Aboriginal sexual abuse
A sad chapter of Aboriginal health is the sexual health and abuse, especially of children. Issues like stolen wages and the governmental removal of children (Stolen Generations) lead to hopelessness and cultural dissociation. This in turn leads to inappropriately high alcohol consumption or petrol sniffing which causes violence and in the worst cases sexual child abuse. Aboriginal community and family structures that once protected children from sexual abuse break down.
Dire consequences of sexual child abuse
As a consequence of dysfunctional families Aboriginal children are exposed to adult sexual behaviour, neglect and violence. Children copy what they witness or watch on DVDs which is totally inappropriate for their age.
The consequences of child sexual abuse are horrifying:
- Children under the age of 10 and as young as 4 are diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhoea, chlamydia, syphilis and trichomoniasis [7].
- Children as young as three have been exposed to pornographic material in their homes [9].
- Teenagers rape children.
Within a six-month period in early 2007 more than 800 cases of STD were reported in Indigenous populations, while just 53 cases were noted in non-Indigenous groups [7].
Sexual abuse gets children into a vicious cycle
When we assess and judge sexual offenders we often forget their history of abuse. Sexual offenders rarely offend because they cannot control their sexual desire. Much more they cannot control the damage done to them in their childhood, the pain caused by cultural and identity loss, or the traumas suffered when they themselves became victims of sexual abuse.
A sad case study of abuse
"HG was born in a remote Barkly community in 1960. In 1972, he was twice anally raped by an older Aboriginal man. He didn't report it because of shame and embarrassment.
He never told anyone about it until last year when he was seeking release from prison where he had been confined for many years as a dangerous sex offender.
In 1980 and 1990, he had attempted to have sex with young girls. In 1993, he anally raped a 10-year-old girl and, in 1997, an eight-year-old boy (ZH). In 2004, ZH anally raped a five-year-old boy in the same community." [8]
The Northern Territory intervention
In August 2006 the Northern Territory Government commissioned a report to research allegations of serious child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities. An inquiry was established to find better ways to protect Aboriginal children from sexual abuse. The report, called 'Little Children are Sacred', was released on 15 June 2007.
On 23 June 2007, less than a fortnight after its publication, the federal government staged a massive intervention in the Northern Territory where the report had collected its data.
Legislation passed by both major parties (Labour and Liberal) allowed
- to remove the permit system for access to Aboriginal land,
- to abolish Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP),
- to quarantine 50% of welfare payments,
- to compulsorily acquire Aboriginal land and
- to subject Aboriginal children to mandatory health checks.
Critics of the 'invasion' point out that the word 'child' or 'children' does not appear once in the hundreds of pages of the legislative documents and that it was impossible to draft them in the short time since the report.
Six months after the intervention began [10]
- no new charges had been laid in connection with child sexual abuse,
- no new community-based services to ensure the safety of children had been established,
- $88 million had been spent on bureaucrats to control Aboriginal welfare payments.
Everywhere we went, everyone complained. Both men and women complained about pornography. —Pat Anderson, co-author of the 'Little Children are Sacred' report [11]
You cannot drive change into a community and unload it off the back of a truck. That is the lesson of the Intervention. —NTER Review Report, 13 October 2008, p58
Check out the government's website about the Northern Territory intervention at www.nterreview.gov.au.
Movie: The Intervention: Katherine, NT
This movie traces over one year the impact of the emergency intervention. Shot over a an 8-month period, it features the lives of community residents and government and business workers implementing it.
One year after the Intervention, the filmmakers posed the questions: what new evidence of sexual abuse has been uncovered? Is life better for children and their parents? What did the Intervention deliver? More details
Causes of child sexual abuse
Community hearing during the inquiry into sexual child abuse in the Northern Territory [9]. The inquiry
found 'widespead sexual abuse' and made 97 recommendations.
Child abuse is not driven by sexual desire. The immediate cause seems to be a cocktail of alcohol abuse and resulting violence when the offender is of age.
There are also young offenders of teen age and below who just imitate the beaviour they are exposed to by either adults or pornographic material. Their victims are even younger, sometimes toddlers.
The authors of the 'Little Children are Sacred' report believe that "generations of social problems" play an important role, one of which is education. "Education is the key to helping children and communities nurture safe, well-adjusted families," believes Rex Wild, co-author of the report [9]. Getting children to attend school puts them into such a safe environment.
Other causes include [9,11]:
- overcrowding of houses
- limited education
- boredom
- easy access to drugs and pornography
- limited understanding of European ways due to English being a third or fourth language
- frustration and helplessness
- government neglect
- childhood sexualisation (exposure to graphic pornography at a very young age)
- no or limited sexual education
When it came to matters of sex he was clueless, save that he watched porn [...] that was in essence his sex education. —Peter Elliot, lawyer of a juvenile sex offender [11]
Out of respect for Aboriginal culture I use Indigenous sources as much as possible.
[7] 'Illness rates terrify AMA', Koori Mail 417, p.4
[8] 'Little Children are Sacred' report, 2007, p.14
[9] 'Abuse rampant', Koori Mail 403, p.1
[10] 'Sea of black faces bound for Canberra', Koori Mail 417, p.7
[11] 'Innocence lost', Koori Mail 417, p.22
[12] 'Quitting smokes the goal of calendar', Koori Mail 417, p.40
The author of this site acknowledges the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land in which we live and work.