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Saturday, May 8, 2010

John Pilger: Support NT Indigenous fightback http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/43897

In 2007, the Howard government used the report, Little Children are Sacred, to justify its actions. Child abuse in Indigenous communities was in “unthinkable numbers”, said Mal Brough, then Aboriginal affairs minister. In fact, the sexual abuse of Aboriginal girls and women is mostly committed by non-Aboriginal people living nearby. 

Out of 7433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors, 39 were referred to the authorities for suspected abuse. Of those, four possible cases have been identified. In other words, as Professor Alastair Nicholson, a former chief justice of the Family Court, has pointed out, this is no more than the rate of child abuse in white Australia. 

How did Brough and Howard get away with this? Certain journalists played a crucial role. The ABC program, Lateline, broadcast allegations about what it called “sex slavery” among the people of Mutitjulu. The program’s source was described as an “anonymous youth worker”. 

In fact, he was exposed as a federal government official whose word was discredited by the Northern Territory chief minister and the police. The ABC has never withdrawn these damaging allegations, claiming it has been “exonerated by an internal enquiry”.

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