The abuse of innocence

The Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (Qld) was the first statute that provided comprehensive legislative power to public servants to exercise discriminatory practices without challenge. It didn’t take long for other states to follow suit as the appeal of removing Aboriginal children without challenge was too great an opportunity to pass up.

I shudder at the very thought of public servants having such unfettered rights back in 1897 to remove Aboriginal children at will from their parents. However, I am even more concerned today that removing children has reached such alarming levels that governments nation wide are seeking to provide more rights to public servants to perform their thankless job.

HREOC’s 2002 Bringing Them Home Report identified about one in 12 (8 per cent) Indigenous Australians aged 15 years or over reported having been personally removed from their natural family. A further 29 per cent reported having relatives who were removed from their family when they were children. The most frequently reported relatives removed were grandparents (15 per cent), aunts or uncles (11 per cent) and parents (9 per cent).

If the trend is intergenerational, as reports suggest, then what is the answer to solving this over representation of Indigenous children in foster care?

I support the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) who advocates the following strategies to address the child welfare;

• healing for victims and perpetrators of family violence and child abuse;
• education for victims and perpetrators;
• education in protective behaviour for very young children to lessen the chance of them becoming victims;
• more education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people, including those in remote communities, in sexual health, protective behaviour, life choices, rights, self esteem and parenting training;
• empowering community leaders who are trusted and respected in their own communities to help with healing and education; and
• programs addressing familial sexual abuse with elements to address the needs of the victim, the other children in the family, the non-abusive parent and the abusing parent.

It takes a community to raise a child but sadly with the escalation in numbers of Indigenous children being removed from their parents it would appear that many within our communities are not pulling their weight in looking out for children at risk.

We all need to be vigilant and not be frightened to report to police obvious signs of child neglect: patterns of late night partying, domestic violence, unkempt children, excessively untidy households; high grass, washing on the line for days on end, empty car bodies and an accumulation of rubbish and beer bottles littering the yard, to name a few.

But above all parents ought to do more to protect their children by kicking their alcohol, drug or gambling habits and by insisting their partners address their habits or be brave enough to give them their marching orders.