A confidential police report claims there is endemic sexual abuse and violence against women, children, and even babies in Australia's indigenous communities.
By
News

Source:
SBS Radio
16 May 2006 - 12:00 AM  UPDATED 22 Aug 2013 - 12:18 PM

Central Australia's chief prosecutor, Ninette Rogers, compiled the information over 15 years and says the level of violence is intolerable.

Murder is the main cause of premature death for women in the region, which has a murder rate 10 times the national average.

But Dr Rogers says there is a conspiracy of silence and she says she is concerned new generations of Indigenous children are growing up experiencing violence as a normal part of everyday life.

The Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, says indigenous violence is rampant and society needs to face up to it and say it's not going to accept it any more.

He has told ABC radio that customary law is stopping people from giving evidence in court and indigenous communities have hidden behind a veil of cultural sensitivity for too long.

Earlier Mr Brough said that he can't understand why the Northern Territory Government had failed to limit alcohol, following the continued stories of violence in remote communities.

Mr Brough says while the Federal Government has started working with the N-T
government over housing and other matters, something needs to be done urgently
about alcohol.

Brough told the ABC's Lateline program that there is also a need to review police numbers in remote communities.

"When you go into the a community here in the Territory, of over two and a half
thousand people and there's not one policeman, I challenge the Territory
government or anyone in the media to find another Australian community
where ever it may be, with two and a half thousand inhabitants and not one
policeman," Mr Brough told Lateline.

The Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin says her government is
working with police to decide how best to deploy officers throughout the
region.

"It is just not possible to have one police per community of, say, 50 -
that's a fact of life. We have vastly more police per y'know, per capita than
any other part of Australia. And ah police now have ways of ah of having
communities grouped and that you have a police presence perhaps across three
communities," she told ABC radio.