NT Police Child Abuse Taskforce to investigate itself over how three kids in care were failed
THE NT Police’s Child Abuse Taskforce will investigate itself to find out how it failed to look into the alleged sexual assault of three Aboriginal siblings while in government care
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THE NT Police’s Child Abuse Taskforce will investigate itself to find out how it failed to look into the alleged sexual assault of three Aboriginal siblings while in government care.
A damning Office of the Children’s Commissioner report this week found ‘systemic failures’ within the NT’s child safety system led to the abuse of 12 Aboriginal children going unnoticed for 16 years.
Failures by authorities included three instances of NT Police’s Child Abuse Taskforce not thoroughly investigating, if at all, alleged sexual assault of three children.
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The OCC has recommended, for the second time, that a full review of the Child Abuse Taskforce be undertaken.
NT Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker confirmed he had tasked the superintendent of NT Police CAT to undertake that review.
Mr Chalker also confirmed he had moved an “intelligence function” into the joint-emergency services communication centre with the goal of turning it into a 24/7 unit before morphing it into a multi-agency case management system.
“The review is going to provide that advice to me so that I can have a fulsome understanding of what’s occurred,” he said.
“I’m very keen to understand why things had failed and ensuring the system we build in the future mitigates that.”
There is no deadline on when this review will be completed.
The OCC report found that in 2006 and again in 2009, one of the children in the care of two foster carers reported being sexually assaulted by her father, brother, uncle and mother before entering care.
The girl said her sister, who was in care with her, had also been a victim.
The girls’ brother was in care with them.
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According to the OCC report, the police investigation never led to criminal charges, despite finding the allegations to be substantiated, and that police failed by not interviewing the girl’s sister.
And by failing this, NT Police CAT “failed to provide a service reasonably expected” to be provided to the children.
A separate allegation of the boy being sexually assaulted while in government care was also never investigated by NT Police.
An incident in 2005 in which a 15-year-old cognitively disabled girl was allegedly sexually abused by the male carer was never reported to police by the child’s case manager, the report says.
Police have confirmed they are now looking into this.
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