Here, There are Dragons

In August 2019, Witness J, a decorated Duntroon graduate and former Australian Secret Intelligence Service officer, was publicly outed as Australia’s first recorded secret prisoner. He was arrested, remanded, tried and imprisoned under unprecedented levels of secrecy, and after spending his first month in solitary confinement, spent the remainder of his 455 day sentence in the Alexander Maconochie Centre’s notorious sexual-offender wing, despite not being a sexual-offender himself. ‘Here, There are Dragons’ is an honest memoir exploring what it is like to live among paedophiles, rapists and murderers in prison, and considers the philosophical question the author has struggled with: can one accept the humanity of these predators and not lose yourself in the process?