Chaotically run by ill-equipped guards, the detention centres spiralled into hot houses of riot, protest and self-multilation. Today we hear the harrowing stories of the Australian guards, abandoned amidst this mayhem, with little training or support. They were the spearheads of a controversial policy, and often were ill-fitted to the task. Today they find themselves tormented by a past they cannot escape.

Rod Gigney was a guard at Woomera in 2001. He shows us around the site of the now defunct camp, "This was the main compound. It's where the hunger strikes were. Most of the ladies had their lips sewn up with wire or mesh. Over here was where the man jumped off the top ... straight onto the razor wire." And it goes on, a litany of horrifying story after horrifying story. Guards with no training, and no back-up, forced to deal with situations they weren't equipped for. The result? "A profoundly damaging and dehumanising experience for detainees and staff."

"We were just treated like cannon fodder. Just numbers on the ground," explains Allan Clifton, another Woomera guard, "and then when we started to fall over, they didn't want to know us anymore." His friend Les Brooks, "tried to hang himself and took a cocktail of drugs." Tanya Austin, a 20 year old single parent, was initially attracted by the stability of the job and the attractive overtime. Thrust in at the deep end, Tanya found that one minute she could be talking a young kid down from a suicide attempt and the next facing fully grown men threatening her. After leaving the service, Tanya suffered a nervous breakdown and would spend 6 months in hospital.

Tanya and Les aren't the only ones. Many other former guards suffer mental illnesses including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Some still find it difficult to quell the instinct to hate anyone foreign, anyone that reminds them of their experiences inside the centres. Some former guards may never work again. They are forgotten victims of Australia's hard-line detention policy.

A thought-provoking and powerful indictment of a mandatory detention policy which went too far.

Reporter: Quentin McDermott