Rapists of Aurukun girl, 10, behind bars
Padraic Murphy; 25/6/08
Two years after they gang-raped a 10-year-old girl - and eight months after a judge decided their crime was not worth a jail sentence, noting the child “probably agreed to have sex with all of you” - five of the victim’s nine attackers were finally behind bars last night. Three males convicted over the May 2006 rape of the girl in the remote Cape York Aboriginal community of Aurukun arrived in Cairns yesterday to start their custodial sentences. The males - adults Austin Koowarta and Raymond Woolla and a 15-year-old juvenile who cannot be named - handed themselves in on Monday and were yesterday flown from the community in far north Queensland in a single-engine aircraft, accompanied by two police officers, to begin their sentence.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23918422-5013404,00.html
NSW ignores black child sex victims
Gary Highland; 25/6/08
After his colleague, former Aboriginal affairs minister Milton Orkopoulos, was charged with child sex offences in November 2006, NSW Premier Morris Iemma declared war on the state’s child abusers. … It’s not as though the Premier isn’t well aware of the scale of the problem. It was his Government that commissioned Breaking the Silence, a 300-page report on child abuse in Aboriginal communities. … You’d think, given his tough talk in parliament, that Iemma would be morally outraged enough to commit the resources needed to seriously tackle the problem. Yet as documents obtained by NSW Nationals leader Andrew Stoner revealed last week, after a year of the Government’s implementation plan in response to Breaking the Silence, only one Aboriginal child sexual assault counsellor had been hired to deal with such an enormous demand. Although two more counsellors have recently been appointed, the vast majority of children in need of this support remain unable to access it.
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23917395-7583,00.html
Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, NSWAdd new tag, Sex Trade