SA: Report into APY Lands sex abuse finished by former judge

AAP General News (Australia)
04-30-2008
SA: Report into APY Lands sex abuse finished by former judge

ADELAIDE, April 30 AAP - A report into sexual abuse in Australia's oldest self-governing
tribal lands has been completed by a former Supreme Court judge.

Ted Mullighan will hand his report into sexual abuse in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara
(APY) Lands in South Australia's far north to the SA governor this week.

The report will then be tabled in state parliament next week.

Mr Mullighan, who earlier this month exposed systematic sexual abuse of SA foster children
after an almost four-year inquiry, was asked last year by the government to investigate
reports of widespread child sex abuse in the APY Lands.

The APY Lands, Australia's oldest self-governing tribal lands, were returned to a form
of formal governance when Mike Rann's Labor state government intervened in May 2004 in
a bid to stop alarmingly high rates of petrol sniffing.

The APY investigation was performed concurrently with Mr Mullighan's Children in State
Care Commission of Inquiry, which uncovered what the former judge described as a "foul
undercurrent" of sexual abuse of state wards.

The state wards inquiry found sexual abuse of foster children occurred in every type
of care, with Mr Mullighan hearing from 792 people who said they had been sexually abused
by 1,733 alleged perpetrators from the 1930s to the present.

AAP sl/jfm/jlw

KEYWORD: ABUSE SA

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