1. Rural Aboriginal people and child
sexual abuse
A public health perspective
Jon Willis
May, 2008

2. Some Background
 Between 2001 and 2007 Australia has been
occupied with an extended moral panic about
the issue of family violence, particularly child
sexual abuse.
 The perpetrators demonised by this moral
panic have often been personified in male
public figures. Most prominent were two
cases.
 The Australia Governor General and former
Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, Peter
Hollingsworth, was implicated in concealing
the abuse of children by priests under his
authority, and forced to resign as the
Australian head of state in 2004.
 The second case involved Geoff Clark, the
first elected chair of the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), who was

3. Geoff Clark‟s case(s)
 The lawsuits failed, as had criminal
prosecutions of Mr Clark in both
cases, but not before Mr Clark‟s
behaviour was put to an extended
examination in the media.
 The public and political frenzy
surrounding Mr Clark‟s case was
accompanied by an unprecedented
groundswell of public discussion of
Aboriginal men as rapists and abusers of
women and children
 This frenzy included
 policy discussion and shifts in relation to
services to Aboriginal women and families
 in early 2005 the total dismantling of
ATSIC, which had been responsible for

4.  I did a study of the Australian print media
portrayal of Aboriginal men and their sexuality
from mid-2002 to mid-2003, at the height of the
moral panic.
 A Lexis-Nexis search of all Australian newspaper from
the period on the search terms Aborigines and Sex
returned an (astonishing) 445 articles, letters and
editorial pieces addressing the issue of Aboriginal men
as rapists and sexual abusers of children.
 Although many of these pieces focus on or allude to the
ongoing public spectacle of Mr Clark‟s rape cases, they
also discuss a range of other prominent sexual abuse
accusations around the country, many implicating senior
Aboriginal men previously viewed as leaders of their
people and even non-Aboriginal public servants working
in Aboriginal policy portfolios.

5. The media content of this moral
panic
 is fuelled by centuries-old
characterisations of black men as
sexually suspect and dangerous
 it serves the continuing
disempowerment of Aboriginal people by
characterising them as perpetrators or
victims of sexual violence and therefore
degraded in comparison to European
Australians
 the moral panic was cynically
manipulated by the Ministers of the
Howard Government to achieve their
policy goal of dismantling
ATSIC, destabilising the authority of the
Northern Territory Government, and
attacking Land Rights through the
compulsory re-acquisition of Aboriginal
land for Government purposes

8. Aboriginal child sex numbers „put in
perspective‟
Margaret Wenham, May 19, 2008, Courier Mail
ONLY 39 of nearly 7500 Aboriginal children
examined from remote Northern Territory
communities were assessed as at risk of serious
neglect or abuse.
The Commonwealth Health Department figures of
those examined after the Howard government's
indigenous intervention, and released to The
Courier-Mail yesterday, raised questions about the
true level of child-sex abuse in indigenous
communities. A departmental spokesman said the
0.5per cent of cases was not necessarily for
suspected sexual abuse but could include
emotional or physical abuse or neglect.
In contrast, nearly 40 per cent of the children
examined were referred to dentists and ear, nose

9. Sunrise Health Service chief executive Irene Fisher
said the figures brought a "welcome perspective back to the
whole issue".

10. "We screened 1100 of the children and less than a handful
were suspected of being sexually abused," she said.
"Since June 21 (last year) I've been really concerned
about the perpetuation of negative stereotypes about
Aboriginal people.
"Not only has it been made to seem like every male is a
perpetrator of abuse, but communities have been labelled
neglectful, when they just live in poverty.“

11. Mr Howard said in June last year that
the innocence of childhood in
indigenous communities was "a myth".
He ordered a widescale "intervention
in the Northern Territory in response to
allegations of shocking
neglect, including child health
checks, controls on spending of
welfare money and alcohol bans.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny
Macklin said it was important to
balance the "reality" which showed
indigenous children were five times
more likely to be abused than non-

12. Recent Evidence
 The Mullighan Commission of Inquiry into
Children on APY Lands reported 2 weeks ago on
abuse and neglect issues in the far north-west of
SA
 The Commissioners found “evidence of sexual
abuse relating to 141 children living on the Lands
where it was reasonably possible that they had
been sexually abused”.
http://www.service.sa.gov.au/ContentPages/sagovt/mullighaninquiry_apy.aspx

13. The case summaries
 The case summaries that relate to each child who
was reasonably likely to have been sexually abused
have been put into categories based on the
relationship between perpetrator and victim and the
nature/reason for the sexual abuse. The categories
are:
 extra-familial – men abusing girls (mostly 13-15 year old
girls, and 17-19 year old boys)
 Sex for petrol, food or cannabis, money and gambling
 Promised wife
 extra-familial – juvenile on juvenile
 So-called „consensual‟ sex between juveniles
 No consent
 intra-familial abuse (11 cases, including abusers with
intellectual disability, or petrol sniffers)
 offender unknown (mostly extra-familial)

15.  There appear to be significant changes
Why so in Pitjantjatjara sexual culture over the
last 10 years (e.g. sexual repertoires
many? and scripting, availability of
pornography) without concomitant
changes in education about
relationships and sexual risk
 There have been considerable
disruptions to family and community life
over the past 2 generations
(missionaries arrived here in 1938)
 Neglect of older kids, and substance
misuse
 Communalisation and the provision of
Western-style housing has had a
significant and disruptive effect on the
management of privacy, and particularly
on the supervision and surveillance of
adolescents
 Community standards differ, including
what is categorised as a child, and what

16. Why we worry: the consequences of
child sexual abuse
 Sexual abuse touches every life when it leads to
losses of trust, decreases in self-esteem and
development of shame, guilt and depression.
 Sexual abuse touches every life when it leads to
eating disorders, substance
abuse, suicide, promiscuity/prostitution and other
psycho-behavioural problems
 Victims of child sexual abuse report more substance
abuse problems. 70-80 per cent of sexual abuse
survivors report excessive drug and alcohol use
 Young girls who are sexually abused are three times
more likely to develop psychiatric disorders or alcohol
and drug abuse in adulthood than girls who are not
sexually abused

17.  Among male survivors, more than 70
per cent seek psychological treatment
for issues such as substance abuse,
suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide.
Males who have been sexually abused
are more likely to violently victimise
other
 Children who have been victims of
sexual abuse exhibit long-term and
more frequent behavioural problems,
particularly inappropriate sexual
behaviours
 Women who report childhood rape are
three times more likely to become
pregnant before age 18.
 An estimated 60 per cent of teen first
pregnancies are preceded by
experiences of molestation, rape or

18.  Victims of child sexual abuse
are more likely to be sexually
promiscuous
 More than 75% of teenage
prostitutes have been sexually
abused
 Adolescents who suffered
violent victimisation are at risk
for being victims or
perpetrators of felony assault,
domestic violence, and
property offence as adults
 Nearly 50% of women in prison
state that they were abused as
children

19. Some strategies for moving
forward
As Public Health practitioners

20. Support versus control
 Hold back expertise unless invited
 The difficulty is empowerment, or providing an
enabling environment
 Barriers include personal and community history,
and current personal circumstances
 Sometimes the same things work or don‟t work in
different situations, but when they don‟t work you
don‟t get the chance for critical reflection with the
group on what went wrong

21. Sensitivities
 finding the right person to talk to
 elders
 organisations
 ignorance about community structures can make it
hard to manoeuvre (in the way you would with a non-
Indigenous community)
 use local workers/connections to talk to the right
people, meet the requirements of local protocols
 permission
 sometimes being rigid about structures causes
problems – eg working with young people where they
have conflicts with elders

22. Time frames
 develop trust
 staff turnover – problem with long project time
lines
 long time to develop foundation networks

23. National focus
 means different approaches with urban, rural and
remote communities but
 need to work through local networks, and with local people
 gender is important, though there is flexibility
 managing and meeting expectations is important – not good
to surprise people
 other issues can intervene in relation to gender (for eg
young gay men in one place didn‟t want to be seen by a
straight male health worker)

24. Service Delivery
 flexibility (outside of hours, outside of clinic)
 may cause problems over visible “work hours”
 men sometimes need to know women‟s stuff, and
women sometimes need to know men‟s stuff

25. Shame
 Difficult to understand cross-
culturally
 Includes different understandings
of the implications of different
parts of interaction (such as
looking/staring and touch)
 Aboriginal people may not be
experienced with dealing with
white people
 Shame reactions might include
withdrawal or anger

26. Sensitivity to levels of abuse in the
community
 make counselling available
 make sure people feel free to leave
 be conscious of and prepared for the emotional
content of these issues

27. Partnerships
 need to normalise processes of dialogue with
organisational cultures
 include Aboriginal people prior to the
development of the process
 the importance of advisory structures, especially
being involved from the start
 formal mechanisms sometimes lack the flexibility
need to allow partnerships to move forward, or
get in the way of the work of the partnership

28. Equality
 mutual respect needs to be articulated
 expectations between workers and managers go
both ways

29. Interviews
 May be difficult to ask direct questions without
giving the person time to think
 Sometimes hypothetical scenarios are a better
way to go (not as personal)