Police not told of sex abuse in communities
06.08.2003
CHILDREN on remote Aboriginal communities suffer continuing serious sexual abuse because doctors' reports of the incidents given to the Queensland Families Department are not passed on to police for investigation.
Extensive details of the failure of the department to act were last night handed to Prime Minister John Howard at Weipa on western Cape York where he is inspecting the problems of alcoholism and abuse on indigenous communities.
Dr Lara Wieland, who has just completed a three-year stint as resident doctor on Kowanyama community, and is working at a clinic at Aurukun where Mr Howard is to visit today, gave the 10-page letter to the Prime Minister and sent a copy to Premier Peter Beattie.
She appealed for immediate government action to save children from further abuse.
The letter also detailed abuse of elderly Aboriginal people in a community hostel ``who were lying naked for several days in their own faeces and urine, malnourished and covered in dog ticks and lice''.
``It was only after intense lobbying, for which I was criticised, that these services improved and aged care services in communities were reviewed,'' she wrote.
Dr Wieland said child sexual abuse and neglect were ``out of control'', adding that the majority of young women on communities had been sexually abused. She gave details of children as young as five with sexually transmitted disease, and added that Queensland Health discouraged testing of children for STDs.
``Doctors are told to test children only when a child is symptomatic, and even this is discouraged,'' she said.
``Despite this I have had many patients aged just five or six test positive for STDs such as chlamydia.
``Queensland Health does not want to know about this problem. No one is encouraged to report, and doctors are the only ones mandated to report in Queensland.''
She said she her multiple reports to the department of abuse of children were ignored.
Dr Wieland said she assumed when reporting a case of abuse to the department, it was automatically passed on to the Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) team and the police Juvenile Aid Bureau.
``I now find that most cases I reported to DFS were never passed on to the JAB/SCAN teams and this has been the case in other communities also,'' she wrote in the letter to the Prime Minister.
``I have seen children placed in a foster home more than once despite DFS being notified by me and others that community members suspected the father was a pedophile. Several children from that household have tested positive for STDs.
``When a child discloses sexual abuse to me, I no longer promise to make the abuse stop, as that makes me a liar.''
Dr Wieland said many children who had been abused were becoming the next generation of abusers. She said there was evidence that specialised early intervention and counselling could prevent that occurring, but there was no such help available anywhere in the north.
Queensland Health's northern zonal medical officer for sexual health, Dr Janet Knox, said the department took the issue of child sexual abuse very seriously.
Dr Knox said staff who suspected sexual abuse of children notified a medical officer who conducted an assessment, including a medical examination and appropriate tests for sexually transmitted infections.
Queensland Health is revising its policy for dealing with child sex abuse claims and Dr Knox said staff were continually trained on best practice responses to the problem.
A spokesman for Families Minister Judy Spence said medical staff who suspected child abuse were obliged to notify the department, and the director-general was obliged to notify police if he suspected a crime may have been committed.
