Investigation launched into care of toddler before alleged rape

The Northern Territory children’s commissioner has launched an investigation into the care and services given to a two-year-old child and her family before her alleged sexual assault in Tennant Creek last week.

The investigation – which served notices on the Territory Families department on Wednesday – followed revelations there were multiple child protection notifications made about the child in recent months.

On Tuesday it was revealed a 24-year-old man had been charged with allegedly raping the toddler on Friday night. The child was taken to hospital in Alice Springs before being transferred to Adelaide. She was discharged on Wednesday.

The office of the children’s commissioner said: “The commissioner, [Colleen Gwynne], will also examine whether the current investigation and assessment policies and procedures are sufficient to analyse and prioritise levels of risk and harm.” It would also look generally at services in the outback town, it said.

“There can be no compromises in stopping and challenging violence against children.”

Tennant Creek residents said the alleged sexual assault was the “final straw” for a town in crisis and that it had been “forgotten” by territory and federal governments.

A community meeting was held on Wednesday afternoon attended by police commissioner Reece Kershaw and the acting chief minister, Nicole Manison. According to people who were at the meeting, it was heated but well attended. Local pubs had agreed not to open until it had finished.

Family members had accused Territory Families of not following up multiple notifications made about the child and her younger brother, who lived with their mother, in the weeks before the assault.

They stressed the significance of Indigenous family members going to government services with their concerns.

In a 12-hour period before the alleged attack on the girl, police received almost twice as many callouts as usual, the ABC reported on Friday. The duty superintendent Rob Burgoyne, said alcohol was a major factor.

While acknowledging there were serious issues within the community, the family members said government and authorities needed to do more to work with them in addressing the problems.

“They can’t just rely on community members to do it. They have the infrastructure to bring people together and do something about it.”

Manison said alcohol was “the biggest cause of social harm in the territory”.

The NT government, which recently changed its alcohol management policy from police officers stationed outside bottle shops to a computerised register of banned drinkers, on Wednesday announced an expanded police operation to Tennant Creek to respond to the increased incidents.

Manison said more had to be done to address the systemic and social issues that often contributed to higher rates of crime.

“We know that these types of tragedies are so often driven out of the fact that we’ve got poverty,” she said.

“We have got alcohol involved. We have got poor housing, poor education. They are the systemic problems we deal with day in, day out here in the NT and they are the issues that we are working so hard to address. More needs to be done.”

The Northern Territory government and authorities are attempting to address a long-running crisis in child protection and juvenile detention, highlighted by the recent royal commission.

Several public hearings over the course of 10 months heard evidence that previous iterations of the Territory Families department had failed to handle an overwhelming caseload of at risk children and notifications of concern, and that many were written off as “unsubstantiated” without investigation.