Out of Yuendumu: how violence seeps through generations
Horrific violence inflicted by Kumanjayi Walker on his partner was just a fraction of the atrocities being committed at house 577. Ruby’s story will shock you.
Today The Weekend Australian begins a three-part series revealing the effects of family violence in remote communities through the life of 21-year-old Ruby, who lived at Yuendumu in the same house for a time as Kumanjayi Walker, shot dead by police in 2019. It’s a confronting story but one that needs to be told.
Relief, then excitement, washed over Ruby’s face when the number flashed up on the borrowed phone.
It was noon on Friday and the 21-year-old was desperate to see her baby son before the weekend and their first Mother’s Day apart.
But it was “too late”, she was told.
The 10am visit with her 18-month-old had been cancelled because Ruby – not her real name – hadn’t confirmed it the day before.
The young mum’s eyes filled with tears as she silently slumped back in her seat, heartbroken and defeated.
The quiet Warlpiri woman knew that this decision – whether she could see and hold her only child that week – was now, like so much in her life, out of her hands.
She wouldn’t see him for another five days – until Wednesday – but only if she confirmed on Tuesday that she would be there.
That visit right before Mother’s Day was not the first Ruby had missed since her release from prison in late March.
The young Yuendumu woman had no phone, car, money, family or support in Queensland – where her son is living – making it hard to meet her obligations and attend rigidly scheduled meetings.
Ruby ended up in tropical far north Queensland after fleeing the Northern Territory last year, with her boyfriend and their newborn, out of fear for her safety and in search of a fresh start.
Instead, unable to escape her pain and trauma, her life has only spiralled further out of control.
When interviewed on a muggy morning this month, Ruby told The Weekend Australian she could not “brush off” the daily flashbacks of the horrific abuse that began in her home at Yuendumu.
Ruby was raised in the same house where Kumanjayi Walker stayed with his girlfriend, Rickisha Robertson – Ruby’s cousin – for the final five or so years of his life, before Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe fatally shot him.
House 577 at West Camp is also where Walker threatened two local police officers with an axe just three days before Constable Rolfe’s immediate response team was deployed from Alice Springs to arrest him.
In March, Constable Rolfe was found not guilty of murdering Walker at the remote outback community during that arrest in November 2019.
But the tragic case thrust the troubled town – and its social issues – into the light. Before his death at the age of 19, Walker was the living embodiment of the deep, intergenerational trauma and abuse that is the flip side of Australia’s egalitarian prosperity.
In remote towns like Yuendumu, the greatest tragedy of Walker’s story was how common it is: a baby born in circumstances of substance use and family instability, who himself developed addictions, destructive behaviours and a lengthy criminal history.
In death, Walker was eulogised as a happy person who loved animals and his family.
The revelations that relatives were fed up with his offending and that he had been inflicting horrific acts of violence on his girlfriend prompted some critics to suggest these parts of his story should not have been told.
But it is impossible to tell the story of Indigenous women like Rickisha and Ruby – some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in our society – without revealing the layers of abuse they, and those around them, have endured.
At the conclusion of Constable Rolfe’s trial last month, The Australian revealed Walker himself had been perpetrating savage, regular and “escalating” domestic violence against Rickisha.
Some of the sickening abuse Walker’s teenage girlfriend suffered included choking, face-biting, bashing her head with a rock, pinching her cheeks, kicking her in the face, dragging her by the hair, hitting her and beating her with a piece of steel.
Documents from 2017 – obtained by The Weekend Australian – showed police believed Rickisha to be unsafe, “unsupported” and at “imminent risk of harm or death” during their volatile relationship.
And it turns out the shocking – and shockingly common – domestic violence Walker inflicted represented just a snapshot of the atrocities that were being committed at house 577 in Yuendumu.
Lonely life without dad
Ruby – who tried to protect her cousin from Walker – was suffering her own hell in that same house at the hands of her father, who was viciously bashing and raping her.
The house belongs to Ruby’s grandparents, Eddie and Lottie Robertson, but Rickisha, uncle Ethan, his partner Janice Burns, their small children, at least three of Ruby’s “sister-cousins” and Walker – when not in jail – also lived there.
Eddie and Lottie’s adopted sons, Dean and Darren Wilson, also moved back in from time to time. The Robertsons raised the brothers after their biological mother – Lottie’s sister, Diane Wilson – died.
Eddie and Lottie also raised Ruby – Dean’s only daughter – from when she was a baby.
Like Walker, Ruby was born at Alice Springs Hospital – just 10 weeks before him – in late 2000.
She had lived with the Robertsons at Yuendumu, 330km northwest of Alice Springs, for most of her life except for a few short stints in other communities and a year spent studying in Melbourne.
Ruby’s parents were both absent while she was growing up.
“(Life) was all right but a bit lonely because I didn’t have my parents and I always missed them,” she said.
“It was hard for me to see other kids with their parents because I missed mine.”
So when Dean was released on parole in September 2017, Ruby – 17 at the time – was “happy” because she wanted to enjoy a “proper father-daughter relationship” and finally have someone to look after her.
In late September that year, Dean moved back into the Robertsons’ home and lived – for the first time – in the same house as his teenage daughter.
“I was relieved and everything, like I would get to spend time with him and everything, like I’d get to know my father kind of thing, but everything was turned around,” Ruby told The Weekend Australian. “Life’s always not what you expect, you know.”
‘No one told me’
Dean had been serving time for sexual intercourse without consent, deprivation of liberty, causing grievous harm and assaulting a police officer.
But Ruby had not known why her dad was in jail and is now angry that her family had kept her in the dark.
“I’m angry that nobody told me the truth about him, why did he go to jail in the first place,” she said.
“I never knew about it. Nobody told me. That’s why I was disappointed. (He did) the same thing to someone else. Some girl.”
Within a week of his release in 2017, the 34-year-old began terrorising his daughter.
He started subjecting her to regular sexual and domestic violence that would put him back behind bars.
Northern Territory Supreme Court documents reveal the sickening physical assaults were “protracted or prolonged, at times with the use of weapons”, including a cultural stick.
Court documents also reveal Ruby found the courage to testify at her father’s trial despite her fear of him and potential payback from relatives for speaking out.
Two other brave young girls – SB and SW – also gave evidence at Dean’s trial.
‘Didn’t believe me’
Ruby told The Weekend Australian that despite feeling “nervous” and worried what relatives will think about her for speaking out, she wants to share her story to encourage other victims to report abuse to police.
She said the incidents, detailed in the Supreme Court documents, have stripped her of confidence and left her feeling “worthless”.
Ruby said she told a relative – whom The Weekend Australian has chosen not to name – her “jealous” and possessive father had raped her, but they “didn’t want to believe” her.
“Before I went to Alice Springs, I told (a relative) that he took my pants down and what he did but (the relative) didn’t believe me,” she said.
“(They) just stood there really shocked and just looked at me.”
The reality was Dean raped Ruby “whenever he got the chance” and – on multiple occasions – bought her weed before assaulting her.
“But I would just smoke it and act like normal and refuse and everything,” she said.
“But if I refused, I’d get bashed.
“That happened (with the weed) a few times at Yuendumu and Alice Springs.”
Night of terror
The first documented assault – detailed in court documents – occurred in October 2017 after Ruby, SB and SW went to a female friend’s house in Yuendumu one night to watch movies.
When SB and SW arrived at the house, Dean was waiting.
“Where is Ruby, the c..t?” he asked. “If I find her, I’m going to hit her.”
The Warlpiri man also threatened to hit the girls if they didn’t reveal where his daughter was.
He forced them into his car and drove erratically to their friend’s home where he punched Ruby in the face twice before pulling her into his car.
With SB and SW in the back seat, he took the three crying girls back to the house, punching his daughter’s head as he drove.
He then ordered Ruby inside but not before punching her back, striking her legs with a piece of iron, pushing her to the ground and smashing her phone.
Once inside, Dean took his daughter to the middle bedroom where he kept punching her before striking her back and ankles with a cultural stick.
Ruby cried out in pain.
Eventually Dean left the room and his daughter fell asleep.
SW, who had witnessed the assault, went to sleep in the same room.
But it wasn’t over.
After both girls drifted off Dean went back in, woke Ruby up and ordered her to come to his bedroom. “I don’t want to go to that room,” she screamed.
Dean slapped her face, pulled her into his room, punched her face and pushed her onto his bed.
“Be quiet, otherwise people are going to hear you,” he threatened.
She tried to get up but he pushed her back down, held her there and raped her.
Afterwards she tried to kick his face and he punched her again.
Alice Springs ordeal
Another night in late 2017, Dean’s brother, Ethan, and his partner, Janice Burns, were watching television in the lounge room with their baby when another savage assault occurred.
The door on the middle bedroom behind them was closed but they could hear Ruby screaming “let me go”.
Janice asked Ethan to help Ruby so he knocked and told his brother, “Hey, open the door. Let the girl go”.
Janice could see Ruby had been hit in the face and scratched.
On another occasion, Dean hit Ruby outside in the yard. Lottie and two other women saw the assault and “growled” at him, according to court documents.
Ruby told The Weekend Australian Dean also bashed and raped her “lots of times” in Alice Springs.
Court documents reveal that on December 21, 2017, the pair were in town visiting Dean’s girlfriend when he told Ruby she had to come with him to the shops but instead drove her into the bush.
The teenager – anticipating what would happen – said she was tired and wanted to go home.
“No, let’s just chill for a little while,” her dad insisted.
Once parked in a secluded spot, he touched her legs and breast before telling her to get into the back of the car.
“No, I don’t want to,” she said, panicked.
Short-lived escape
After the rape, he told her to wipe her face so nobody would see that she had been crying but she couldn’t stop the tears.
He threatened that if she kept crying, he would rape her again.
He then drove them back to his girlfriend’s house at Hoppys town camp.
After that incident, Ruby fled to a community outside Alice Springs.
Dean repeatedly called and texted her.
“I ran away from him for five days,” Ruby said.
“I went missing for five days and he was texting me, telling me, ‘I’m sorry and everything, come back please’.”
When she finally answered his call, she reluctantly told him where she was.
He found her at Amoonguna, slapped her face and chastised her for running away. He then drove her to Old Timers Camp in Alice Springs and picked up another man named Terry.
He then directed Terry to drop them off at the Telegraph Station turn-off, about 5km north of Alice Springs.
“He told them other people lies,” Ruby told The Weekend Australian. “He said ‘can you drop us off here first, my wife is drinking here’, but it wasn’t true.”
When the car came to a stop, Ruby tried to run but Dean grabbed her by the shirt and slapped her face.
“He took me out into the bush and started punching me, dragging me on the ground and hitting me with the big rock on my back and my two knees,” she said.
Dean took her to a nearby hill and punched her before hitting her back, ankles and knees with a stick.
He pelted her with rocks and when she fell to the ground, he kicked her in the stomach and dragged her by the hair.
He told her to stop crying, dragged her by the hair again and kicked her face before hitting her head three times with a rock.
He then grabbed a bigger rock and hit her ankles.
Dean told Ruby to take her pants off. She refused. He wrestled them off her. “No, I don’t want to,” she told him.
He took his pants off and told her: “Just do it.”
Ruby said “no” and tried to fight him off. She threw a rock, hitting his shoulder, and kicked his knees.
“I cried so loud so someone could hear me,” she said.
“He just gave up because I was (being so noisy). I was fighting back so he just let me go.”
Dean then took his distraught and shaking daughter to his girlfriend’s house. The next day he drove Ruby back to Yuendumu.
“I couldn’t walk or stand up,” she said.
“I was so scared that I didn’t even think about my pain.
“I walked to Serita and asked her for help.”
Ruby’s aunt, Serita, took her to the medical clinic.
‘Please drop charges’
Court documents state that when doctors examined Ruby, she was limping and exhibiting at least 50 separate bruises and injuries.
Medical staff notified the police.
“The police asked Serita if he’d done anything (sexual) to me,” Ruby said. “I started crying and said ‘yes’. I was frozen for a second because I was scared that he (the policeman) might think that I’m a liar but he believed me because there were bruises everywhere on my body.”
Dean appeared at the police station and begged his daughter to drop the charges.
“He said ‘can you drop the charges please? Can you drop them please?’,” she told The Weekend Australian.
“I was too scared to answer him. I was just shaking and there were tears running down my face and he just ran away.”
On Monday, Payback: Chapter 2 of Ruby’s Story
