SARAH Bradley, the district judge who shocked the nation when she declined to jail nine males found guilty of raping a 10-year-old girl, had been extensively briefed by prominent Aurukun community members on their desire for tough measures to deal with the culture of violence in their township.
Fairfax Media has been told that members of the Aurukun Justice Group — a state-funded community law-and-order consultative body — told the judge of the terrible problems that had beset the tiny Cape York community, including rampant teenage sexual promiscuity and high rates of serious juvenile crime.
Janine Chevathun, an Aurukun councillor and member of the justice group, said the committee had taken Judge Bradley out on the community boat and explained to her over several hours the levels of social dysfunction and alcohol-related crime tearing the community apart.
On Sunday morning, we packed the car up and said goodbye to the house. We found a table under some shade and had our lunch before we left to go back to Brisbane. This tree was just asking to have it's photo taken! The breeze was so refreshing! Gypsy loved sitting on the seat between Brad and I. She didnt want any kabana or her sausage but she did want the cheese we had. She would have eaten the whole block if we had let her!
A few photos of Brad at Bribie Island with Gypsy. We had such a relaxing weekend away. I wish we could have stayed for a whole week. Gypsy wasnt very impressed with the waves on the beach. She freaked out when we went near them. She really wasnt supposed to be on the beach either but we figured that she was more of a rat than a dog! The signs didnt say "No Rats"!!! I cant wait to go back again soon.
This is the house we stayed in at Bribie. Its Brad's sister's house. It is very eclectic inside! Where ever you look there are things on the walls and books all around. It really is the kind of beach house I have dreamed about. So now I have a new goal after I get a house of my own... a little cottage near the beach... possibly on Bribie. I love the feel of Bribie Island. Not too commercialised yet, it still has a country feel to it.
It is a technicality - Ritchie has signed a contract to work for the radio station Nova next year - but the impact is no less significant. "It's a new beginning for me. I don't know myself without Sally Fletcher," she said.
Since announcing her intention to quit the top-rating soap in September, Ritchie said preparations for her departure had almost overwhelmed her. "I've been trying to gather my thoughts and reflect on a few things. I feel such an intense, deep sadness.
"It's so hard to explain because on the other hand there is this overwhelming sense of excitement as well. A lot of people are joking about whether I will enjoy retirement, but I really feel like it's the beginning of something."
Ritchie will start the first day of the rest of her life with her regular workout at the gym, followed by a day of running pre-Christmas errands.
"It's a good time of the year to be leaving, because life doesn't stop. I'm [going to be] hosting Carols in the Domain, and I have a lot to get done, which is a really good thing."
The show's producers paid tribute to her on the set last night, and tonight she will be the guest of honour at a farewell party thrown by the show's cast and crew. Tomorrow night she will have a small dinner with her family.
"I didn't make the decision to leave overnight. It was something that has been, if I want to be honest, floating around in my head for years, so to finally say the words out loud and to say I was leaving was almost a relief," Ritchie said.
"On days like today I worry about getting through the day, and saying goodbye, but there is never a moment that I worry I have made the wrong decision."
The final episode for 2007, which aired last week, featured the arrival of a stranger, played by Josh Quong Tart, the word "Milco" (the name of Sally's childhood imaginary friend) written in the sand and an on-air promotion campaign which promises to solve "a 20-year-old mystery".
For Ritchie, the link between her first and final storylines in the show is serendipitous. "When I first sat down with the producers , I was really pleased, not only with the way I leave the show, but all the stories which lead up to the last days of Sally Fletcher in Summer Bay," she said.
"Revisiting the past has given me an opportunity, as an actress, to tie up a few loose ends and say goodbye in a funny sort of way."
Ritchie's final episode will air next April.
December 13, 2007 07:00am
THE family of a 10-year-old gang-rape victim have revealed they had warned child safety authorities she would be attacked if taken out of a Cairns foster home and returned to their remote Aboriginal community of Aurukun.
Amid a continuing public outcry over the Queensland Department of Child Safety's failure to protect the girl and a Queensland District Court judge's controversial decision not to jail her attackers, her family has told of a community in crisis and "a little girl who has had the light turned off on her life".
They expressed outrage at the sentence the nine males received, and claim some of the offenders had first raped the girl when she was seven.
"She should never have been allowed to come back from foster care while those boys were still here. We told that to welfare. (Some of) those boys had raped her in the past," the girl's mother said.
In October, judge Sarah Bradley decided not to record convictions against six teenage attackers and gave three others, aged 17, 18 and 26, suspended sentences over the rape.
The sentences will be appealed and dozens of other sex abuse cases from the cape reviewed after the lenient sentences in the gang-rape case were revealed.
The prosecutor in the case, Steve Carter - who described the rape as "a form of childish experimentation" of which the victim was a willing participant - has also been stood down pending an internal investigation.
The girl's aunt said she was deeply offended by Mr Carter's claim that the victim had consented to the rape, and said suggestions underage sex was a fact of life in cape communities was abhorrent.
"That's not right. It's not traditional to have sex without parents' consent. Something is not right. She is a little girl who has had the light turned off on her life," she said.
Her uncle, the family patriarch, said sexual assaults, family violence and drugs had become so bad in the community he would support a Northern Territory-style intervention.
"The violence happens all the time. Something needs to be done, we shouldn't have to live like this," he said.
Cape York Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson last night described the case as "just the tip of the iceberg" of dysfunction in indigenous communities.
Mr Pearson blasted the notion that indigenous children taken into care and placed with non-indigenous foster carers were "another Stolen Generation" - as social workers in the Aurukun case believed.
He said that where children's welfare was under threat, the placement should be "one of safety, whether it is whitefellas or blackfellas".
"Those child protection practices that have sought to place Aboriginal children exclusively with Aboriginal carers have resulted in a great deal of harm for the individual children under care," Mr Pearson said.
"This is a case of children in urgent need of protection. As long as Aboriginal society is so dysfunctional that we have to take children into care and protection, we should never hear people bleat about some Stolen Generation.
"Today children on communities are living in dysfunctional situations where their welfare is under threat. There should be no hesitation in taking them out of those threatening circumstances and placing them with carers - whitefellas or blackfellas."
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has vowed to take radical action and work with federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin if the review of sex abuse cases finds systemic problems.
"What's not clear until we look at all of these cases is, is it a systemic issue where the standard of justice is somehow different or lower in these communities?" Ms Bligh said.
"Or is this a one-off aberration from one particular officer?"
The girl's family speak to her once a week by satellite link because she is housed in a secret location in north Queensland.
"She sleeps with the light on. She gets jumpy when they get new case workers," her uncle said.
The uncle said no authority had contacted the family since the story was reported. He first heard about it on the radio, and he welcomed the opportunity to speak to the media.
Authorities had neglected to inform the family the case was being heard in October in a courthouse less than 100m from the victim's former home.
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