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Black Australia: a picture of despair, rage and violence

By Debra Jopson

16 February 2001 - Aboriginal people are 45 times more likely than other Australians to be victims of domestic violence, while their risk of being murdered is eight times greater, the most comprehensive research into indigenous community violence reveals.

Most domestic violence victims are women, but there is also a little-reported phenomenon of rape and sexual abuse of small children in some remote communities, said Dr Paul Memmott, lead author of a University of Queensland report, Violence in Indigenous Communities.

The rape of an eight-month-old baby in one community and of a three-year-old in another were reported to the researchers, who believed "that the severity and extent of this kind of violence may be increasing in indigenous communities", the report said.

In their survey of the research literature and interviews with representatives from 100 Aboriginal organisations nationwide, they found reports that groups of boys aged 10 to 15 had raped drunken women and that boys had traded younger sisters to older boys to pay gambling debts and to buy alcohol.

One survey in the early 1990s had found about 6,000 incidents of assault on indigenous women in the Northern Territory annually. In 50 to 60 per cent of cases of indigenous spouse attack in the Territory, women were assaulted with weapons which included sticks, rocks, iron bars, knives, spears, guns, firesticks, bottles and ropes.

The researchers also identified a "dysfunctional community syndrome", especially in some remote parts of Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, where "multiple violence" appears to be increasingly in frequency and with greater
intensity.

"A typical cluster of violence types in such a dysfunctional community would be male-on-male and female-on-female fighting, child abuse, alcohol violence, male suicide, pack rape, infant rape, rape of grandmothers, self-mutilation, spouse assault and homicide," the report said.

"Such communities need to be viewed as in a state of dire emergency."

These communities had suffered a loss of leadership, social cohesion and common values and needed justice programs and reinforcement of customary law to bolster Aboriginal cultural authority, Dr Memmott said.

Governments were supporting this "in some areas, but it could be more widespread".

Dr Memmott said he was relieved that the report, delivered to the Federal Government 18 months ago, has finally been released by Senator Amanda Vanstone as she departs as Minister for Justice and Customs. Governments needed to acknowledge that the situation was worsening with each generation and begin tackling the problems at preschool, he said.

"It's very despairing because it is like sitting on a time bomb," Dr Memmott said.

The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, for which he had conducted research, had shown individuals took their own lives because they were suffering from an identity crisis, following their parents' and grandparents' "horrendous" history dictated by governments and institutions.

"They were victims of the history of problems handed down," Dr Memmott said. "Now we are talking about two generations later. The whole thing's been wound up like a spring and just been passed from generation to generation."

The Federal Government had taken some action, but needed to do much more.

"One Federal Government department just put in 30 programs. That's good, but 30 programs across Australia when there might be 1,000 communities is going to have a very small impact."

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

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