Officials failed their sworn duty
12.12.2007
--- COMMENT ---
TO what depth has justice in Queensland sunk when a Crown prosecutor considers it reasonable to propose to a sentencing court that teenagers and mature men who rape a 10-year-old intellectually impaired girl should not go to jail?
And to add insult, not only to the justice system but more incredibly to a troubled child screaming out for help, prosecutor Steve Carter did not even bother to compile a statement outlining the impact the crime had on this young girl.
Had the term ``kangaroo court'' not been well established in the Australian vernacular, it would have emerged following the disclosures about the distasteful goings-on at the Aurukun sittings of the District Court on October 24 last year.
Mr Carter told the court that the sex involved was ``consensual in a non-legal sense'' and was ``childish experimentation''.
The ``legal sense'' he referred to is the Queensland statute that sets out clearly that a 10-year-old cannot consent to sex. To have sex with a 10-year-old makes the act one of rape. Rape of a child.
And judge Sarah Bradley made only the mildest inquiry about these pathetic utterances, and clearly accepted that they were appropriate.
In fact, she told The Australian from her Cairns home on Sunday that they were appropriate ``because that is what the prosecutor asked for''.
Citizens have a right to expect a more intellectual and responsible attitude than what the court transcripts reveal occurred at Aurukun in this case.
But most of all, the victim deserves, for once in her wretched life, to be treated with dignity and respect.
She was afforded no such niceties -- something to which she has become accustomed in a world run by adults who apparently care not one whit about her welfare.
The calls for a judicial review of this farce should be heeded by the Queensland Government, and blame sheeted home to those responsible for the shameful and shabby result that has been revealed.
And that inquiry should concentrate also on the part played by ill-informed welfare workers who took this child from a safe home in Cairns and returned her to Aurukun, where they knew she had previously suffered multiple rapes as a seven-year-old.
They excused their conduct by claiming they were avoiding ``another stolen generation'' by taking her from a non-indigenous family and putting her back where she suffered these unforgivable attacks.
The two women who took that action should not still be employed by the Queensland Government, but they are.
Is anybody surprised?
