MODULE 6 QUESTIONS

MODULE 6 QUESTIONS

The dilemma of child abuse and violence in Australian indigenous communities has been documented to a large extent (Gordon, et.al, 2002). Particularly indigenous women experience more severe violence ad victims and sufferers as compared to non-indigenous women (Wundersitz, 2010). In this context, this paper addresses two questions from section 1 and two questions from section 2 regarding difficulties of indigenous community, and northern territory government.

Section 01

Answer to question 01

One of the major reasons for mainstream Australian's ignorance to the difficulties experienced by the indigenous community is indigenous sufferers may decide to inform due to specific or all the causes. Indigenous population face an array of barricades to reporting and many also face the barricades related to the widespread Australian community in different manners. The causes for not reporting or reporting less has usually concerted on sexual attack victimisation in the widespread Australian community. It is complex in several scenarios to segregate sexual aggression from other types of aggression, such as, family aggression and victims may face various sorts of aggression (Mouzos & Taylor, 2006).

Lievore (2003) affirms that massive analyses of the global research on hidden recording of sexual attack illustrated that causes for not reporting fall under two fundamental types, which include barricades to the criminal justice system and personal barricades to reporting. The barricades to informing often mentioned in international and national surveys are illustrated in table 1.

Table 1: Barriers to reporting sexual assault

Personal barriers

Barriers related to justice system

Too inappropriate or trivial to report to police

Not an ''actual misdemeanor

Not evident that injury was planned

Handled it themselves

Consider it as a personal affair

Embarrassment, shame

Did not like to inform relatives or others associates

Fright of revenge by attacker

Blamed or self-blame by others for the assault

Want to defend criminal (children or relationship)

Police could not or would not do anything

Police would not consider it as severe crime, or would not want to be concerned with the occurrence

Fright of not being understood by police

Fright of aggressive behavior by police or other stringent regulations of justice system

Dislike / fright of police or the legal procedure

Lack of evidence that the criminal act happened

Did not recognize how to report

Table 1: The barricades to reporting. Source: Willis, 2011.

Answer to question 02

Northern Territory Government can appoint social justice commissioner with far reaching powers via the chief Minister to monitor and report on the well being of the community, however, at the present time, there are a number of major concerns related to indigenous community and the system and structure of northern territory government. Police authorized in Northern Territory have classified occurrences with the criminal justice system as a barricade to unveiling child sexual violence, notifying that procedures of court for child fatalities are extremely distressing (wild and Anderson, 2007). Police also mentioned that deficiency of non-government and government services and restricted resources related to policing, specifically specialist workers, like those skilled in consulting and interrogating children, as aspects in non-disclosure.

An official meeting conducted at University of Melbourne disclosed a main drawback depicting impracticable at the current ...