NT govt clams up on ‘toothless’ sex offender laws after case of girl’s ongoing abuse in remote community
THE NT government has refused to say whether it will consider beefing up reporting obligations for sex offenders after an 11-year-old girl was repeatedly sexually abused in the home of a known sex criminal in a remote NT community.
Police & Courts
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THE NT government has refused to say whether it will consider beefing up reporting obligations for sex offenders after an 11-year-old girl was repeatedly sexually abused in the home of a known sex criminal in a remote NT community.
The Supreme Court heard the man had been required to self-report ongoing, unsupervised contact with children under the Child Protection (Offender Reporting and Registration) Act since his release from prison in 2013 when the girl became a frequent visitor to his house in May 2018.
The girl was placed into care in Darwin after being sexually abused by two teenage boys in the man’s bedroom while he was elsewhere in the house but was subsequently returned to her home community where she resumed regular contact with the man.
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In late 2019, the court heard, the man ordered a 17-year-old boy to rape the girl in his bedroom and last week pleaded guilty to procuring the teenager to assault her.
In his submissions to the court, Crown prosecutor David Dalrymple described the CPORR Act as somewhat “toothless”.
“For an offender who is subject to the (CPORR) regime, who lives in a remote community without a police station, it may well be somewhat of a toothless mechanism for protecting children if there are grey areas or no fulsome information provided in the reports by the offender, and there’s no real follow-up or not sufficient follow-up and monitoring on the ground,” he said.
But on Monday staffers for Attorney-General Selena Uibo and Police Minister Nicole Manison handballed questions from the NT News between them before eventually refusing to comment.
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“The Child Protection (Offender Reporting and Registration) Act has been regularly amended since 2004 and it was last amended in June, 2020,” a government spokeswoman said.
The spokeswoman erroneously claimed she was unable to comment further on the efficacy of the Act or potential changes to it before the man was sentenced and would not be drawn on the nature of the most recent amendment.
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