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Are Indigenous perpetrators homogeneous?

By Stephen Hagan - posted Thursday, 4 June 2009


The year 1999 will always be viewed by me as a watershed year as it was the time when I reprioritised my personal and family goals. It was the year I applied myself to the critical proactive role I needed to play to support my immediate family as opposed to the untenable desire of always attempting to satisfy my extended family and friends’ shallow expectations.

This process was quite painful in its infancy as I stopped lending money to family and friends - most of which was not returned in full, if at all - and I declined requests from them to bunk down for the night at my residence when visiting from out of town.

While my actions initially put me off side with disgruntled relatives and long standing acquaintances, it nevertheless gave me complete confidence in my ability to provide uncompromising safety and financial security for my family - not to mention an increase in quality time alone with them.

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I chose not to have people, men in particular, in town on business sleeping under the same roof as my young children, principally because I wasn’t fully aware of their past history with children. I’d never be able to live with myself if I allowed someone to stay the night - and, to later find he abused my trust by wandering into one of my children’s rooms with the intent of violating their innocence.

Today I sleep soundly knowing they; Stephen 16 and Jayde 13, are safe in their beds without a worry in the world of devious intrusions from within.

The only disturbance I hear today in my house comes often in the morning when my son enters into friendly banter with his mother and sister for.

Sadly, however, the same cannot be said of significant numbers of Indigenous parents sleeping soundly in their homes at night around the nation. For them the weight of community expectation is often so great they inevitably succumb to the pestering of visitors seeking free accommodation under the same roof for the night - and often longer.

It is this issue of overcrowding in Indigenous homes - something that has not raised any notable attention in the past - that has now been identified, in 2007 The Little Children are Sacred Report, as one of the chief reasons for the high incidence of child sexual abuse.

Besides making assertive statements placing my home off bounds for visitors and declining requests for financial loans from family and friends, I’ve also given up drinking alcohol and all forms of gambling, as a personal goal, to be an even greater role model than I previously was for my children.

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As a young public servant starting out in Canberra in the early 1980s I thought drinking and gambling was an Australian norm and thought nothing of it until the late 1990s when I married Rhonda and had nothing to show for my considerable working life - except for minor alcohol related health problems and a bank account that remained perilously pronounced on or adjacent to the red, for most weeks of the year.

In making reference to my past unhealthy social practices I have, in effect, prefaced this paper by touching on the more pertinent causal effects of family violence, if left unchecked: overcrowding, drinking and gambling.

I hope my frank admissions might inspire others, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, who still engage in these pastimes to re-evaluate their personal and professional goals.

The provocative title of my paper Are Indigenous perpetrators homogeneous? has been expressly calculated to challenge societal positioning on the hideous scourge of family violence that has afflicted Indigenous communities throughout the nation.

The vexed question posed by my title will no doubt shape an array of emotions: from outrage for my audaciousness of proposing a notion that potentially links all Indigenous men as perpetrators of violence against women and their children - to intrigue at the prospective scope of my considerations of a topic that is often placed in the too-hard basket by political leaders, Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

Domestic violence and family violence, is viewed by people in this specialised field as an actual or threatened violence in a domestic or family context where an adolescent or adult family member, partner or ex-partner attempts to physically, sexually, psychologically or economically dominate or harm other adult family member(s).

Prominent Indigenous academic Sonia Smallacombe refers to the term violence in a generic sense: “It covers sexual violence including incest, physical violence, emotional violence and self harm. It also includes women who commit violence on men, children and other women.”

Ms Smallacombe’s definition draws light on an often overlooked occurrence of women as the perpetrators of violence. The assault may be a provoked response by the woman that may in fact constitute a defendable criminal claim of retaliation. On an ascending scale of severity, an assault case could refer to harming their child, sibling or intimate male or female partner. The perpetrator may very well be a troubled woman in need of psychiatric assistance for a mental condition.

Nevertheless it is important for all practitioners of family violence to remain impartial on the culpability of offenders under investigation - irrespective of gender. However, statistics show that offenders in most family violence situations are men.

The basic premise of theories concerning the intergenerational transmission of abuse is that being a victim of physical abuse, or witnessing the abuse of other family members teaches boys to become violent.

The identified interrelated theoretical mechanisms that may be at work - identification with the aggressor, vicarious reinforcement, and positive reinforcement of aggression - allow people to assess personal concerns against their circumstances. In the area of intergenerational violence children may conclude that physical violence is sometimes a necessary and effective strategy for achieving behavioural change in family and intimate relationships.

On International Women’s Day in 2003, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Anan said: “There is no time to lose if we are to reach the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) by the target date of 2015. Only by investing in the world’s women can we expect to get there.”

The United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women 1993 refers to article 2 as “violence occurring with the family” and Article 4 that requires “States to punish acts of violence against women perpetrated by the State or by a private person(s)”.

Article 4 of the declaration is worthy of considered praise in relation to recent debates over customary law, as it refers to “custom, tradition or religion cannot be used as a justification to avoid eliminating violence against women”.

Several years ago I became embroiled in a customary law controversy when I publicly called for an appeal on the leniency of sentencing an elder for an unlawful sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in the Northern Territory.

In particular I criticised the farcical and offensively lenient one-month sentence handed down by Northern Territory Chief Justice Brian Martin to the 55-year-old Aboriginal Elder for his hideous crime.

The court heard the elder was promised the girl when she was four, and became angry when he heard she had struck up a friendship with an 18-year-old man in June 2004. He beat her with a boomerang, then took her to his remote out-station - where he lived with his first wife - and forced her to have anal sex.

On sentencing the elder on August 11, 2005, Chief Justice Martin took into account the fact the girl was the man’s promised wife under Ngarinaman law. He said he was satisfied the man believed the sexual assault was acceptable because the girl had been promised to him and had reached the age of 14.

I noted in my article how obtuse Chief Justice Martin’s ruling was when statutory law states that it is a criminal offence to have a sex with anyone under the age of 16.

I made this observation as I felt Chief Justice Martin’s excuse to down grade this abhorrent sexual assault on a child to the status of a minor crime, because it was done under Aboriginal lore, in fact makes a mockery of western law.

This appalling example of sexual abuse and many other similar acts of depravity against our children that occur habitually around this country clearly demonstrates that Indigenous traditional mores have been conveniently misinterpreted and misused by some Indigenous men, with tainted intent, who have an inflated view of themselves and their standing in their community.

It was never a cultural trait to wilfully violate the innocence of our children or brutalise our women, and it never will be. Those who do so should feel the full weight of western law and not an expediently diluted version of traditional lore.

I don’t believe that Indigenous perpetrators are homogeneous but I do believe there are some of our men and women who need to take a hard look at themselves and seriously consider giving up alcohol and/or drugs and/or gambling and/or their insane jealousy conspiracy theories for the sake of their family and also for their financial, physical and mental well being.

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About the Author

Stephen Hagan is Editor of the National Indigenous Times, award winning author, film maker and 2006 NAIDOC Person of the Year.

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