LIVES CHANGED: The accessability of hardcore pornography is having a detrimental impact on the lives of young people in remote Australian towns and is seen as central to a sexual assault in Maningrida, east of Darwin.
AAP Friday, 21 December 2007
Posted: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4332725a12.html
In the mid 1990s, Peter Danaja noticed life was changing at Maningrida, an Aboriginal community east of Darwin.
Already the children had stopped listening to their parents. They were talking of sex, ribbing each other with dirty jokes, turning their backs on ceremony and culture.
Mr Danaja, a senior community leader at Maningrida, says this coincided with the introduction of pornographic and violent movies.
Graphic sex scenes were also making their way on to commercial television stations and the years to come brought hardcore porn on pay TV.
Perhaps no one realised the impact this would have on young Aboriginal males at Maningrida.
"Nowadays kids rebel against us," Mr Danaja said in a letter read to the NT Supreme Court in Darwin this week during sentencing submissions for one of the more disturbing cases of child abuse in recent years.
An 11-year-old boy was attacked by two adults and three teenagers on three separate occasions at the coastal Arnhem Land community, between May and August last year.
During the screening of a pornographic DVD, the child was anally penetrated by both Cleaveon Cooper, then 18, and a 16-year-old before being fondled by a 15-year-old.
The juveniles cannot be named because of their ages at the time of the attacks.
Later than evening, the boy performed oral sex on Isiah Pascoe, then 19, while Cooper rubbed his penis in the area of the child’s buttocks.
His 13-year-old friend – who had been laying on a mattress watching television – then attempted to penetrate the young boy.
On another occasion, possibly after police returned him to the community despite doctors finding he had gonorrhoea, the group went swimming at the Army Beach outside the town.
There he was sexually abused again by Cooper and the youngest offender.
In total the group pleaded guilty to eight sex offences, including sexual intercourse with a child under 16 and gross indecency.
A psychologist’s report tendered to the court during sentencing submissions found all five offenders had a narrowly formed view of the world and lived in a community where overcrowding was rampant, particularly in the wet season, and there was "very little for young people to do".
They live in a remote corner of the territory and sometimes hunt and fish. Other times they are bored, with no jobs, easy drugs and limited schooling. English is spoken as a third or even fourth language and teenagers have little understanding of European ways nor the tools to make sense of it.
"A feeling of helplessness and frustration in the community. . . is quite palpable," the report said.
Justice Trevor Riley sentenced four of the group to a total of 32 months in prison. While acknowledging the role of pornography and other environmental factors in the lives of the offenders, he said: "These matters do not excuse or justify what took place".
The sentences ranged from 15 months for one attacker, to a good behaviour bond for another, and one month in juvenile detention for the youngest offender, who was less than two years older than his victim at the time of the attacks.
"They are each young men, they have each had a very basic formal education, their schooling has been sporadic and of little impact upon them," Justice Riley said.
"English is for each of them effectively a foreign language, they have limited understanding of European ways, they have been brought up in a remote location. . . and the psychologist regards each as having cognitive skills below their chronological age."
Justice Riley also questioned how and why pornographic material was so readily available to the group.
"The viewing of such material must provide impressionable young people with a distorted view of the world and what is not acceptable conduct," he said.
"How that (the porn) came to be there has not been explained, what impact that had upon the youthful offenders is not known to me. What cannot be doubted is that the playing of such material for young people is quite unacceptable and should not have occurred."
The case is reminiscent of those outlined in the Little Children are Sacred report, which prompted the Howard government’s emergency intervention.
It found evidence of systemic child abuse fuelled by grog, pornography, poor education coupled with a breakdown in traditional values, cultural alienation and government neglect.
Child offenders, it said, were compelled to rape out of rage, confusion or despair. Their actions could also be traced back to a childhood sexualisation, where children as young as three were regularly exposed to graphic pornography.
The inquiry – which travelled 35,000km to 45 territory communities – made 97 recommendations, including a tightening of pornography laws.
"We found a lot of sexualised behaviour between children. Children acting out what they have either seen at home in overcrowded houses or through pornography being left around, magazines as well as DVDs as well as videos," said co-chair of the inquiry Pat Anderson.
"Everywhere we went, everyone complained. Both men and women complained about pornography."
Defence lawyers in the Maningrida case repeatedly pointed out their clients had a limited understanding of sex.
"When it came to matters of sex he was clueless, save that he watched porn. . . that was in essence his sex education," said Cooper’s lawyer Peter Elliott.
Peggy Dwyer, who represented the youngest defendant, said: "He also spoke to me about mimicking what he saw in a DVD but not knowing really what was involved in sexual activity."
Outside the court, Mr Danaja spoke about the need for education, mentors and outside help.
"A lot of the kids are now. . . are starting to drift away from their responsibility to the cultural values that we have," he said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4332725a12.html
Leave a Reply