Fury as child rapists escape jail in Australia
Outraged child welfare campaigners in Australia have protested after nine people who raped a 10-year-old girl escaped jail because a judge said their victim “consented” to sex.
The girl had been removed from a remote Aboriginal community after being sexually abused at the age of 7, then sent back to live in the northern Queensland town of Aurukun where she was attacked.
Nine people who pleaded guilty to raping her were paroled or had their sentences suspended by judge Sarah Bradley.
Officials in Queensland said they would launch an appeal against her decision.
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has also announced a review of all 75 sexual assault cases over the last two years in the area, a remote, tropical region dotted by giant cattle farms and tiny Aboriginal outstations.
As anger surrounding the case continued to ripple across Australia, Ms Bligh today confirmed that the girl was first sexually assaulted at Aurukun in 2002, by several juveniles who did not face court.
Ms Bligh said the girl was taken from the community and put into foster care before being returned to Aurukun in April 2006, when shortly afterward she was raped by nine males, six of them younger than 16, the legal age of consent, and the others aged 17, 18, and 26.
“The system clearly failed this little girl,” she said.
One welfare officer responsible for sending the girl back to Aurukun had been fired and two others have been suspended, she said.
The case underscores fears about the breakdown of society in remote Aboriginal communities, where joblessness, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual assault and violence are reported as rampant.
