Abuse Inquiry Ignores the Kids Most at Risk

By Piers Akerman
The Daily Telegraph
November 23, 2012

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/abuse-inquiry-ignores-the-kids-most-at-risk/story-e6frezz0-1226522233508

THE royal commission announced by the Prime Minister 11 days ago will do nothing for the majority of victims or those most vulnerable to child abuse - poor and Aboriginal children.

With submissions to the government about the terms of reference to be lodged in writing by next Monday, the Gillard government has made it clear that it is not going to address these areas of greatest need.

The discussion paper released this week by Attorney-General Nicola Roxon and acting Families Minister Brendan O'Connor makes it absolutely clear that the commission will focus on sexual abuse in public and private organisations and institutions.

However, the overwhelming evidence makes it plain that the greatest risk of abuse occurs within the family home and increases incrementally if the family is poor or indigenous.

Police assistant commissioner Dave Hudson said this year 95 per cent of the victims were known to offenders and that the offenders were "close to the family" or "within the family unit", that attacks took place within the family home. The risk he said, was not "stranger danger".

To highlight the issue, Hudson made his comments while announcing the unit dealing with this scourge would be badged as the Child Abuse Squad and the point was made, at his press conference on May 9, that the trauma inflicted on the child victims of sexual abuse lasts for the rests of that person's life.

According to NSW Department of Family and Community Services statistics, of the different forms of child abuse, domestic violence, neglect, sexual, physical and emotional abuse; physical abuse and neglect, followed by emotional abuse and domestic violence, were the most commonly reported issues for children and young people last year.

While there was a (welcome) overall reduction of 19.5 per cent in the number who had a finding of actual harm or risk of harm over the previous year there were two categories which increased - actual (11.4 per cent) and risk (20.3 per cent) of harm or sexual abuse.

Northern NSW and Hunter and Central Coast had the largest number of children reported at risk of significant harm (ROSH).

After considering populations in each region, a slightly different picture emerges with the Western NSW region reporting the highest rate of ROSH children as 60.3 per 1000 children and young people, followed by Northern (57.2) and Hunter Central Coast (47.1).

In Metro Western Sydney the rate is 32 per 1000.

But here is the staggering statistic that makes plain how misdirected this commission's sketchy outline is: the rate of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children and young people reported at ROSH is 187.4 per 1000 compared with 32.8 per 1000 of non-Aboriginal children and young people.

Our Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander youngsters are nearly six times more likely to be at risk than other Australians.

Health and social workers and law enforcement officers are well aware of this and there have been numerous reports and commissions of inquiry into what is an endemic crisis.

But Labor and the Greens and their hand-wringing supporters in Australia's wealthier suburbs have relentlessly sought reasons to turn the spotlight away from this plague affecting Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders and those in our lowest socio-economic groups and apportion blame for their plight to churches and institutions or Western culture.

Without in any way wishing to deflect the deserved opprobrium that must be meted out to those criminals who abused their religious or civil oaths and preyed upon the young, it is widely recognised within Aboriginal society that the missions were generally regarded as a force for good providing a welcome sanctuary from the hardships of tribal life before the misguided policies of the Whitlam government and its flawed guru H.C. "Nugget" Coombs systematically dismantled them and substituted a blighted apartheid in their place.

In scorning assimilation, Labor and its supporters consigned Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to a ruinous welfare dependency that eroded all cultural influences - traditional and Western.

It is worth noting that last year, four years after the Howard government's intervention policy was introduced in the NT to combat child sexual abuse, among other symptoms of systemic dysfunction, a second Aboriginal community in WA was ordered closed by the state government because of issues with child abuse and governance problems. The closure of Oombulgurri, in the East Kimberley, followed the June, 2003 forced closure of the Nyungah Community in the Swan Valley, after evidence of horrendous child abuse emerged.

But the royal commission Gillard has proposed would do nothing to address crimes committed by those who chose their victims from among their family members.

Every day since this commission was announced I have received letters from victims of sexual abuse. While one poll shows that 95 per cent of Australians welcomed the announcement, those who have been abused and whose cases fall outside the scope of the inquiry are not so happy.

One man who asked me to telephone him yesterday said he had been attacked as a schoolboy in the public lavatory at Sydney's Central Station in 1973 by a well-dressed, well-spoken older man who only desisted and ran away after passers-by heard his screams.

He did not complete his schooling, he suffers from trauma and he draws a permanent disability pension.

His case does not fall within the guidelines hurriedly released by Gillard, Roxon and O'Connor.

I can offer my sincere and heartfelt sympathy as I do to the thousands of others who will not be given even the smallest opportunity to air their lingering grievances, or discuss their sense of shame and helplessness.

Gillard, Roxon and O'Connor provide only empty words.