Mission & Justice

Leslie Cannold; 5/10/08

In the early 1990s I worked as a researcher for an organisation dedicated to finding accommodation for young, homeless women. Many of these women were escaping violent homes and, even if they were lucky enough to get a bed in a refuge, they often found more violence there. My female co-workers thought they had the answer single-sex accommodation. The only problem was that the actual and threatened assaults the young women told me about were not just from angry young men, but hardened young women who had been on the streets for years.
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Padraic Murphy; 25/9/08

The suicide of a 12-year-old boy in Kowanyama has exposed the child safety crisis in remote indigenous communities in Queensland. The case has prompted authorities to admit that 40 per cent of notifications are not dealt with and staff on the ground are inexperienced, under-resourced and unable to cope with the misery played out daily in Cape York communities. Queensland Coroner Michael Barnes has criticised the state’s police, child protection system and even his own office over how authorities handled the suicide of the 12-year-old. Mr Barnes delivered a stinging rebuke to the state Government by recommending a review of funding and training to ensure child safety workers can “discharge their functions within the mandated time frames”.

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Brendan Nicholson; 18/9/08

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has declared violence against women “the great silent crime of our time” and warned that the attitudes of men must be changed. In a speech to the White Ribbon Foundation’s annual dinner, Mr Rudd said that from birth, it must be drilled into the conscious and the subconscious of all men that there were no circumstances in which violence against women was acceptable. The foundation highlights such violence. Mr Rudd announced last night that the Government was putting up to $2 million into research and analysis of community attitudes towards violence against women.

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Paul Toohey; 5/9/08

The principal lawyer for the Northern Territory’s peak Aboriginal legal aid service says his organisation is dealing with an unprecedented number of murder cases, which he links to failures of the federal intervention. Glen Dooley said the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency had eight clients facing murder charges after a run of killings that started in April. “We can say that in the 15 months of the intervention that we’ve now got unprecedented levels of killing,” Mr Dooley said. “This shocks me. We’d normally pick up six killings a year. At this rate, we’ll pick up 20.

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Paul Toohey; 30/8/08

The case of Ronald Djana, who was sentenced this week to the longest non-parole period dealt to an Aboriginal murderer in the Northern Territory, has revealed in shocking detail the levels of degradation in the town camps of Alice Springs. It also has sent a warning that being an impoverished, alcoholic, illiterate, unemployed, wife-killing Aborigine will no longer win the special consideration of the courts. The Djana case represents a significant benchmark in the sentencing of Aboriginal killers in the NT, where Alice Springs remains the per-capita homicide capital of Australia. Judge Dean Mildren accepted the recommendations of Alice Springs crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers that Djana ought to receive more than the mandatory 25 years he was already facing for murdering his wife, Janie Norman, in May last year. Mildren sentenced Djana, 32, to a 27-year non-parole period for what was a cruel and sustained attack over many hours. Djana assaulted Norman in various locations in and around the Little Sisters town camp on the southwest fringes of Alice. Norman’s injuries were terrible: she was jumped on, had her head pounded with rocks, was whipped and impaled in the vagina on a stick or a pole.

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Paul Toohey; 27/8/08

In a decision that will send tremors through town camps and bush communities, fringe dweller Ronald Djana yesterday received the longest non-parole sentence ever handed down to an Aboriginal murderer in the Northern Territory. Djana, 32, will serve a minimum 27 years for the murder of Janie Norman after Alice Springs Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers told the judge that his history of brutalising his wife had earned him more than the 25 years he was already facing.  Supreme Court judge Dean Mildren agreed. His sentence makes it clear courts and prosecutors will no longer treat Aboriginal men as a special class of offender and is one of the strongest statements in the defence of beaten Aboriginal women in the Territory’s history.

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Joshua Arlo; 27/8/08

Homicide arising out of domestic arguments between husbands and wives is a prevalent offence in the community and must be met with a very stern sentence, National Court judge Justice Panuel Mogish said. The judge said this last Friday when sentencing Nicholas Aia Aisi, a 54- year-old grandfather and father of eight, to 10 years in jail for killing his wife. He hit his wife when she was trying to save her daughter from being beaten with a bamboo by Aisi. The killing occurred on June 4, 2007, when Aisi came home drunk and a domestic argument started. “This woman was your wife, the mother of your children, entitled to your respect and support and protection.

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David Pallister; 30/7/08

People who kill their partners after years of abuse would be able to use a new defence that they had acted in response to extreme “words and conduct”, under British Government plans to change the law on murder in England and Wales. The proposals by the Ministry of Justice would also provide a defence for women in domestic violence cases who kill their partners in premeditated attacks. They would be able to rely on a defence of “fear of serious violence” but would not have to show they acted spontaneously. The reforms, triggered by concerns about the different treatment of men and women in cases of domestic violence, would mean the abolition of the 17th-century defence of provocation and a more precise medical definition of diminished responsibility.

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Bernard Lane; 23/7/08

Jim Franklin, being a philosopher, is careful with words. The ambiguous title of his latest project, the Australian Database of Indigenous Violence, is quite calculated. “I mean violence to indigenous people but, as everybody can see, nearly all of it is by other indigenous people,” he says. Franklin, a professor at the University of NSW, is well aware of the kind of welcome that may await his project, an attempt to document all serious violence against indigenous people over age 10. “It’s going to be named as racist by some people in the Aboriginal industry,” he says. “I agree it’s problematic to say in some sense that one community is worse than another, but that’s too bad. They are.” The trial version of the database offers brief accounts of crimes, such as murderous beatings and rapes, drawn from court records and newspapers. Most have taken place in remote Aboriginal communities.

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Alia Al Theeb; 20/7/08

Wife-beating was the most common crime dealt with by Dubai Police’s family security department last year. The department dealt with a total of 455 cases related to various family problems. Lt Col Arif Baqer, director of the family security department, said the department dealt with 126 cases of wife beating. He said the department also dealt with 113 cases of disputes among spouses, 35 swearing cases, 50 cases involving psychological and social counselling, 26 disputes between parents and children above 18 years, 18 cases of nuisance, 17 cases of disputes over child custody and 8 cases of psychological and social threats, such as threats of divorce.

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