‘System failed’ gang rape girl
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Officials conceded Tuesday that Australia’s welfare system failed a girl who was removed from a remote Aboriginal community after being sexually abused at age 7, then gang raped at age 10 when she was returned to live in the town.
The case has drawn outrage in Australia after it was revealed that nine males who pleaded guilty to the second rape were paroled or had their sentences suspended by a judge who said the victim had probably consented to having sex with them.
Officials in Queensland state said Monday they would launch appeal proceedings against District Court Judge Sarah Bradley’s decision not to hand down custodial sentences in connection with the girl’s rape in Aurukun township on Cape York in 2006.
Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh has also announced a review of all sexual assault cases on the cape — a remote, tropical region dotted by giant cattle farms and tiny Aboriginal outstations — in the past two years, amounting to about 75.
As anger surrounding the case roiled Australia, Bligh on Tuesday confirmed news reports that the girl was first sexually assaulted at Aurukun in 2002, by several juveniles who did not face court.
Bligh said the girl was taken from the community and put into foster care in the regional center of Cairns before being returned to Aurukun in April 2006, when shortly afterward she was raped by nine males from the community, six of them younger than 16, the legal age of consent, and the others aged 17, 18, and 26.
The system clearly failed this little girl, Bligh told reporters in the state capital Brisbane.
One welfare officer responsible for sending the girl back to Aurukun has been fired and two others have been suspended, she said.
The case underscores fears about the breakdown of society in remote Aboriginal communities, where joblessness, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual assault and violence are reported as rampant.
Today, Australia’s original inhabitants are a minority of about 400,000 in a population of 21 million, and are the poorest and most disadvantaged citizens, with a life expectancy 17 years shorter than any other group.
The federal government earlier this year launched a radical intervention plan in another Outback region, the Northern Territory, after an official investigation concluded child sex abuse was rife because of neglect and the effects of what it called rivers of grog — or alcohol.
The plan, which involves bans on alcohol and pornography and tying welfare payments to schooling and buying food, does not apply outside the territory, where the federal government retains powers it does not have over the states.
Bradley’s office did not respond Tuesday to requests for comment. The judge was quoted in The Australian newspaper on Monday as saying the penalties had been sought by the prosecution and were appropriate, and referred further inquiries to her sentencing remarks.
Transcripts released by Queensland officials on Tuesday show that prosecutor Steve Carter told the court the girl could not legally have consulted to sex because of her age. But he said she had agreed to meet the offenders for the purpose of having sex, and for that reason he was not seeking prison sentences.
It was a form of childish experimentation, rather than one child being prevailed upon by another, Carter told the court in September. I can’t say it was consensual in the legal sense but … in the general sense, the non-legal sense, yes, it was.
Bligh on Tuesday rejected that view as unacceptable.
The Australian newspaper, which first reported the story on Monday, reported Tuesday that the rape victim had earlier been judged by welfare authorities to be mildly intellectually impaired after being born with fetal alcohol syndrome to an alcoholic mother.
In sentencing, Bradley told the offenders that the victim was not forced and she probably agreed to have sex with all of you but warned them that having sex with anyone younger than 16 was illegal and they could end up in prison.
Aboriginal leaders have condemned the ruling as too lenient, and have demanded Bradley be stood down.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Monday said he was disgusted and appalled by the reports of the case, and that sexual violence against women and children should be treated with zero tolerance.
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