Alert over Aborigine abuse rate

By NICK SQUIRES in Sydney

A "volatile cocktail" of poverty, despair and anger has led to record levels of domestic abuse among Australia's Aborigines, including incest, violence against women and the rape of babies.

In a frank and sometimes shocking speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, respected Aboriginal leader Professor Mick Dodson said extreme action was required to prevent indigenous communities from social meltdown.

"Our children are experiencing horrific levels of violence and sexual abuse," Dodson said, adding that details of the abuse of infants were too gruesome for him to describe.

Abuse of Aboriginal children by their own communities included "neglect, incest, assault by adult carers, paedophilia and rape of infants by youths",

he said.

Queensland Domestic Violence Taskforce research had estimated that nine out of 10 Aboriginal families in Queensland are affected by domestic violence, while indigenous women are 45 times more likely to be victims of violence at home than other Australian women.

This week the state parliament of Western Australia was told of systematic abuse in the notorious Swan Valley Nyungar Aboriginal community in Perth.

Nearly two-thirds of boys in the camp are regularly sodomised, and not a single girl remained a virgin beyond the age of 10, MPs were told. The death rate among Aboriginal children in Western Australia is three times that of non-indigenous children and the subject of a Government inquiry.

Dodson, who heads the Institute for Indigenous Australia at the Australian National University, said violence in Aboriginal communities was endemic and getting worse.

He cited the example of a community in Queensland where three men raped a 3-year-old child, who was raped again by another man 10 days later.

Calling on the Prime Minister, John Howard, to provide strong political leadership in tackling the problem, the former Social Justice Commissioner said: "We have to throw resources into this like it was a national emergency".

He said domestic violence was caused by unemployment, poverty, welfare dependency and alcohol abuse, leading to "a volatile cocktail of despair, anger, powerlessness and hopelessness".

Victims of abuse become abusers themselves before they even reached adulthood.

Dodson criticised Aboriginal leaders for not doing enough to confront the problem and called for increased funding for night patrols of vulnerable communities, refuges for abused women and therapy programmes.

Aboriginal welfare groups welcomed his unflinching comments and said help for the victims of domestic violence in remote Outback communities needed to be radically improved.