A registered nurse left Karl Stefanovic speechless on the Today show after revealing the disturbing reason some children roam the streets in Alice Springs, detailing horrific instances of the child sexual abuse that plagues many of Australia’s remote communities.
Rachel Hale, who has worked as a registered nurse for almost 14 years, spoke on Tuesday of the “level of trauma and shocking occurrences of sexual violence” she had witnessed, which mean some children in Alice Springs simply do not have a safe home to which to return.
“It haunts me. I have seen a four-year-old boy come in with anal warts and a six-year-old with vaginal sores,” she told Channel 9’s Today.
“A two-year-old was raped in Alice Springs last year. I have colleagues who witness things on a daily basis here, even in Darwin and the town community, where a first responder was turned out and the lights of the vehicle shone on a house, and they saw a man raping an eight-year-old girl.
“I asked, what happened to that little girl? What was she doing? Nothing, was the answer. She didn’t scream, she didn’t move, she didn’t cry out, because she is so used to that treatment.”
The descriptions were graphic and disturbing, Ms Hale said, but it was important for Australians to understand the reality of the unrest in Alice Springs.
“This is why these kids are on the street, and your viewers need to hear this,” she told the program.
“It’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it’s one that needs to be addressed.”
“The brutal reality. It’s uncomfortable, it’s awful,” said host Karl Stefanovic, who was left near-speechless by the account.
Ms Hale’s interview comes more than 15 years after the federal government’s Little Children are Sacred report, which found disturbing evidence of significant child sexual abuse in Northern Territory communities — and which prompted a number of new policies, including the Stronger Futures alcohol ban that was terminated last year.
Restrictions on alcohol and movement in Alice Springs would not work unless children were given a safe home, Ms Hale said.
“People want to know why kids are out on the street late at night. I’ve seen little children, about five or six years old, and they were out all night, and why aren’t the families and the parents being held responsible?” she asked, in response to a question about whether she believed restrictions in the town were working.
“I guess the short answer to that is, these kids are being raped at home, and the level of domestic violence that they see is horrific. So, it’s far safer for them to be on the streets than at home in these town camps.”
Ms Hale, who lives in Darwin but owns a business in Alice Springs and visits every two months, detailed more of the horrific scenes she had dealt with during a harrowing interview with Ben Fordham on 2GB radio on Tuesday.
“Us healthcare workers have got some form of PTSD because we see a lifelong career of this,” she said.
“You cannot unsee the things that we’ve seen.. I’ve seen an entire family with the same strain of gonorrhea from the children to the parents, let that sink in.”
Anthony Albanese earlier this month flew to Alice Springs to reintroduce a partial ban on alcohol — but Ms Hale criticised the short visit.
He (the Prime Minister) came into Alice Springs for five hours, and they come up with ‘we are restricting takeaway alcohol for Monday and Tuesday’, and that’s where the conversation ended. You have to be there on the ground,” she said.
“The children, they were all bussed out for the day when the Prime Minister was in town, and then they came back later on that night” Ms Hale added, referring to a widespread rumour that Indigenous youth were removed from Alice Springs for the government visit.
“It’s not fair on the people of Alice Springs when this happens. I guess these kids, their home life environment is so unstable and so unsafe, as I said, it’s far easier and safer for them to be in the streets. But these kids need to be put in a safe facility and rehabilitated.”
News.com.au previously spoke with Ms Hale, who provided footage of Alice Springs youth hurling racial abuse, spitting on and assaulting pub patrons just days after Mr Albanese’s visit.
In one video, a group of young Indigenous girls are standing outside the pub’s fence yelling at customers, before leaning through and spitting on a woman seated at a table.
Another video shows a man in a red shirt chasing a group of boys on the street after they allegedly stole something from his ute parked outside.
In a third video, a young man in a grey shirt gets in a fist fight with one of the teens as the pub’s security guard stands by watching.
“People describe these events that are happening here but no one’s actually seeing it,” Ms Hale aid.
“Probably by 7pm it started. The most disturbing part is the taunting by these kids — for the locals it’s like water off a duck’s back — but they stand on the other side of the fence slinging insults. It’s just disgusting, racist. ‘You white b****h, you white c**t.’ Everyone’s sick of it. The patrons downstairs, they were firing back telling them to p**s off, but they don’t stop.”
NT Police asked witnesses to come forward.
“NT Police condemn any form of anti-social behaviour, particularly alcohol related violence, within our community,” a spokesman said in a statement to news.com.au.
“We urge anyone who witnesses crime or anti-social behaviour to make contact on 131 444 or in an emergency triple-0. You can also report anonymous through Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.”
Earlier on Saturday, a news.com.au photographer witnessed a group of youths — including at least one girl wearing an ankle monitor — scrawling graffiti on walls along the Stuart Highway and throwing rocks at passing cars.
At one point an enraged tradie jumped out of his truck and chased two of the teens towards the Stott Terrace intersection near the Westpoint shopping centre.
One of the teens turned and picked up a rock from the ground, stopping in the middle of the road at the traffic lights to threaten the man.
Ms Hale said police were practically powerless to stop the young offenders.
Under controversial justice reforms passed by the Labor government in December, the Northern Territory became the first Australian jurisdiction to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12.
Children under 12 who engage in behaviour that would normally constitute an offence will instead be offered “intensive” therapeutic programs and psychological assessments.
The bill also simplified the legal test, commonly known as doli incapax, which is used to determine whether a child under 14 years of age has the mental capacity to commit an offence.
“Because now kids that age can’t be charged, the adults are loading the cars up with kids and dropping them off in the suburbs, they go and do all the crimes,” said baker Darren Clark, founder of the Action for Alice Facebook page.
“And if they get caught, it’s a thing called ‘doli incapax’, which means I don’t know what I’m doing. They plead it on the spot, and the cops just take them home.”
Introducing the proposed changes in October, Attorney-General Chansey Paech insisted “the evidence is clear — the earlier a child enters the justice system, the more likely they are to reoffend”.
“Punitive measures are not a deterrent for 10 and 11-year-olds,” Mr Paech said at the time, reported the NT News.
“In fact, it is more likely to increase behavioural problems and reoffending. It’s time to get smarter on our youth justice approach and break the cycle of youth crime. We’re asking Territorians to come on a journey with us. We’ve heard loud and clear that the old system is not working.”
Ms Hale, like other locals in the town which is besieged on some nights by hundreds of marauding youths, slammed the government as out of touch with reality.
“What would you have police do with an 11-year-old who’s just assaulted someone with a machete, attempted rape, bashed someone with a rock, broken into a shopfront?” Ms Hale said.
“What happens in Alice Springs is they move them on — if they can catch them. The kids know this, therefore their actions have become quite brazen. You can slap an ankle bracelet on all these kids — then what?”
She also slammed the Opposition for simply pointing the finger at Labor. “I’m sick of one political person blaming the other party,” she said. “We don’t care whose problem it is, we care that the problem is fixed.”
Mr Clark, a local of 25 years, previously told news.com.au he, too, didn’t believe an alcohol ban would be effective.
“The roll back of the (alcohol) ban probably has added to the alcohol problems here, but we’ve had alcohol problems for a long time,” Mr Clark said.
“Taking the alcohol away is not going to give these kids a safe home … These children from a young age are witness to the kind of violence we cannot comprehend. The violence they now partake in, to us, is extreme. To them, it’s all they know.”
Ms Hale warned that, unless the youth crime problem was addressed soon, she feared something bad would happen.
The town that can’t stay open past sunset
‘Not OK’: Aussie city descends into chaos
“People are getting fed up,” she said. “Someone is going to lose their s**t and retaliate and one of these kids is going to die, and it’s going to be splashed all over the headlines.”
From https://www.news.com.au/national/cr...e/news-story/45110f8ecc7c5218350d7975f00d9521
Rachel Hale, who has worked as a registered nurse for almost 14 years, spoke on Tuesday of the “level of trauma and shocking occurrences of sexual violence” she had witnessed, which mean some children in Alice Springs simply do not have a safe home to which to return.
“It haunts me. I have seen a four-year-old boy come in with anal warts and a six-year-old with vaginal sores,” she told Channel 9’s Today.
“A two-year-old was raped in Alice Springs last year. I have colleagues who witness things on a daily basis here, even in Darwin and the town community, where a first responder was turned out and the lights of the vehicle shone on a house, and they saw a man raping an eight-year-old girl.
“I asked, what happened to that little girl? What was she doing? Nothing, was the answer. She didn’t scream, she didn’t move, she didn’t cry out, because she is so used to that treatment.”
The descriptions were graphic and disturbing, Ms Hale said, but it was important for Australians to understand the reality of the unrest in Alice Springs.
“This is why these kids are on the street, and your viewers need to hear this,” she told the program.
“It’s an uncomfortable conversation, but it’s one that needs to be addressed.”
“The brutal reality. It’s uncomfortable, it’s awful,” said host Karl Stefanovic, who was left near-speechless by the account.
Ms Hale’s interview comes more than 15 years after the federal government’s Little Children are Sacred report, which found disturbing evidence of significant child sexual abuse in Northern Territory communities — and which prompted a number of new policies, including the Stronger Futures alcohol ban that was terminated last year.
Restrictions on alcohol and movement in Alice Springs would not work unless children were given a safe home, Ms Hale said.
“People want to know why kids are out on the street late at night. I’ve seen little children, about five or six years old, and they were out all night, and why aren’t the families and the parents being held responsible?” she asked, in response to a question about whether she believed restrictions in the town were working.
“I guess the short answer to that is, these kids are being raped at home, and the level of domestic violence that they see is horrific. So, it’s far safer for them to be on the streets than at home in these town camps.”
Ms Hale, who lives in Darwin but owns a business in Alice Springs and visits every two months, detailed more of the horrific scenes she had dealt with during a harrowing interview with Ben Fordham on 2GB radio on Tuesday.
“Us healthcare workers have got some form of PTSD because we see a lifelong career of this,” she said.
“You cannot unsee the things that we’ve seen.. I’ve seen an entire family with the same strain of gonorrhea from the children to the parents, let that sink in.”
Anthony Albanese earlier this month flew to Alice Springs to reintroduce a partial ban on alcohol — but Ms Hale criticised the short visit.
He (the Prime Minister) came into Alice Springs for five hours, and they come up with ‘we are restricting takeaway alcohol for Monday and Tuesday’, and that’s where the conversation ended. You have to be there on the ground,” she said.
“The children, they were all bussed out for the day when the Prime Minister was in town, and then they came back later on that night” Ms Hale added, referring to a widespread rumour that Indigenous youth were removed from Alice Springs for the government visit.
“It’s not fair on the people of Alice Springs when this happens. I guess these kids, their home life environment is so unstable and so unsafe, as I said, it’s far easier and safer for them to be in the streets. But these kids need to be put in a safe facility and rehabilitated.”
News.com.au previously spoke with Ms Hale, who provided footage of Alice Springs youth hurling racial abuse, spitting on and assaulting pub patrons just days after Mr Albanese’s visit.
In one video, a group of young Indigenous girls are standing outside the pub’s fence yelling at customers, before leaning through and spitting on a woman seated at a table.
Another video shows a man in a red shirt chasing a group of boys on the street after they allegedly stole something from his ute parked outside.
In a third video, a young man in a grey shirt gets in a fist fight with one of the teens as the pub’s security guard stands by watching.
“People describe these events that are happening here but no one’s actually seeing it,” Ms Hale aid.
“Probably by 7pm it started. The most disturbing part is the taunting by these kids — for the locals it’s like water off a duck’s back — but they stand on the other side of the fence slinging insults. It’s just disgusting, racist. ‘You white b****h, you white c**t.’ Everyone’s sick of it. The patrons downstairs, they were firing back telling them to p**s off, but they don’t stop.”
NT Police asked witnesses to come forward.
“NT Police condemn any form of anti-social behaviour, particularly alcohol related violence, within our community,” a spokesman said in a statement to news.com.au.
“We urge anyone who witnesses crime or anti-social behaviour to make contact on 131 444 or in an emergency triple-0. You can also report anonymous through Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.”
Earlier on Saturday, a news.com.au photographer witnessed a group of youths — including at least one girl wearing an ankle monitor — scrawling graffiti on walls along the Stuart Highway and throwing rocks at passing cars.
At one point an enraged tradie jumped out of his truck and chased two of the teens towards the Stott Terrace intersection near the Westpoint shopping centre.
One of the teens turned and picked up a rock from the ground, stopping in the middle of the road at the traffic lights to threaten the man.
Ms Hale said police were practically powerless to stop the young offenders.
Under controversial justice reforms passed by the Labor government in December, the Northern Territory became the first Australian jurisdiction to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12.
Children under 12 who engage in behaviour that would normally constitute an offence will instead be offered “intensive” therapeutic programs and psychological assessments.
The bill also simplified the legal test, commonly known as doli incapax, which is used to determine whether a child under 14 years of age has the mental capacity to commit an offence.
“Because now kids that age can’t be charged, the adults are loading the cars up with kids and dropping them off in the suburbs, they go and do all the crimes,” said baker Darren Clark, founder of the Action for Alice Facebook page.
“And if they get caught, it’s a thing called ‘doli incapax’, which means I don’t know what I’m doing. They plead it on the spot, and the cops just take them home.”
Introducing the proposed changes in October, Attorney-General Chansey Paech insisted “the evidence is clear — the earlier a child enters the justice system, the more likely they are to reoffend”.
“Punitive measures are not a deterrent for 10 and 11-year-olds,” Mr Paech said at the time, reported the NT News.
“In fact, it is more likely to increase behavioural problems and reoffending. It’s time to get smarter on our youth justice approach and break the cycle of youth crime. We’re asking Territorians to come on a journey with us. We’ve heard loud and clear that the old system is not working.”
Ms Hale, like other locals in the town which is besieged on some nights by hundreds of marauding youths, slammed the government as out of touch with reality.
“What would you have police do with an 11-year-old who’s just assaulted someone with a machete, attempted rape, bashed someone with a rock, broken into a shopfront?” Ms Hale said.
“What happens in Alice Springs is they move them on — if they can catch them. The kids know this, therefore their actions have become quite brazen. You can slap an ankle bracelet on all these kids — then what?”
She also slammed the Opposition for simply pointing the finger at Labor. “I’m sick of one political person blaming the other party,” she said. “We don’t care whose problem it is, we care that the problem is fixed.”
Mr Clark, a local of 25 years, previously told news.com.au he, too, didn’t believe an alcohol ban would be effective.
“The roll back of the (alcohol) ban probably has added to the alcohol problems here, but we’ve had alcohol problems for a long time,” Mr Clark said.
“Taking the alcohol away is not going to give these kids a safe home … These children from a young age are witness to the kind of violence we cannot comprehend. The violence they now partake in, to us, is extreme. To them, it’s all they know.”
Ms Hale warned that, unless the youth crime problem was addressed soon, she feared something bad would happen.
The town that can’t stay open past sunset
‘Not OK’: Aussie city descends into chaos
“People are getting fed up,” she said. “Someone is going to lose their s**t and retaliate and one of these kids is going to die, and it’s going to be splashed all over the headlines.”
From https://www.news.com.au/national/cr...e/news-story/45110f8ecc7c5218350d7975f00d9521
