Australian worker charged after ‘tying up’ Aboriginal children he found swimming in pool

An Australian man has been charged with aggravated assault after allegedly restraining three Aboriginal children with cable ties after finding them swimming in the pool of a property where he was working.

Images of the barefooted children, all of whom were under the age of 8, sitting restrained on the pavement have provoked outrage in the country.

The man said he had found the youngsters swimming in the pool at a vacant property in the seaside suburb of Cable Beach in Broome in the far north of Western Australia.

He was reportedly a tradesman who had turned up at the house to do some work for its owner.

Video footage taken by a passerby shows the children sobbing and in distress on a driveway as the man looks on, apparently waiting for the police to arrive.

In a Facebook livestream, the passerby is heard saying: “Look what he did to these kids. What if someone tied up your kids like that?”

Another woman who was at the scene said the children “were frightened, they were crying, they were singing out for their mum. We were yelling at him to tell him to release them [for over an hour]”.

State police say the degree of force allegedly used by the man was disproportionate to whatever the children might have done. Photo / Facebook

Police who arrived at the house said they found a 7-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl manacled and linked together with the cable ties.

A third child, an 8-year-old boy, had also been tied up but had apparently fled the scene before the arrival of the police.

Roger Cook, the premier of Western Australia, described the scenes as “confronting” and “disturbing”.

He said the footage would provoke “very strong emotions” in anyone who watched it.

The 45-year-old man, wearing a black T-shirt, was arrested and has been charged with three counts of aggravated assault. He was granted bail and will face court on a date yet to be determined.

Jacqueline McGowan-Jones, Western Australia’s commissioner for children, said she was appalled by the images.

“It would appear these are very young and small children. They appear to be quite frightened in the circumstances. He is quite a large man. And they appear to be very nervous,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Rod Wilde, an assistant commissioner of the state’s police force, said while Australians have the right to make a citizen’s arrest in some circumstances, the degree of force allegedly used by the man was disproportionate to whatever the children might have done.

“Whatever force you apply to arrest someone needs to be reasonable, given the age of the person involved, and their vulnerability. In this case, it’s the basis of the charges that it’s disproportionate to what is reasonable in the circumstances.”

He added that children under the age of 10 could not be held criminally responsible.

The children were checked by medics and then returned to their families.

Politicians appealed for calm amid fears the incident could stoke racial tensions in the region.

More than 200 years after colonisation, indigenous Australians are the country’s most disadvantaged ethnic group, suffering from high rates of incarceration, alcoholism and unemployment.

Aboriginal men have a life expectancy of 71 years, which is nearly nine years less than the rest of the population.

Last October, Australians voted in a referendum against a proposal that would have enshrined in the constitution an apparatus that would have allowed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to advise parliament on issues that affect their lives.

The idea of giving indigenous people a so-called “voice to parliament” was deeply divisive, with the fractious national debate described as “Australia’s Brexit moment”.