(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
Five years after a landmark inquiry exposed widespread child sexual abuse across South Australia's remote Anangu Pitjatjantjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) traditional lands in SA's far north west, reports of neglect and abuse have barely declined.
The state government has presented its fifth and final report claiming it's achieved all but three of the Commission of Inquiry's 46 recommendations - but advocates argue the job's far from finished.
Meanwhile, communities are working on their own ways of building children's resilience in a bid to stop them becoming victims of sexual predation and emotional trauma.
The jungle gym [climbing frame] outside the Fregon school is a magnet for kids.
On a summer's evening, about a dozen of them kick up a cloud of orange dust, no parents in sight.
Chances are at least some of these kids have been exposed to things that children shouldn't see or experience - domestic violence, pornography, neglect or abuse.
Understanding the extent of such issues on the APY lands is difficult due to all kinds of factors including mistrust of authorities, language barriers, isolation and concerns about shame.
"It's helping, Mr Mullighan, helping, but not fixing properly, report must be for another one, another report, another look."
Senior woman Mrs Milyika Paddy is reflecting on the 2007 Commission of Inquiry conducted by former judge Ted Mullighan.
It lifted the lid on abuse, but Mrs Paddy is one of many Anangu (Aboriginal people, pronounced UH-nuh-noo) who think more still needs to be done and that further reporting is required.
Commissioner Mullighan, who has since died, found 141 children had been sexually abused and more than 70 had contracted sexually transmitted infections, noting that abuse was likely under-reported.
The government's annual progress reports don't detail sexual abuse rates, but do show that a key abuse indicator - sexually transmitted infections - have fallen amongst under 18s, with 13 reports of chlamydia [kluh-MID-ee-uh] and 30 of gonorrhoea [GON-uh-REE-uh]; only one notification involved a child under 14.
Meanwhile the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service has 217 cases open, with 108 referrals in the past 6 months.
With the total population of the APY Lands around 3,000, and fewer than a third of them children, the statistics indicate a significant proportion of children continue to be exposed to emotional trauma, neglect and abuse.
The Minister for Education and Child Development, Jennifer Rankine (RAN-kin), says the steadiness of the reporting rate could reflect communities developing confidence in the Child Protection system, leading to a greater willingness to make reports.
Ms Rankine says the government has committed substantial resources to address abuse and neglect and progress is being made.
"I'm happy to check this but I don't think there has been anyone charged in the last year, at least to my knowledge, of sexually abusing a child on the Lands for this 12 months. There may have been some historic cases that came to light but it would appear that many of the protective measures that have been put in place are having an impact."
The Deputy Chief Executive of the Department of Education and Child Development is David Waterford.
He says organisations like the Nganampa (NUN-uh-pa) Health Service are producing reliable data indicating improvement.
"And I think we can have very significant confidence if there are not notifications of sexually transmitted diseases in children under 14, they're not being diagnosed. Nganampa does work really closely with the community and young children are in and out of the clinics very often. If we had children under the age of 14 with chlamydia, it would be being diagnosed and it would be being reported. "
Of particular concern is the access to pornography, which is known to contribute to sexualised behaviour in children.
Mr Waterford says it's difficult to track, but police and child protection workers have evidence of children being exposed to explicit material.
"USB memory sticks are probably the greatest concern. It's not wifi, it's not the internet. That could be a problem in the future but right now it's actually something as simple as a memory stick."
Reporter: "Do you have any idea how widespread it is, how do you actually monitor what's happening?"
"Look, how do you monitor memory sticks? I think the really important thing is teaching children protective behaviours in the context of school and we've got a really strong program with that. And secondly working with parents so they have some insight into the corrosive effect of pornography on children."
Minister Rankine says protecting children from visual, emotional and physical abuse is a complex challenge, but headway is being made.
"The government has invested significantly on the APY Lands both in infrastructure, in personnel and in services on the Lands, so they will continue. The APY Lands is a really challenging environment. It poses challenges like no other area, and so we have to continue being creative, there is no point at which we can say everything is done and dusted. Positive things are happening but things need to continue if we want to see good outcomes on the Lands and that the children on the Lands are safe, educated and having a real future."
The manager of Indigenous Policy and Advocacy with welfare agency Uniting Communities, Jonathan Nicholls (NIK-uls), says while there's been welcome progress, the government's reporting process has been a nonsense , leaving communities uneasy about the future.
"The government's tried to present it as done and dusted, that they've ticked off 43 of the 45 recommendations that they accepted, but when you dig down into the information, either they haven't done what Commissioner Mullighan asked to be done, or they've gone part of the way, but really aren't in a position to say they've completed the recommendations, even though that's what they say at the front of the report."
Mr Nicholls says an absence of benchmarks at the beginning of the five-year reporting process has made it impossible to assess progress and the reports lack rich data.
"What's difficult to know is because of the lack of information that's been in each of the five annual reports, it's very hard to feel confident that the systems are all in place and working well."
Mr Nicholls says some of the purported achievements are the opposite of what is actually happening on the Lands.
He says examples include the claim that school attendance recommendations have been achieved when attendance has declined, and that court resources have been boosted yet sitting days have been cut by 25 per cent.
Mr Nicholls says an alarming number of children remain in vulnerable situations, yet specialist workers that the report says have been appointed, haven't been.
"You find that the government has established positions but those positions have been empty, in some cases for 12 months or more. So establishing a position is not the same as getting somebody on the ground to carry out a critical role at a time when there are allegations of child sexual abuse or neglect."
On that measure, Minister Rankine says attracting workers to the APY Lands and keeping them there long enough for the community to trust them is an ongoing challenge.
"It has been difficult finding the right people to fill those positions but we do have social workers in each of the schools, so it hasn't been left unattended but we haven't been able to fill for any significant period of time those specific positions. But it is a very difficult environment in which to work for lengthy periods of time and so it's not unreasonable to think people may have a one or two year contract up there because it is an incredibly difficult environment and I think probably impractical to think you would have someone working up there for five to seven years, for example."
The government has had better success in expanding the police presence on the Lands, with new stations and more officers, although it is still struggling to fill Aboriginal community constable and liaison officer positions.
Ms Rankine says improved Aboriginal housing is reducing the overcrowding that can facilitate abuse, and construction is continuing.
Housing for government staff on the lands remains in short supply in places, and effective cooperation between agencies can also be difficult.
Observing government workers on the Lands, it's clear they strive to share information and resources, but are sometimes hampered by rules set in Adelaide that can be inflexible or poorly attuned to the demands presented by this remote area.
As government grapples with the challenge of responding to child protection with coordinated, effective services, Anangu are turning to their own cultural traditions in a bid to prevent abuse.
APY elder Mrs Milyika Paddy has been working with senior women across the Lands to develop a storytelling program which educates children and their parents about the dangers of child abuse.
Mrs Paddy says elders draw stories in the sand about the snake man, as a warning to children about not trusting strangers, while parents are being coached to keep a closer eye on their little ones.
"You come together and play with family looking after properly, and say "Snake man" coming - you play here, close, not going playing outside, that snake man coming, must be take them away. Come and play close, not playing too far."
Mrs Paddy says Anangu are trying hard to take responsibility for protecting children, but can't do it all by themselves.
It's a subtle reference to the pressures on the region since colonisation that has massively damaged cultural traditions and caused social deprivation.
She doesn't want the focus on the Lands to fade now that the government's delivered its final report and doesn't hesitate to nominate areas where more effort is needed.
"More social worker, nurses and police should be looking (out for children). Should be housing. Families staying in one house with 20 people, 100 people. there's not enough house. Not enough. Should be keep it family, husband wife and kids, looking after, not everybody staying in one house. All the kids must be safe. "
Indigenous advocate Jonathan Nicholls notes that the government announced a review of the APY Child Protection Protocols a month before its final report was delivered.
He hopes it's a genuine effort to improve procedures and not a tactic to deflect criticism.
Mr Nicholls says Anangu deserve stronger, more independent monitoring than has occurred in the past five years, and hopes the major parties will commit to that ahead of the state election in March.
"It would've been a more useful reporting process if it had been done by some independent body or party, because what's tended to happen in the reports is that agencies have scrambled around and it appears cut and pasted from previous reports or other reports, and said here's our response to child protection issues on the APY lands. Sometimes the information provided is completely irrelevant to the recommendation, sometimes it's the same information that was used in last year's report. And critical pieces of information are not provided."
The Mullighan inquiry was the initiative of former Aboriginal Affairs Minister, and now Premier, Jay Weatherill.
Minister Rankine says this government has taken on the challenge of improving life on the APY Lands and that will continue beyond the inquiry's timeline.
Some on the Lands think improvements might be better achieved through a centralised department for the APY Lands to coordinate priorities such as child protection, health, housing, education, police and more.
Minister Rankine says that may be the government's next step.
"I think that's our great challenge, to make sure that does occur."
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