Child abuse and neglect in Indigenous Australian communities

Child abuse and neglect associated with Indigenous communities cannot be understood, nor addressed, unless it is viewed from a broad perspective which includes both historical and present day issues. Measures centred around community-based responses which empower Indigenous Australians are needed, in order to protect Indigenous children from the serious levels of abuse which they are presently experiencing. Accurate statistics about the incidence of child abuse and other family violence in Aboriginal communities are scarce (Bolger 1991). Although the statistics that are available are imperfect, they are sufficient to demonstrate that the occurrence of violence in Indigenous communities and among Indigenous people “is disproportionately high in comparison to the rates of the same types of violence in the Australian population as a whole ” (Memmott, Stacy, Chambers and Keys 2001: 6). O’Donoghue (2001: 15) illustrates the extent of the problem of family violence, noting that many Indigenous children are growing up in communities where violence has become “a normal and ordinary part of life”.