Aboriginal communities rife with horrific sexual violence

SYDNEY - Australian authorities say they are struggling to combat an epidemic of sexual violence against Aboriginal women and children after horrific new details emerged of babies as young as seven months being raped.

The shocking level of violence is blamed on alcohol abuse, petrol sniffing and a breakdown in traditional beliefs.

The remote desert region has the country's highest murder rate and Aboriginal women are 52 times more likely to be assaulted than white women.

A 10-year-old girl who was promised as a wife to a 55-year-old Aboriginal man was tied to a tree in the bush for several weeks. The man gave her food and water and repeatedly had sex with her until she became pregnant.

A 7-month-old baby who was raped after being snatched from her bed by an Aboriginal man in 2003 needed surgery for extensive internal injuries.

The abuse was revealed after ABC television obtained a confidential briefing paper prepared for senior police.

It was written by the Crown Prosecutor for central Australia, Nanette Rogers, who has worked for 12 years in Alice Springs.

In one of the most distressing incidents, an 18-year-old Aboriginal man anally raped and then drowned a 6-year-old indigenous girl.

Cases like this were really beyond the range of normal comprehension, Dr Rogers said.

Many of the incidents do not reach the courts because of a lack of witnesses and a propensity in Aboriginal communities not to seek help from the law.

Children were being abused because their parents were too drunk to intervene, or were simply absent at the time of the attack. Poverty, boredom and alienation also contribute to the abuse.

Of the 40 Aboriginal communities with a population of 2500 or more scattered across central Australia, only eight have a police presence nearby.

Alcohol abuse and sniffing petrol have reached epidemic proportions. In the Northern Territory, 80 per cent of the prison population is indigenous.

"It is really, really bad," said Margaret Kemarre, an Aboriginal elder from Alice Springs. "I think the grog is really taking away all our families."

Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, said he was glad the report had been leaked because the rest of Australia needed to know the extent of the crisis.