Tales of Neglect, Abuse Haunt Lives Cut Short

There are remarkable similarities between Australia's Aboriginal peoples and North America's indigenous peoples, especially those in Canada where child suicide rates are startlingly high in isolated 1st Nations communities.

I have been saying for some time that child sex abuse, even incest, has a significant part in the suicide of minors in remote communities and this report from Australia would certainly support that as child sex abuse, which often causes suicidal thoughts, appear to have been involved in about half of the child suicides looked at.

The Canadian government seems to be skirting around the issue, but they will be wasting more time and effort and costing more lives if they continue to do so.

The short, shocking stories of 13 Aboriginal children and young people who killed themselves in the Kimberley between November 2012 and March last year were read aloud to Coroner Ros ­Fogliani in a Perth courtroom yesterday.

The Australian

The boy was a toddler when he was found in a park in a remote town in Western Australia’s far-north Kimberley.

He was being looked after by a seven-year-old; his mother was drunk and unconscious nearby.

His was the worst case of “failure to thrive” the local pediatrician had ever seen. That is quite something in the Kimberley where the diagnosis is not uncommon.

The boy moved between ­Aboriginal communities that were far apart. He was near the border with the Northern Territory when, aged 7, he told visiting child welfare officers that older boys there sodomised him. Authorities noted that the boy was ­intimidated by the ­community, but they left him there after a senior relative gave assurances she would keep him safe.

The boy, known to the West Australian Coroner’s Court as Case 2, took his own life, as a ­teenager, in the resort town of Broome.

Lawyer Philip Urquhart, who is counsel assisting the coroner in a sweeping inquiry into indigenous suicides, said the teenager had been living in a carpark where police found his body.

“From the very moment he was born his life was largely one of struggles, pain, sorrow and ­neglect,” Mr Urquhart said in his opening address yesterday.

The short, shocking stories of 13 Aboriginal children and young people who killed themselves in the Kimberley between November 2012 and March last year were read aloud to Coroner Ros ­Fogliani in a Perth courtroom yesterday. In coming weeks Ms Fogliani will hear more details about Case 2 and other boys and girls as young as 10 found dead in remote communities and towns. She has suppressed all of their names.

Mr Urquhart was on his feet for two hours yesterday, recounting the miserable circumstances leading up to each suicide. He said there were common threads in most but not all of the cases.

“Those common threads include numerous health issues as they grew up (particularly a diagnosis of failing to thrive), home environments prone to alcohol abuse and domestic violence, frequent moves between households of various family members and guardians with varying degrees of success, poor attendance at school, below average academic results and a reluctance to seek the assistance of mental health services,” he said.

“With respect to six of the ­deceased, there was evidence, of varying degrees, that they had been the victims of sexual abuse, though no charges were ever laid against anyone arising from this evidence.”

In one case, a 15-year-old boy confided to child protection ­officers that he was sexually ­assaulted by three men who came into his bedroom and, “though he reported the incident to his parents, he stated that they were too drunk to understand what he was saying”.

An assessment confirmed the boy had suffered “sexual harm” but he refused to tell police because he was worried about reprisals against his family. That boy became a regular user of alcohol and cannabis and took his life the following year, the court heard.

A 12-year-old girl who took her life in 2013 had not disclosed sexual abuse, but her older sister had told authorities that both of them were victims of the same relative. In the year before she died, the 12-year-old girl became a regular user of cannabis and alcohol, barely went to school and was assessed by a youth justice agency as being at “serious risk”.

She told the youth justice officers she walked around the streets of her hometown with other children late at night because of noise and drinking at home. “This was no exaggeration … her home … was known to regularly have drunk occupants in the house into the early hours of the morning.,” Mr Urquhart told the coroner yesterday.

He said only one of the ­deceased, a 13-year-old girl, left a note. It was a short expression of love for her siblings, including a younger sister who took her own life less than four years later.

Ms Fogliani’s inquiry comes a decade after her predecessor, Alastair Hope, travelled to the then alcohol-ravaged Kimberley town of Fitzroy Crossing to examine the suicides of 22 Aborigines, including one child. Mr Hope heard evidence of children so hungry they were seen suckling a dog, and his report described the plight of the region’s children as “especially pathetic”.

Yesterday, Mr Urquhart said Aboriginal youth suicide and its causes remained, despite dozens of reports and hundreds of recommendations over the past 15 years.

And until the inter-generational cycle of child sex abuse is ended the suicide rate will continue to be extreme.

If you are depressed or contemplating suicide, help is available at Lifeline on 131 114