bobandcaroleUTB wrote:
> Pedophile rings in black towns - minister
>
> May 17, 2006
>
> Advertisement
> AdvertisementTHE Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, says there is
> evidence of pedophile rings in Aboriginal communities in the Northern
> Territory and warns the Government may intervene if the territory does
> not take action.
>
> His comments follow harrowing accounts of child abuse and indigenous
> men hooked on drugs and petrol sniffing setting women on fire.
>
> "Everybody who lives in those communities knows who runs the pedophile
> rings, they know who brings in the petrol, they know who sells the
> ganja," Mr Brough told the ABC TV last night.
>
> "They need to be taken out of the community and dealt with, not by
> tribal law, but by the judicial system that operates throughout
> Australia."
>
> Mr Brough said pedophile rings were working under the screen of
> customary law, as were those who were providing sniffable petrol and
> marijuana in the communities, and called on the territory government to
> rein in the "mafia-style" rule.
>
> "There are examples of people who have been operating at a very senior
> level in indigenous communities that have such power over those
> communities, that use children at their own whim," he said.
>
> "They have been dealt with in some cases. In other cases, they are
> still free and you need to get the evidence. People have been hiding
> behind a thin veneer of cultural behaviour."
>
> He said if the constitutional power existed for direct federal
> intervention in the territory, he would not rule out anything.
>
> Substance abuse in Aboriginal communities has also given rise to fire
> attacks on women. In one recent case, a young man doused petrol on his
> girlfriend's stomach and genitals and set her clothes on fire after she
> refused to have sex. She sustained burns to 30 per cent of her body.
>
> In another case, a young man tossed petrol over his wife when she
> refused to give him $10 to buy alcohol. She suffered third-degree burns
> to 40 per cent of her body.
>
> Jane Lloyd, who advises the Northern Territory's Chief Minister, Clare
> Martin, on Aboriginal violence, said: "Such assaults are not uncommon
> or unusual. Women are burnt, in the abdomen, genital and upper-thigh
> areas also with fire sticks. They are deliberate assaults intended to
> ... sexually mutilate women."
>
> Ms Lloyd's claims are supported by the co-ordinator of the Alice
> Springs Women's Shelter, Maxine Schulte, who said the shelter was
> offering asylum to a growing number of indigenous women suffering from
> burns inflicted by males. "The tragedy is that 80 per cent of assaults
> go unreported because the women often return to their partners because
> they have nowhere else to go," she said.
>
> Over six months, 250 women and children used the shelter to escape
> domestic violence.
>
> Ms Lloyd, who chairs of the Chief Minister's Family and Aboriginal
> Violence Council, praised the Alice Springs crown prosecutor Nanette
> Rogers for speaking out publicly about the epidemic of sexual abuse and
> violent death in indigenous communities.
>
> Dr Rogers has released shocking details from a dossier she has kept on
> numerous cases of rape, murder and sexual assault on women, children
> and babies.
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