A 10 yo girl is pack raped by 9 older boys and young men. A judge, on the advice of the prosecution, refuses to sentence to custody any of the rapists. One justification for the inadequate sentence is that 'the girl consented' according to the judge. The case cannot be appealed because the reporting took place after the 48 day period that such appeals might be lodged.
Previously, it has been reported that the girl had been raped when she was 7 years old. She had a sexually transmitted disease. She had been placed in foster care. Her foster father had taken two years off work to supervise her welfare needs. Then a welfare case worker, after two years, when the girl was aged 9, decided that placing an Aboriginal girl in the care of white foster parents might be an extension of the 'stolen generation' myth, and the girl was returned to the community where she had been raped.
===
The new detail is that some of the 9 who pack raped the 'consenting' 10 yo girl were also among those who raped the girl when she was 7 yo.
===
The Heiner affair, in which a 14 yo girl in youth detention was pack raped is salient. The 14 yo girl's assault was never addressed legally because the Queensland Government, under the administration of current Prime Minister Rudd, shredded the documentation of the evidence. Then Premier Wayne Goss made the claim that the destruction of evidence was a result of legal advice.
As with the 10 yo' s case, the rapists had confessed to their activity. They were never sentenced.
===
The Heiner affair happened in 1989. The 10 yo girl was raped in 2006. During the November 2007 federal election campaign, the Heiner affair was hosed down as an issue by many in the press, as well as the ALP. The 10 yo girl's case wasn't mentioned at all.
How many other issues have not been reported during the election campaign which are critical of the ALP?
Friday, December 14, 2007
More Outrageous Detail Of Controversial Rape
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
How many children were returned to be raped?
Andrew Bolt
First the 10-year-old girl was returned to the town she was raped in, because welfare workers didn’t want another “‘stolen generations”, and was promptly raped again.
Now this:
The crisis deepened yesterday with revelations that Queensland’s Crime and Misconduct Commission is investigating a second rape case, this time involving a 12-year-old Aboriginal girl.
The girl was allegedly raped after she was returned to her community despite being sexually abused by elders, following a breakdown in communication between police and the child safety department.
Good God Almighty. Nothing short of a Royal Commission into the protection of Aboriginal children will do. I fear many others have been betrayed by fashionable policies that need to be smashed before more lives are shattered.
It must be a Royal Commission, because no internal inquiry can deal with monstrous obstruction as alleged today:
QUEENSLAND government ministers ordered Department of Child Safety workers not to tell police about hundreds of cases of suspected child abuse and neglect on Cape York following a row over the gang rape of a 10-year-old girl at the Aboriginal community of Aurukun.
The explosive claim is contained in a record of interview by investigators with a senior child protection specialist police officer, which was obtained by The Australian yesterday.
And, of course, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd should tell Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin to get over her ideological hangups and do whatever it takes to save Aboriginal children from ever being so betrayed again.
That’s sure the view of Premier Peter Beattie, who should be saying some sorries of his own:
The public outcry over lenient sentences in an Aurukun child rape case has also prompted the former Queensland premier, Peter Beattie, to call for a federal takeover of Indigenous communities.
Small problem. There’s no point in the Rudd Government taking over unless it has a minister prepared to do the tough, no-nonsense things that the much-missed Mal Brough was game enough to do. What a great pity it is that Macklin is not such a woman. A takeover by her would probably change nothing.
UPDATE
Russell Skelton and Cosima Marriner have details on the rapists of the 10-year-old - details that those who romanticise Aboriginal communities and the “Aboriginal way” of child-rearing needed rammed in front of their unseeing eyes:
The nine boys and men who attacked her also emerged from dysfunction - bereft of parental influence, poorly educated - in one case utterly illiterate, in another manifestly “slow”. They drank, smoked, sniffed and stole. Then they raped a 10-year-old…
The lawyer for one of the youths, 17 at the time of the rape, spoke of his client’s “great sense of shame”. But Judge Bradley said the youth “did not appear to show remorse”. He had said “that having sex with a girl that’s only 10 years old is normal”. Claims of remorse by another, 20-year-old Ian Koowarta, were also dismissed. “Ian didn’t feel sorry for the complainant,” the judge said.
Against this she weighed nine troubled pasts. All had criminal histories. Only two were schooled beyond year 9. Koowarta couldn’t read or write at all. The eldest, Raymond Woolla, 26, was considered intellectually “slow”.
Most of them lived with grandparents because their parents were unable to care for them. “As far as children go, they haven’t been very well looked after,” prosecutor Steve Carter said.
One lawyer said the boys’ families were in “crisis”. The boys got involved in “drinking or smoking or sniffing or stealing and it becomes quite a vicious cycle”.
Column - Save your sorry for Mary
from Andrew Bolt
TELL me if you see any real difference between Mary, Topsy and Dolly, all Aboriginal girls.
“Mary” is 10 and has had sex with many men, contracting gonorrhoea and syphilis.
Topsy is 12, and also has syphilis. Her father is gone and the whereabouts of her mother unknown. There is no treatment out where she lives, no school and no police.
Dolly is 13 and seven months pregnant. She’s not with her parents and works for no wages on a station, kilometres from anything. She’s had no schooling and needs care.
The difference between them? Time and a myth, mostly.
Mary you’ve read about all this week. She’s the Cape York girl, whose last nine rapists were allowed to walk free.
She was given to loving white foster carers after being raped at seven, but was sent back to her town because welfare officials didn’t want to repeat the “stolen generations”
Weeks later she was raped again, and has been removed again. Too late.
Topsy and Dolly, on the other hand, are two of the children Prof Robert Manne, the top “stolen generations” propagandist, named when I asked him to list just 10 of the 100,000 Aboriginal children we’re told were stolen from their parents for racist reasons, not welfare.
Name just 10, I asked. He named Topsy and Dolly, “stolen” by a Queensland protector of Aborigines a century ago and sent to missionaries for medical care, food and schooling.
In fact, it’s precisely because Manne and others told us we were racist to steal children like Topsy and Dolly that we don’t “steal” children like Mary.
So now the Rudd Government wants to say sorry to Topsy and Dolly for “stealing” them, yet is sorry Mary wasn’t stolen, too. Here’s a dangerous contradiction that needs resolving.
So who should we really say sorry, to? To the girl we didn’t save, I’d say. Her life we’ve broken.
And that’s the difference that counts.
Police claim suspected child abuse cases covered up
By Tony Koch
QUEENSLAND government ministers ordered Department of Child Safety workers not to tell police about hundreds of cases of suspected child abuse and neglect on Cape York following a row over the gang rape of a 10-year-old girl at the Aboriginal community of Aurukun.
The explosive claim is contained in a record of interview by investigators with a senior child protection specialist police officer.
An investigative review team, led by the state's Crime and Misconduct Commission, was tasked with determining why the department took the 10-year-old girl from a safe foster home in Cairns and returned her to the Aurukun community, where she was subsequently gang-raped in May last year, and then failed to promptly alert police of the crime.
The review team heard that hundreds of reports of children being sexually abused and neglected in Cape York communities last year were kept from police by Child Safety officers, who had been directed not to pass the reports to police or even talk to them.
According to the team's 400-page report, Detective Sergeant David Harold from Cairns Child Protection Investigation Unit told the team that police became aware of "numerous child protection issues through the Cape we hadn't been advised of".
While there have been numerous cases where child safety officers had failed to pass evidence to police, Sergeant Harold said: "It got to a political level at that stage where I believe ministers got involved and certain people were told not to speak to police. My job was to track down each (medical) clinic in the Cape and I got that under way ... but then there was some political issues where a directive came from Brisbane (that) 'You are not allowed to talk to the police - don't tell them anything'."
Sergeant Harold said that even the clinics were eventually told not to advise police of any reports they had made of abused or raped children and which had been sent to the Department of Child Safety.
The alleged political issues and the ministerial directive came soon after senior Northern Territory prosecutor Nanette Rogers exposed the horror of indigenous violence, sparking widespread outrage in Australia and ultimately leading to the Howard government's intervention in Territory communities.
At the time, the Queensland Government was at pains to stress that it did not have the same level of crime in its indigenous communities. Even after a public outcry over the handling of the Aurukun case by the justice and child safety systems, the state Government has rejected the need for a Territory-style intervention.
Sergeant Harold also revealed he and other police had insisted that social workers at Aurukun fly the 10-year-old girl to Cairns on June 8 and June 9 last year after she told medical examiners that she had been raped by many men and had contracted gonorrhea.
However, two Child Safety officers did not agree, saying arrangements had been made for the child to spend the weekend with family members on an outstation.
The girl did not go to the outstation and on that weekend was raped again in Aurukun by a 15-year-old youth who pleaded guilty to the offence on October 24 last year.
The director-general of the Department of Child Safety, Norelle Deeth, confirmed the girl's family and Child Safety officers had agreed to move her to Cairns.
"Tragically, this safety plan was not enacted prior to further sexual assaults," Ms Deeth said.
In a rare statement, Ms Deeth also said the girl was taken out of the Cairns foster home only to attend a funeral in Aurukun, but refused to return and remained in the community with a family member.
"Against this backdrop, staff made what they thought at the time was the best decision," Ms Deeth said.
"Sadly, this decision subsequently proved to be wrong."
Speaking about the subsequent arrest of the girl's rapists, Sergeant Harold said: "All of them made full admissions as well as provided statements nominating - and in a group situation where there were five or six or more raping her - they also provided ... there were other witnesses as well who provided statements nominating other people."
Sergeant Harold said the girl had presented to the Aurukun clinic on May 5 last year requesting a pregnancy test and told the doctor that she was having sex.
After the girl was diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease, the Aurukun director of nursing, Peter Fenton, sent a fax message on May 15 to the Child Safety representatives. It was never acknowledged.
When Sergeant Harold visited Aurukun on June 6 last year, he was told about the girl, and he asked why a report had not been sent to him, as was the normal procedure.
He had the girl and her carer, her aunt, brought to the police station, and she told him of the rapes. That was when Sergeant Harold instructed that she be taken to Cairns. But it did not happen, and within the next 24 hours, she was raped again.
He said that when the girl was flown by the department to Cairns the following week, she was put in the control of an Aurukun woman, and he questioned whether she was appropriate to look after the girl.
"(The woman) had only just got out of jail for an extremely serious stabbing ... so whether she was an appropriate person to be caring for (the girl), I have concerns," Sergeant Harold told the review team.
He outlined in detail his frustration with the two Child Safety officers who, he said, resisted moving the child to Cairns.
An official involved with the review team said they had been instructed that they were not allowed to speak to any government minister, including the then child safety minister Mike Reynolds, who is now the Speaker of the Queensland parliament.
Mr Reynolds is overseas and not available for comment, and the two Child Safety officers did not return calls.
Girl endured six weeks of sex attacks
By Kevin Meade and Sarah Elks
THE little girl who was gang-raped in the Cape York community of Aurukun was subjected to a six-week reign of sexual abuse by her attackers.
The story of the attacks on the 10-year-old is told in sparse but chilling detail in a police statement presented in court to Sarah Bradley, the District Court judge who failed to jail the attackers.
The document also reveals that apart from the gang rape, the little girl was raped at least six times over a period of six weeks by the nine males who pleaded guilty to attacking her.
Steve Carter, the prosecutor who has been stood aside pending an investigation into the case, did not give details of the gang rape during the sentencing hearing in Cairns District Court, which was sitting in Aurukun.
Instead, Judge Bradley apparently relied on the statement of facts Mr Carter presented to the court, and released to The Australian yesterday.
The statement says the gang rape was committed by Raymond Woolla, 26, Ian Koowarta, 20, Michael Wikmunea, 19, and a number of juveniles at a house in Aurukun on an unknown date between May 1 and June 12 last year.
One of the juvenile offenders told police he went to the house with another boy to see the girl. "The complainant asked this accused if she could have sex with him," the statement says.
"Initially, he said he couldn't because she was just a little kid, but she kept asking him so he put a condon (sic) on and had sex with her."
Another boy who was in the house told police the girl did not want to have sex, but one of the juvenile offenders forced himself on her.
"He had sex with the complainant ... The complainant was telling him to stop."
Koowarta told police Wikmunea had forced him to go to the house. They went there with Woolla. "He said the four of them had sex with the complainant. Michael (Wikmunea) went first, then (a juvenile) then Raymond (Woolla) ..."
One of the boys confessed to police that apart from the gang attack, he raped the girl twice, once at a house after a disco and once behind a bank a few days later.
Another boy told police he raped the girl the night of someone's 21st birthday party.
"They went to her aunty's house on their bike and had sex there," the documents say.
The girl had been living with a foster family in Cairns but against Department of Child Safety advice stayed in Aurukun after being returned to the community for a funeral.
Her family and the department had agreed to return her to Cairns, but failed to act soon enough to prevent further attacks in Aurukun shortly after her return last year.
The victim's aunt told The Australian this week the now 12-year-old was a "little girl who has had the light turned off in her life".
And her mother claimed the girl had been raped in the past by some of the same Aurukun boys who attacked her after her return to the community last year.
In a record of interview last year, obtained by The Australian, a police officer who had questioned the victim told a high-level investigative review team that when he first met the girl, he suspected she had been sexually abused.
"One thing that stood out when she came in, she shaved all her hair off and there's a couple of girls that I've seen and it's always ... been the case that they ... have been the victims of sexual abuse. It's one of the indicators that I've noticed that stands out, the acts of violence in the community, being armed and then out of some sort of shame or whatever they shave their hair."
When asked whether that was to "make themselves less attractive", the officer said: "Yeah, and she had, like, a jumper on her head but wrapped up like a bouffant type of ... which - I knew I wasn't dealing with an ordinary child".
The officer said it was difficult putting the child at ease enough to speak with police. He said it was difficult to even get her into the interviewing room.
Once they did "build rapport", the officer said the girl had "openly volunteered that she had had 'sex with four or five men', the oldest of whom she thought was 18 and the youngest 19". "The child stated that the boys 'like sex a lot' and that she 'little bit liked having sex'," he said.
The officer said the girl was found to be "very talkative in comparison with other children of her own age in that community". "It is understood that this child is intellectually impaired as a result of fetal alcohol syndrome and is known for frequent violent outbursts."
He said the girl had a history with the Department of Child Safety and detailed one outburst when the girl was nine, where she had "gone to the local shop with a stick and wanted to bash the shopkeepers and had done something to a forklift and she'd been in regular trouble in the community".
He said she had committed a series of break-and-enter offences in the community.
The department is now caring for the child.
"She is currently in a safe place with indigenous carers, maintaining cultural links with her community," the department said last night.
"She continues to receive long-distance education, counselling and other therapeutic support, including music and dance lessons. It is hoped she will be able to attend school in 2009."
Post a Comment