When I first saw this story, I thought she was joking, but she's not. In trying to argue that rage, substance abuse and violence is a result of the oppression of the Aboriginal people, most people would be hard pressed to say that she's wrong. Addiction begets addicts, violence begets violence, and crushing and hopeless poverty and societal isolation does nothing to help. But that does not mean that no one should try.

That the NT intervention is heavy-handed and sucks at fixing the problems in Aboriginal society probably goes without saying. In 1999, one report found that "in Western Australia, Aboriginal women are more than 45 times more likely to be a victim of domestic violence than non-Aborigines." Putting troops on the streets, or interviewing every child about abuse, or curtailing welfare payments is not going to combat a systemic and (at this point) multi-generational problem. It requires education and equity in the legal system and would probably be assisted by poverty-eradication programs, better health care and living conditions and efforts to right the wrongs of racism (like some version of affirmative action). But it does not mean, as Greer suggests, "They can't get over [their rage] and it's inhuman to ask them to get over it."

If one accepts the premise that Aboriginal men are — consciously or subconsciously — expressing their rage over their position in Australian society on the bodies of Aboriginal women and children, one must also recognize that it is the wrong outlet. But domestic violence (as we learned yesterday) also stems from sexism, from an attempt to assert power over another person and from the failure to understand that it's completely wrong. That, even as Ted Bunch noted, more "brown and black men" are punished for it than white men is not a reason to refrain from punishing the former, but a reason to increase the equity in the system for the victims of the latter. And the last thing a feminist ought to be doing is advancing the idea that domestic violence is an understandable reaction to racial oppression and can thus be dealt with, if it still exists, when racial oppression is gone.

Australia Apologizes to Aborigines [International Herald Tribune]
Senate Paves the Way For NT 'Emergency Intervention [Crikey]
The Storm Within [The Age]
Germain Greer Writes on Aboriginal Rage [UPI]
The Truth About Aboriginal Domestic Violence [The Australian Paper Archives]

Reports the Times:

Within her first two days in jail, a man raped her in the bathroom. Inmates rely on visiting relatives to bring food. With no such visits, extreme hunger soon overtook the girl and she began trading sex for food, investigators said. Other men, however, simply raped her when they wanted to, and tortured her for amusement, investigators said. Some placed crumpled papers between her toes as she slept and lighted them.

In other horrific women's news, the case of the young Aboriginal girl who was gang-raped is inspiring swift action. Following international outrage over the leniency of the original sentences handed down, the 10-year-old's assailants are going to be retried on January 30. Unfortunately, the judge who presided over the original trail, Sarah Bradley, is being defended by Queensland Law Society President Megan Mahon. "Personal attacks on any member of the judiciary are utterly intolerable and should be rejected completely," Mahon said in a public statement. "Neither the media nor any community group, however sincere and well-meaning their motives might be in this matter, should try and supplant the due process of our justice system which is a robust one with inbuilt checks and balances."

Rape of Girl, 15, Exposes Abuses in Brazil Prison System [NY Times]
Aborigine rape official suspended [BBC]
Gang rape appeal to be heard 'swiftly' [The Australian]
Attack on rape case judge condemned [Sydney Morning Herald]
Rape case underlines plight of Aborigines [IHT]
Intervention may cross border [Sydney Morning Herald]

Earlier:
Horrors
Prosecutor Says Gang Rape Of 10 Year-Old Girl Was "Childish Experimentation"

Prosecutor Steve Carter described the rape in court as "childish experimentation" and further claimed that "I can't say it was consensual in the legal sense, but in the other - in the general sense, the non-legal sense, yes, it was." Carter also said that the rape was "all by arrangement." What Carter failed to mention is the ten-year-old in question was born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

This girl's young life has already been so unbearably rife with abuse and tragedy. She was born in the Aurukun Aboriginal community in Northeastern Australia, a hotbed of child molestation where violence of all kinds is so prevalent, the government has placed major curbs on the sale of alcohol, because as one government official put it, "A river of grog is killing people and destroying our communities." (As an inquiry into Australia's Aboriginal communities found earlier this year, "child sex abuse [was present] in each of the 45 communities they visited...[and] Children as young as five were found to have contracted sexually-transmitted diseases," the BBC reported.)

In addition to her FAS, the girl had been shuffled between foster homes throughout her life, and, according to the New York Times, was raped at age seven, a crime from which she contracted syphilis. After placement in several foster families, the girl had finally found a home where she was thriving in the seaside city of Cairns, but was removed from the home by social workers because the family was non-indigenous. The social workers in question thought that Aboriginal children should only be in Aboriginal homes. She was then moved back to Aurukun, where the more recent assault took place.
(The nine man gang-bang was only discovered in the first place because the girl went to a nearby clinic, asking for condoms and a pregnancy test. The clinic found that she had gonorrhea.)

Now that the case has been widely publicized, elected officials are coming out of the woodwork to decry the situation. Newly elected Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said: "I am horrified by cases like this, involving sexual violence against women and children. My attitude is one of zero tolerance." Prosecutor Steve Carter has been "stood aside" and several social workers have been suspended. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh told reporters, "The system clearly failed this little girl.'' As judge Sarah Bradley is the current president of Australian Association of Women Judges, the system is in clear need of an overhaul.

Australia Shocked by Case of Raped Indigenous Girl [NY Times]
'It was a childish experiment' [Daily Telegraph]
PM's fury at freeing of girl's gang rapists [Sydney Morning Herald]
Prosecutor to be stood aside [Courier Mail]
'We failed pack-rape girl' [Sydney Morning Herald]
Aborigine child sex abuse 'rife' [BBC]

Earlier: Horrors

• Is a bridal line in Kate Moss's future? Her boyfriend, supposedly sober Pete Doherty, says that if he can stay clean, he hopes to marry Moss this summer. We say there's as good a chance of that happening as there is our voting for Giuliani in 2008. [Yahoo News]
  
• New names being tossed around to replace Rosie O'Donnell. Yay, the gays! Sex and the City's Mario Cantone and Ross "The Intern" Mathews (of Tonight Show fame) are both being considered for the gig. [E!]
  
• Speaking of the gays, Jerusalem's Gay Pride Parade went off without a hitch this year. And by "without a hitch" we mean, aside from those 18 arrests of ultra-orthodox Jews during the parade, including one who attempted to bomb it. [BBC]
  
• And while we're still on the topic, maybe-homophobe Isaiah Washington continues his reign of victimhood, now saying that it is his Grey's Anatomy castmate T.R. Knight who should have been fired from the show, not him. Dude! Get over it! [People.com]
  
• Wes Craven is suing his neighbor Pauly Shore, claiming that water seeped from Shore's property onto his own and caused major damage. Wow: Pauly Shore and Wes Craven are neighbors? That's fucking hilarious. [USA Today]
  
• No porn or booze for Australian Aborigines. Glad to know that colonial paternalism is still alive and well! [CNN]
  
• First it was the whales, then the dolphins, and now all we can do is worry about the seals. Haven't marine mammals been through enough?! [Reuters]
  
• 9 U.S. casualties identified today. [DoD]