Prosecutions
In a press release on 23 June 2008,24 the Northern Territory Police Commissioner Paul White referred to the following statistics:
“Twelve months prior to the Intervention being announced, Northern Territory Police established the Child Abuse Taskforce (CAT). CAT was joined by Department of Health, Family and Children’s Services and later, as a result of the Intervention, gained a further six Australian Federal Police Officers to further build the capacity of the team.
Since the CAT commencement in June 2006, over 400 investigations into reported matters have been conducted across the Territory. The investigations have covered 69 communities resulting in 46 arrests and eight summonses.
Since the Intervention and the establishment of the 18 additional, remote police stations, 56 reports concerning child abuse have been referred to CAT from those stations. These reports alone have resulted in 8 arrests, 30 charges of child abuse offences, 3 convictions to date, 4 matters remain before the Court and one matter was withdrawn. Eight of those investigations are still underway.”
This press release was in part a response to comments in our earlier submission, however these statistics do not pick up the fundamental distinction this submission made between “child abuse” and “teenage relationships” (we referred to cases involving “child abuse” as matters generally involving sexual abuse of pre adolescent children by adults significantly older than them, and “teenage relationships” where the age difference between the two people is not large and the younger person has consented to the relationship - leaving aside the legal issue that a person cannot consent before the age of 16). While we are aware that both are criminal offences, we believe that they require very different policy responses. However they are currently being treated as one and the same.
The press release also does not distinguish between different types of offending against children, which includes violent and sexual offences.
It is thus very difficult for us to comment on the statistics referred to by Commissioner White. Nor do the Northern Territory Quarterly Crime & Justice statistics provide any assistance, other than stating that the underlying average level of sexual assault has remained stable at 30 offences per month during the past 9 quarters,25 although this does not distinguish between the ages of the victims and offenders.
We can merely repeat our earlier comments that in our experience we have not had a spike in the number of cases of child abuse prosecutions, although we have witnessed a noticeable increase in the number of prosecutions of teenage relationships as well as a marked difference in the way these matters have been dealt with by police and other authorities.
We request that the Review Board consider this matter carefully, particularly in light of the proclaimed reasons for the very commencement of the intervention (the so called “paedophile rings”). The Child Abuse Taskforce has been established for two years now, so we would have expected to see an increase in prosecutions for child abuse (rather than teenage relationships) by now.
It is of course extremely difficult to accurately estimate the levels of child abuse in any community, particularly Aboriginal communities. We believe however that this complex issue has been over simplified by the media, some politicians and also policing and prosecution services, for instance the view of the Australian Crime Commission and others that there is a clear link between sexual transmitted diseases in people under the age of consent and sexual abuse.26 However this link has been rejected by James Ward Program Manager, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health at the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research at the University of New South Wales who has said that:27
“Results from the Australian Study of Health and Relationships published in 2003 which surveyed 19,300 Australians on a range of issues related to sexual health and relationships found that 10% of women and close to 3% of men had been forced or coerced into unwanted sexual activity when they were 16-years-old or younger. In the NT over the last twelve months, the expected surge of sexual abusers hasn’t eventuated …
Sexually transmissible infections within the NT and many other remote communities across Australia are an issue of major concern, yet very little of the appropriated Intervention budget has been allocated to address this issue. Rates of notified STI in many of these communities remain among the highest in the developed world. Shameful for a country such as ours. And while sexual abuse and STI rates are largely two separate issues they are often linked by mainstream media.
So why hasn’t the intervention addressed sexually transmissible infections if they are such an issue? Last year in the NT of all chlamydia and gonorrhoea notifications reported among Aboriginal people aged less than 16 years of age, 96% of chlamydia and 94% of these gonorrhoea notifications were among people aged 12-15 years and more than 80% of these infections occurred among 14 and 15-year-olds.
Similar to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, the majority of chlamydia (93%) and gonorrhoea (88%) notifications notified among under 16-year-olds, occurred among 12-15 years olds. Very few cases occurred in people aged less than 12 years in both populations. It is highly likely that the rates of STI notified among people aged 12-15 occur as a result of early sexual debut among similar aged peers rather than as a result of child sexual assault.
The reality is that until STI rates are reduced in remote communities, the chances of acquiring an STI will remain high. Further fuelling the attention in the NT on STI rates is that for Central Australia, it is one of the few places in Australia where regular programs for testing of STI occurs, making rates appear much higher than anywhere else in the country.”
24. http://www.nt.gov.au/pfes/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewMediaRelease&pID=8500&y=2008&mo=6
25. Issue 23: March Quarter 2008 p 2
26. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23898640-2,00.html; http://www.bennelong.com.au/conferences/pdf/Milroy2008.pdf
27. http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20080617-Why-the-media-needs-to-lift-its-game-on-the-NT-intervention.html