Reality of Aboriginal child abuse far worse

How would you react if your 11-year-old daughter had a sexually transmitted infection? How would you take the news that your daughter is up to 10 times more likely to be the victim of sexual abuse than others in her class? How would you feel if she was sexually abused and no one bothered to report it?

To most of us these situations are unthinkable and it would be difficult to fathom how we would react to them.

This is the plight of hundreds of Aboriginal children in remote communities throughout Australia and this is only half of the story.

Recently in Parliament, Colin Barnett cited 39 cases of Aboriginal children reporting with an STI in 2013.

For this the Premier was condemned by protesters who, in my view, completely missed the point. Disturbingly, the reality he was trying to present was likely to be far worse.

Statistics about the magnitude of child sexual abuse in remote Aboriginal communities are unreliable, mainly because of deliberate under-reporting. The Australian Institute of Family Studies has estimated that up to 90 per cent of sexual abuse in these communities is under-reported.

Only last week I spoke to my management team in the Kimberley who continue to express concerns that workers in communities are deliberately not reporting STIs because of pressure from the abusers not to “betray” the culture.

Detectives from the Child Abuse Unit, under the most challenging conditions, have also identified gross under-reporting of abuse during their regional and remote investigations.

A police operation in the Pilbara identified that many people did not report child abuse because they believed child sex abuse was part of Aboriginal culture and that teenage pregnancy was a norm. Sex abuse is not part of Aboriginal culture, rather it is a practice built out of intimidation of women and children.

Abusers are equally divided between older men and teenage boys, the latter often beset with substance abuse problems or foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

There are varying estimates of how many children are subjected to sexual abuse in remote communities, however, there seems to be a consensus that about one in four girls is subject to abuse and one in nine boys.

Pam Greer, a passionate Aboriginal activist in the area of Aboriginal family violence, was quoted as saying in 2007: “Men are having sex with children, young girls, young boys .(.(. It’s a tragic situation because the children lie awake at night, waiting for it to happen to them, just lie there, waiting. They know it’s coming for them, because it’s happened to everybody. And who are they getting abused by? People who are in positions of power .(.(. And what happens? The children get stoned, get drunk, hang themselves, and we all know why.”

This is exactly the situation we found in Oombulgurri, a Kimberley community often only accessible by boat from which the State Government has now withdrawn all services. It was a community where young girls were regularly preyed upon by the men who were the resident powerbrokers.

The facilitation of contraceptive implants in girls as young as 11 or 12 when requested by a parent or guardian resident in these communities or recommended by a health worker is not uncommon. This must surely be a last line of defence when it is not possible to adequately protect the children from predators.

Oombulgurri is too remote for the continuous attention that would have been needed to intervene in the cycle of abuse.

I am not suggesting that the closure of that community saved all those girls from abuse, however, there is no doubt that it disrupted the cycle of abuse of power and resulted in the charging and imprisonment of the perpetrators. A necessary first step. Many families moved to Wyndham, where there are services, support and housing.

There is always a dilemma when making a decision of the magnitude of closing a community, but the safety and welfare of our children must be pre-eminent.

The story of Oombulgurri is not unique. According to advice I received last week, the contraceptive implant Implanon is known to be prescribed for younger girls in the region. I was advised the use of the drug was not always in accordance with concerns about sexual activity but might be prescribed for “health reasons”. That statement sounds like just another addition to the confusing rhetoric around this problem and in my mind is nothing more than clever language.

I cannot respond to the safety and protection needs of these children in the way you would expect. It is simply not possible. If we facilitate the existence of communities beset by substance abuse, family violence and child abuse hundreds of kilometres from support or intervention services, then we must accept the loss of yet another generation of Aboriginal children. The Government gets it but many don’t.

In the past few days I have seen images of people trying to save whales at Bunbury and dolphins in the Serpentine River, to get them back to a place where they can survive and thrive. It’s a pity we are not all showing the same resolve for children in our remote communities.

Karl O’Callaghan is WA Police Commissioner