Nine escape jail terms despite guilty pleas for raping girl, 10

REVELATIONS that nine people who pleaded guilty to raping a 10-year-old girl had escaped prison sentences were met with outrage in Australia yesterday, prompting officials to launch a review of sexual assault cases in remote Aboriginal communities.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he was “horrified” by reports of the result of the trial of a group of juveniles and young men for the rape of the child in the settlement of Aurukun, northern Queensland, in 2005.

National media reported yesterday that district court judge Sarah Bradley placed six of the offenders — who were juveniles at the time of the rape — on 12-month probation and recorded no convictions against them, and handed down suspended six-month prison sentences for the three other offenders, aged 17, 18 and 26.

Judge Bradley told the offenders in her sentencing remarks that it was illegal to have sex with anyone younger than 16, but that the victim in this case “was not forced and she probably agreed to have sex with all of you”.

Aboriginal leaders have slammed the result as too lenient and demanded the judge be fired.

Queensland attorney-general Kerry Shine said the government would appeal the sentences, and Premier Anna Bligh has announced a review of all sexual assault cases in Aboriginal communities in Cape York, the remote region where the assault occurred.

Judge Bradley defended her sentencing, telling The Australian that the sentences were “appropriate” because they were the penalties sought by the prosecution.

But Mr Rudd spoke out against the rulings.

“I am horrified by cases like this, involving sexual violence against women and children. My attitude is one of zero tolerance,” he said in Queensland, his home state.

Boni Robertson, an Aboriginal activist in Queensland, said there could be no excuse for the judge’s decision.

“There is nothing culturally, there is nothing morally, there is nothing socially and there is definitely nothing legally that would ever allow this sort of decision to be made,” she said.

Ms Bligh has announced a review of all sentences given over the last two years in the communities of Cape York.

“I am not prepared to just write this off as an unusual one-off case,” she said.

The offenders came from some of the most powerful and prominent Aboriginal families in Cape York, while the victim’s family had a lower status, The Australian reported.

The case comes six months after a high-profile inquiry into child sex abuse in remote north-ern Australia found problems in every Aborigine community visited by researchers.

It led to an intervention programme in the Northern Territory.