Justice system that fails the innocent
10.12.2007
COMMENT
THAT any adult person, let alone those ``learned in law'' such as an experienced judge and a Crown prosecutor could believe it was ``appropriate'' that child rapists not receive a jail term defies belief.
In the remote Aurukun community, there is a girl, now aged 12, who has daily contact with those who raped her when she was 10 years of age.
Ten. A child. A child who ``probably agreed'' to have sex with nine teenagers and adults, a court says.
Has anybody ever heard of such arrant and heartless nonsense being promoted in non-indigenous Australia?
Are we to believe that because this young girl, this child, gave some kind of consent to have sex, the perpetrators are less culpable?
And what ``consent'' is a 10-year-old capable of giving when confronted by nine males, aged up to 26?
The children in communities such as Aurukun must wonder what their lot in life really is when they look around and see the drunken nonsense, the sloth, the dysfunction, the violence and, like this little one, wait their turn to become the inevitable victim.
And, presumably, they learn at school or at church there exists a thing called justice -- that when somebody does wrong, that person is punished under the law. Imagine what the past two years have been like for this little girl.
How is she supposed to deal with it?
The Australian learned last night that she has been removed from Aurukun and put in a foster home ``well away'', where, we are assured, she is receiving extensive medical and therapeutic help.
So she continues to suffer. She is removed from her family and her home, yet the perpetrators are able to continue their lives there -- after receiving the gentlest of slaps on the wrist for the awful thing they did.
Every thinking person with the slightest compassion should offer a prayer that this little black angel who has been so dreadfully wronged, so appallingly treated, so let down by our justice system, does not do what so many of her brothers and sisters do when the pain and inability to understand become too much.
