it's black and white

There is a rotten story on the news agency wires that if it involved a white Australian and a white teenage victim would make Page One of newspapers around the country.

As it is the story rated four short paragraphs on AAP. Probably didn’t make some papers or radio  or TV news bulletins at all.

The man is a rapist. He is a thirty-one year-old married man with one child. He raped a 13-year-old girl after luring her into his house.

He pleaded guilty to a crime that had a maximum sentence of 16 years. He was sentenced to two years. You see Jacky Lee is Aboriginal. His victim is Aboriginal. Now, the story doesn’t say that, but I’ll bet my news judgment that that is the case.

Lee lured the young girl to his house on Goulburn Island off the coast of the North Territory.

He threw her against a wall and then sexually assaulted her. So why was the sentence so light? Well, Mr. Justice Riley said Lee had experienced’ great remorse’. Whether that was over what he had done or that he had been caught and charged is arguable.

And the Judge said “he is unlikely to reoffend’.  How does he know?  He’ll only be 34 when he’s back on the streets how can a judge reassure that victim or other possible victims that he won’t rape again.

And it leads to the bigger connected issue. For decades, to our shame, our judicial system and our police forces left aboriginal communities to their own devices and own forms of justice. Anybody who has spent time there can tell stories of battered women. Even little kids with sexually transmitted diseases.

To raise the issue makes you a racist. To even ask the question why a black Australian gets two years for rape and a white Australian may get ten makes you automatically a racist.

Our argument that Lebanese migrants must live by our laws and that gang rapists will be locked up for a long, long time, should apply to ALL Australians. Migrants and indigenous people alike.

There have been recent promises to enforce our laws equally – especially where child victims are involved – but we haven’t seen much evidence yet.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007