Aboriginal problems

Dirty big secret | Features | The Australian

Of course the newly publicised stories of sexual abuse in aboriginal communities are appalling.

The article above has lots of complaining that this has been known for a long time, but not much is done. Or if something is done, it is not done well enough. Noel Pearson, for example, says:

...physical or sexual abuse of children is "totally reprehensible and not acceptable in any community". Parents who neglect their children and allow them to become targets of sexual predators are also culpable.

"We proposed this to government and got no response," Pearson says. "It transpired that police stop investigations into abuse when they talk to the families and are told they do not know anything about the incident. They are not persisted with. The police basically stop the investigation. Anybody who possesses information of an assault on a child should have to give that information."

Pearson says the Queensland Government had not assisted by appointing community justice groups comprising local elders but giving them no support. "We asked for laws to be changed so that members of the justice groups could not be abused or sworn at, but that never happened. Why should an old woman be sworn at when she is walking down the street, just because she is trying to do something for her community by being on the justice group? We sought to have them protected, but that just never happened."

But Noel, how do the police force a family to co-operate in interviews over how their kiddie got an STD? And how do you protect a local elder in such small communities from verbal abuse? A continous police escort?

I feel so sorry for the police who have to deal with these communities.

It certainly does seem that there is a reluctance to remove children from aboriginal parents in situations where there would be no hesitation at all if it was a white family.

The whole basic problem comes down to communities rendered dysfunctional by a combination of having no participation in an economy, rampant drug abuse, and unresolved cutural issues that are not helped by trying to keep one foot in the past and one in the present.

While there are no easy answers, surely it would help if there was renewed effort to make more communities alcohol free, free from petrol sniffing (with that petrol you can't sniff), no hesitation to removing children who are obviously being sexually abused (eg those who have an STD) into care (even if they have to be sent a great distance away,) and large incentive for all children to be educated away from these communities. The benefit of educating them away from home is that it might encourage the communities that can't be so easily just "shut down" might fade away gradually due to the kids realising there is a better world out there.

Even though I have no knowledge of aboriginal communities other than through the media, surely these ideas are just common sense?