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Culture of ViolenceCulture of violence see Aboriginal girls raped
By Michael Perry
SYDNEY (Reuters) - A culture of violence fuelled by alcohol and drugs has led to endemic sexual abuse against aboriginal women in remote parts of Australia, where girls as young as seven months are raped, an outback prosecutor has said.
The prosecutor for central Australia said the sexual violence in black communities around the outback town of Alice Springs, where she has worked for 15 years, has been allowed to occur because of fear and the cultural belief it is "men's business".
"Violence is entrenched in a lot of aspects of aboriginal society," prosecutor Nanette Rogers told Australian television after her briefing paper detailing the abuse was made public.
"Aboriginal society is very punitive so that if a report is made or a statement is made implicating an offender then that potential witness is subject to harassment, intimidation and sometimes physical assault," Rogers said.
Rogers said the male-dominated culture of remote aboriginal communities saw men routinely abusing women.
"Men's business is a pre-dominant aspect of life in remote communities and young men ... feel they are not responsible for their actions," she told Australian Broadcasting Corp's news programme "Lateline" on Monday night.
"In other words they can do whatever they like."
Rogers' briefing paper details several disturbing cases. In two incidents, a seven-month-old baby girl and a two-year-old girl were taken into bushes by aboriginal men and raped.
"GROG" TO BLAME
In the case of the two-year-old, she was raped by a drunken male while her mother was away, drunk in a nearby town. When the girl was returned by the man to her family, crying and bleeding, she was handed over to her drunken father. When the mother returned she was still too drunk to realise what had happened.
"The seven-month-old and the two-year-old both required surgery for external and internal injuries under general anaesthetic," Rogers said.
In another case an 18-year-old aboriginal male, high after sniffing petrol, drowned a six-year-old girl in a waterhole while anally raping her. Her friends threw rocks at the man to try and stop him before running for help.
Aboriginal elder Margaret Kemarre told "Lateline" there was no respect for women in the aboriginal communities and blamed alcohol, what Aborigines call grog, for destroying families.
"I think grog is really taking away all our families. It's really destroying us," said Kemarre, who has seen three of her six children die in extremely violent circumstances.
Australia's 458,500 Aborigines, around 2.3 percent of the population, are dying at almost three times the rate of other Australians and have a life expectancy 17 years lower than the rest of the population.
In central Australia, homicide is the leading cause of premature death for aboriginal women, who are also 45 times more likely to suffer domestic violence than white women.
Northern Territory opposition leader Jodeen Carney said on Tuesday that aboriginal customary law, which is taken into account by judges in the territory, was being abused.
"Customary law ... is a shield behind which violent aboriginal men can hide," Carney told local radio.
"I think, and hopefully some others share the view, it is an unconscionable mechanism by which their criminality is reduced or excused. It should therefore be removed from the deliberation of courts in criminal proceedings."
Rogers believes violence has become generational in black communities and Aborigines have become accustomed to tragedy.
"The child grows up seeing violence all around him or her, and having violence done to him or her, and so they become an adult and they become violent themselves," she said.
Copyright © 2005 Reuters
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