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Rape, abuse cover-up - report
14/12/2007 11:36 - (SA)
Sydney - Officials in Australia allegedly covered up hundreds of Aboriginal child abuse cases, a report said on Friday, as authorities probed why nine males who gang raped a 10-year-old girl had not been jailed.
Investigators heard complaints by child protection police that ministers in northeastern Queensland state allegedly gagged social workers dealing with child abuse cases, according to The Australian newspaper.
The gang rape of the girl and the court system's subsequent failure to jail her attackers has sparked outrage in Australia.
But documents cited by The Australian suggest child abuse problems have long been widespread in Aboriginal communities in the Cape York region in Queensland's far north.
The newspaper cited a leaked interview with a police child protection officer, questioned by the gang rape inquiry, who said social workers had failed to report cases where Aboriginal children had been raped or abused.
"I believe ministers got involved and certain people were told not to speak to police," detective sergeant David Harold told investigators, according to the leaked transcript of his interview.
He also said police investigations had showed there were "numerous child protection issues through the Cape we haven't been advised of".
Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh said she had asked for a report from the corruption watchdog on Harold's claims.
Cape York Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson said the allegation of political interference, if true, was a major concern.
"If there's any hesitation on the part of either health workers or teachers or child safety officers ... that they should be reporting all concerns to the police, then we have a corrupted system," he told ABC radio.
The prosecutor in the 2006 gang rape case, who described the nine attackers as "naughty" was suspended this week pending an inquiry into how the case was handled.
Critics say they would not have escaped jail if the victim had been white.
The girl, who cannot be named and is now 12, had been abused previously at the age of seven and put into foster care with a non-indigenous family in the town of Cairns.
But in April 2006 she was returned to the Aurukun community, where she suffered the gang rape. Six of her attackers were under the age of 17, with the three others aged 17, 18 and 26.
Australia's original inhabitants make up some two percent of a population of 21 million.
Aborigines were marginalised after the first British settlers arrived in 1788 and many live in squalid outback camps, where unemployment, alcohol dependency and lawlessness are rife.
In June, the government moved to crack down on high levels of child sex abuse in Aboriginal communities by deploying police and military to improve living standards and impose controls on alcohol and pornography.
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