AUSTRALIA: A new report has revealed an epidemic of sexual assault and violence in indigenous communities in Australia's Northern Territory.
The crown prosecutor for central Australia, Nanette Rogers, exposed in harrowing detail widespread rape and violent death in Aboriginal camps.
Dr Rogers said Aboriginal children, including babies as young as seven months, were being raped by community members, with these crimes often going unreported and few cases reaching trial.
"The volume [ of sexual assault] is huge and I don't have a single file in my room that is not related to violence," said Dr Rogers. "Seventy per cent of the cases are violent crimes against women. The practice comprises homicides, grievous bodily harm, adult sexual assaults and child sexual assaults." She cited an example from 2003 where a man raped a seven-month-old baby girl whom he had taken from a room of sleeping adults.
In the morning, the baby's mother noticed blood on her clothes but was too drunk to register what had happened.
Dr Rogers, who has handled hundreds of cases of sexual assault in 12 years as a prosecutor, also reported that a six-year-old girl was drowned while being raped by an 18-year-old man, while other children cried for help.
Other cases include: a 12-year-old girl who was taken from her community, tied to a tree for several weeks and repeatedly raped. She eventually became pregnant and gave birth; and a two-year-old girl who required surgery after being sexually abused by a young man. Her mother and father had been drunk at the time of the assault.
Dr Rogers also told ABC television of cases of extreme violence, sometimes perpetrated against children. In one case a baby was stabbed twice in the leg by a man attempting to kill her mother. In another, a teenager saw his grandfather being stabbed repeatedly in the throat.
"These kids see violence as an everyday part of their life and many of them become violent themselves," she said.
"Violence happens to children. Children are punched or hit in the face, punched in various parts of the body . . . Small children become so inured to the violence. It doesn't augur well for Aboriginal people to be functional human beings with the attributes for turning around and caring for children themselves," she said.
Margaret Kemarre, an Aboriginal elder at one community, said women were mostly too scared to speak out. "There is more violence, there is no respect around here, no respect for elders or parents . . . I think the grog is taking away all our families, it is really destroying us."
While many others also blame alcohol and substance abuse and poverty for violence in Aboriginal communities, Dr Rogers said indigenous people, especially men, must accept responsibility. She said the causes of the violence could be traced to a culture that promoted male authority over women and where men were not held accountable for their actions.
Australia's federal minister for indigenous affairs, Mal Brough, said "customary law" (traditional Aboriginal law) was being used to shield violent men.
"I think that there has been far too much play by so-called indigenous leaders who hide behind the veil - the thin veil - of cultural sensitivity, when the reality is this is a total disaster for the people involved and the only cultural sensitivity here is that if we stand by and allow people to use these sort of excuses to allow their crimes to continue, then we have failed," said Mr Brough.