Violence against Aboriginal women 80 times worse
Aboriginal women 80 times more likely to be hospitalised for assault
"Disastrous" school attendance rates of remote indigenous children
Australians "don't want to know" about shame in their backyard
DO you want the shocking truth?
There's a place in the world where dreadful violence is regularly inflicted upon women - rape, terrifying assault and murder.
In this place, women of a certain ethnic group are 80 times more likely to be hospitalised for assault and injury.
Many of the assaults are perpetrated by the women's husbands or partners and include being raped with wooden or metal objects, or being murdered by being repeatedly punched and struck with a saucepan, stones, a wheel rim and a wheel brace.
Or there was the case of the man who used a hose to whip his 32-year-old wife, stomping on her abdomen and dragging her naked body over rough ground, before raping her, and then bashing her with either a stick or metal pole, causing severe internal injuries, before finishing her off with a rock.
In this place, up to 20 people live in some houses and children are stressed out and neglected.
In remote areas, up to 65 per cent of children attend school for fewer than three days a week and up to 60 per cent of them fail the national early developmental index which measures a child's ability to cope with starting school.
Apart from the outrageously high rates of violence, unemployment is rife, and thousands of people are battling alcohol and gambling abuse.
Australians who were shocked over the last few months by violent attacks on women in India should be alarmed by this.
This place is in our backyard.
It is one-third the size of India, and has .0002 of India's population.
It is Central Australia, and in particular the Northern Territory.
"There is a tri-state area in the middle of Australia which is a Bermuda triangle for domestic violence against Aboriginal women," said South Australian university lecturer and anthropologist, Professor Peter Sutton.
"People don't want to know, but how about women being raped by a burning fire stick or by a star picket?
"After the incidents in India I had a stream of emails from people wanting something done about it, but there's no petitions hitting my in-tray about what goes on in Central Australia and has done so for a very long time."
"The society where this is going on is very different from the middle-class Aboriginal people that many people know.
"These are hair trigger communities where people fly into a rage in a second.
"People are under the influence of alcohol and there are beatings and stabbings.
"Resorting to physical violence is the norm."
Dr Howard Bath, the Northern Territory's Children's Commissioner said the most recent statistics from the NT's five major government hospitals showed that in 2010 the number of non-indigenous females hospitalised for assault was 0.3 for every thousand women in the population.
The rate for indigenous females was 24.1 per thousand, or 80 times the rate.
"In numbers, that was 27 non-indigenous females being admitted, compared with 842 indigenous women being treated for assault.
"What we are looking at is a disastrous situation in terms of the risk of violence to indigenous women.
"These numbers are mind boggling. The rate of abuse of these women is enormously high and children are being exposed to this, resulting in very, very high rates of child neglect."
Aboriginal men and to a lesser extent Aboriginal women and non-indigenous men were responsible for violence against Aboriginal women.
Dr Bath blamed alcohol and drug abuse, overcrowding and "consistent unemployment".
"Alcohol is the worst factor by a country mile," he said.
"Between 60 and 70 per cent of violence is directly related to alcohol.
"The facts are generally known, but it's a delicate area.
"Most of the people who are familiar with the details don't want to put a set of shameful allegations against the Aboriginal community and in particular the menfolk."
Dr Bath agreed Australians seemed more sympathetic with cases of violence in other countries than in their own country.
"Where is the outrage?" he said.
"I think if it's close to home, it's harder to look at.
"People aren't comfortable with what is happening to women in the Northern Territory.
"And it's having devastating developmental impacts on children.
"The figures for children from very remote areas of the territory very high rates of developmental skills and school attendance rates of 65 per cent attending less than three days a week.
"That is outrageous. It's disastrous".
Northern Territory MP Bess Price said the Aboriginal and white communities had long known about the violence and done nothing.
She had been "routinely attacked", called "a liar" and "obscenely insulted on the internet" - in particular by people with left-wing political views - for raising the issue.
She told the NT Parliament last month that two of her relatives who were "young mothers" were killed in Alice Springs this year.
"One was injured mortally in the public, in front of several families," Ms Price said.
"Nobody acted to protect her.
"Dozens of my female relatives have been killed this way. Convictions usually lead to light sentences.
"I was told by a senior lawyer that no jury in Alice Springs will convict an Aboriginal person for murder if the victim is also Aboriginal and he or she is only stabbed once.
"We all have done nothing effective to stop this from happening. It has been going on for decades.
"Why hasn't there been the same outrage over the continuing killing of our women and abuse and neglect of our kids?
If these women victims were white, we would hear very loud outrage from feminists.
If their killers had been white, we would hear outrage from the Indigenous activists.
Why is there such a deafening silence when both victim and perpetrator are black?
"I believe that we can blame the politics of the progressive left and its comfortably middle class urban Indigenous supporters."
Read more:
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-new...se/story-e6frfkp9-1226661209335#ixzz2Vm3KVAog
