Australia's Aboriginal Women Call for End to Abuse
By Michael Perry
Originally published by Reuters, June 21, 2001
SYDNEY (Reuters) — Some of Australia's most high-profile Aboriginal women have called for action to end endemic domestic violence in their communities, with a report citing the gang rape of a 3-year-old Aboriginal girl.
"It's our husbands, it's our brothers, it's our sons, it's our next-door neighbours who are committing this violence, and that's a very difficult issue for women to cope with, for (black) communities to cope with,'' said black magistrate Pat O'Shane.
Linda Burnie, director general of the department of Aboriginal affairs in the Australian state of New South Wales, said on Thursday sexual assault and violence against Aboriginal women and children had become almost acceptable in black communities.
"It is a shocking problem in our communities and what is really chilling about it, it almost becomes acceptable when it goes on for so long,'' Burnie said. "It really is destroying lives. It is an enormous issue.''
Under a newspaper headline "Black Women's Burden,'' Evelyn Scott, former head of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, the main black organisation, wrote that for decades indigenous women believed sexual and physical abuse was a price that had to be paid for being Aboriginal.
Scott this week revealed that her daughters were sexually assaulted as children by a close family friend.
"I think abuse is the main contributor to the suicide, violence, alcohol and drug problems our children are facing,'' she said. "They keep it in their hearts for a long time and then the first opportunity they get to let it out, they take.''
Lowitja O'Donoghue, another former head of the top black organisation, said the hidden truth about abuse of black women was slowly being revealed.
"People know it exists and women do now speak out. At one time there was a veil of secrecy,'' O'Donoghue said.
Aboriginal women said more action was needed to end domestic violence, citing a 1999 report which said abuse against black women and children was at a "crisis point.'' They said few of the report's recommendations had been implemented 18-months later.
The government-sanctioned report into domestic violence amongst Queensland Aborigines cited one case where a 3-year-old girl was gang raped by three males and then 10 days later another male sexually assaulted her.
Two of the attackers were juveniles and one said he too had been sexually assaulted as a 4-year-old.
One woman cited in the report said, "I can't remember when I didn't feel scared. There were always stories about bogeymen when I was growing up, but for us they were real. He was our father.''
"I saw amazing scars on the face of women who had been violated physically from a young age,'' the report's Aboriginal author Boni Robertson said on Thursday.
Another report on domestic violence in Queensland, written 10 years earlier, said an estimated 90% of indigenous families living in remote communities were victims of abuse.
Former Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Herron said on Thursday abuse was "endemic'' in Aboriginal communities.
He said he had visited black communities with his wife, when he was minister, so abused women had someone to talk to, as they were culturally forbidden to talk to males.
"They were frightened because if they spoke out they would be subject to violence,'' said Herron, who was minister from 1996 until 2000.
Aboriginal women said the abuse was fueled by alcohol and poverty, but noted the historic ill-treatment of Aborigines which had left them the most disadvantaged group in the country, dying 15 to 20 years earlier than white Australians.
"You can't discount history and the violence that has been perpetrated on Aboriginal people through the historical process of colonisation in this country. Top that up with poverty and you end up with enormous frustration,'' Burnie said.
