Coroner excoriates NT child agencies’ ‘indifference’

Six NT Aboriginal children died in tragic circumstances from causes including suicide and petrol sniffing, a coroner has found.

NT Coroner Greg Cavanagh.

Six Northern Territory Aboriginal children, each known by authorities to be at risk of severe harm, died in tragic circumstances from causes including suicide and petrol sniffing and without receiving “genuine assistance or support”, a coroner has found.

Government agencies meant to be helping three of the kids — teenage girls who each fell victim to horrifying sexual abuse and ­violence — instead displayed “unsettling … blindness … to the obvious trauma” they suffered, sometimes over several years.

That included overlooking “red flags” like evidence of sexual exploitation, positive tests for ­sexually-transmitted infections, behavioural issues, disengagement from school and notifi­cations to the Territory’s child protection agency.

Three more children, two boys and a girl who sniffed petrol extensively, died after authorities overseeing their care showed “indifference to the(ir) evident plight” and that of their families and even “contributed to (their) deaths” by not following the law.

The findings by Coroner Greg Cavanagh on Tuesday follow two joint public inquests into the loss of children aged 12–17 years and from the Top End.

They are likely to raise further questions about the hundreds of millions of dollars that Canberra pays annually to the NT gov­ernment to tackle Indigenous disadvantage.

“These children lived and died in conditions of violence, sexual molestation and despair,” Mr Cav­anagh wrote in one set of findings. “That these conditions continue to exist in an affluent country such as Australia is a ­disgrace.”

He quoted at length from the 2007 Little Children are Sacred report, which concluded child sexual abuse in the bush was “widespread and grossly under-reported”, triggering the Howard government’s NT Emergency Response.

“None of those excellent recommendations from (that report) more than a decade ago appears to have gained any prominence or sustained action,” Mr Cavanagh wrote. “It is also evident that the difficult conditions for children in remote communities have not changed a great deal in the last two decades.”

Labor has ruled the NT for all but one term since 2001.

Ministers declined to comment during the September and October inquests. In a brief statement late on Tuesday, Territory Families Minister Kate Worden extended “our deepest sympathies” to children’s families but stopped short of apologising or acknowledging mistakes.

“In regards to these tragic incidents, we had already begun implementing additional changes following a critical incident review of them,” the statement said.

“We will implement all recommendations of the (coroner).”

Mr Cavanagh revealed in his findings that he would refer three of the children’s files to public prosecutors, believing “offences have been committed in connection with the deaths” and that police catastrophically bungled their investigations.

In one particularly worrying case involving a girl likely raped just before she died, he did not rule out foul play. Her body was discovered in a locked room at a relative’s home.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar said the inquest highlighted how policies designed for Indigenous people were failing them.

“It is clear that significant work needs to be done to overcome the structural racism and disadvantage that disproportionably affects our First Nations peoples around the country,” she said.

“Our First Nations women and girls have the solutions but lack the opportunity to drive change.”

Indigenous businessman Warren Mundine despaired at “bullshit agencies and programs” and governments not focused on catching the perpetrators of abuse.

“I am disgusted because this has been going on report after investigation,” Mr Mundine said.

“It is just a total cop-out by governments of all political persuasions to let it get to this stage … I have very limited trust in any government to actually do anything about it.”

The first inquest examined the deaths of Fionica Yarranganglagi James, 17, Keturah Cheralyn ­Mamarika, 16, and Layla “Gulum” Leering, 15, who each suffered sexual abuse and was separately found dead in circumstances consistent with hanging.

Mr Cavanagh noted that whereas the national average suicide rate for people aged 15–24 years was 12.9 per 100,000, it was double that among Indigenous Australians. In the NT over the past decade, 24 girls aged 12–17 had taken their own lives, equivalent to a population rate of 62.5 per 100,000, he said.

The estimated rate among boys was almost as high, and many of the deaths had occurred in Arnhem Land. He linked the deaths to accumulated trauma.

In 2019, West Australian Coroner Ros Fogliani’s report on the suicides of 13 Indigenous children and youths in the Kimberley set out a litany of failures by governments and, at times, within the extended families of the children.

Ms Fogliani found alcohol abuse loomed large in the lives of most of the children and that most had been exposed to domestic ­violence and had poor school ­attendance records.

There was evidence to suggest up to six had been sexually ­abused, and several had been passed around between relatives and shifted between com­munities.

Mr Cavanagh said sexual abuse “appeared the most difficult aspect” of trauma for government agencies to handle. “There seemed little capacity of (sic) the services to assist in relation to protecting the girls from sexual predation,” he wrote.

“Failing to recognise trauma cannot be isolated to the failure of training or induction, the misapplication of a policy or lack of resources. It is more than that.”

The second inquest examined the deaths of Miss B, 17, Master W, 12, and Master JK, 13. Each was a serial petrol sniffer who did not receive treatment mandated by law.

“Not once, in the two years that the assessors ‘monitored’ and ‘case managed’ Master JK was there compliance with the act and guidelines,” Mr Cavanagh said.