Ways of reading sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities

12 June 2006

Recent revelations of violent crime among Aboriginal people in Central Australia, and in particular of the sexual abuse of children and women, have caused a furore. While perfectly understandable at one level, they have also induced a weary cynicism in many observers of Indigenous affairs. The problems being highlighted are all too familiar; so is the alarm expressed by politicians, journalists and others. Missing from these intermittent outbreaks of moral panic is recognition that deplorable events are connected to the circumstances in which they occur. Every few months some kind of exposé sets off outraged calls for action; after intense interest and debate, Ministers and other political leaders make statements and establish inquiries; the media canvass the views of experts and Indigenous leaders, giving the matter a public airing for a few days, perhaps a week. More often than not, the issue then disappears from public view until it is replaced by the next crisis, or until years later, when the spotlight falls again on the same problem. Current focus is on the sexual assault of children, an incendiary topic. Stories of appalling violence and squalor also appear often, but many other types of social trauma and dysfunction do not attract the same degree of attention. Yet they demonstrate a pattern that should engender deep shame and urgency throughout the Australian polity. The assaults described by Nanette Rogers are at the extreme end of a spectrum of antisocial, dysfunctional, pathological behaviours that many Indigenous people endure. Many spokespersons and observers have described and decried them for years. Dr Rogers described the crimes as beyond most people's comprehension and experience. She is correct: these acts are indeed grotesque. However, three points are worth emphasising. First, although frequent, these acts are aberrant; no Aboriginal society, indeed no known society, condones the sexual abuse of children. Atrocious as they are, such crimes occur from time to time; they are often signs of individual or social psychopathology. Second, one need only look at the statistics for Australia and elsewhere in the world to realise that child sexual abuse is not unique to Indigenous Australians. The prevalence of violence and abuse among Aboriginal people across the country is a particular tragedy. Finally, if sexual and violent crime are beyond the comprehension and experience of most Australians, so too are the conditions in which far too many Indigenous people live. People tend to lay the blame for unacceptable behaviours simply on Aboriginal

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Ways of reading sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities

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