defamation law within the context of social media.^[20]

In 2019, the 21 year old Voller plead guilty to staging a bomb hoax at the Commonwealth Games marathon in Gold Coast.^[21] On 1 February 2020 Voller was sentenced to a 10-month prison sentence due to an incident in which he jumped on railway tracks, exposed his penis and assaulted a transit guard in Western Australia.^[22] Voller also had a warrant issued for his arrest by the Deniliquin Local Court in NSW on 19 June 2020 in relation to an armed robbery that occurred in Moama, NSW in May 2019.^[23]