Australia has recorded its youngest apparent suicide in child protection custody – a 10-year-old boy, who had been in the custody of the state of Western Australia, in out-of-home care since age six.
He was a descendant of this continent’s First Peoples. The maternal side of his family was intergenerationally harangued by four generations of child removals – starting with the barbarous Stolen Generations.
The sins of the invader are yet to be atoned for by consecutive governments. Despite 40 significant inquiries and reports, more than 500 findings and recommendations in aggregate, overarched by the gut-wrenching 1997 Bringing Them Home Report, little has been heeded, other than a trail of symbolisms and apologies.
Presently, there are more than 22,000 First Nations children in out-of-home care. Since the turn of the century, there has been an escalation of removals. First Nations children have been removed from their biological families at rates akin to the first and second waves of the Stolen Generations. Eighty-nine per cent of children removed in the Northern Territory are the children of the First Peoples. 60% in Western Australia. One-in-two Australia-wide.
Child protection authorities in every state and territory are shrouded in veils of brutal silence. A total disregard for the presumptive universal conventions and domesticated concords on the rights of the child.
We don’t have public registers complete with out-of-home care de-identified suicides and ages, deaths and ages, self-harm rates, runaways, and ages. They should exist and be reported immediately, so accountability has a chance. Without the shining of the light, it has been proven there are no ways forward.
We know of many suicides of children while in the care of the state, Australia-wide. There are suicide deaths of children in residential group homes, in foster care, in all forms of placements. Laws preventing the identifying of children removed have made it difficult for media to publish their accounts. These laws deny the affected the right to speak, invalidating them. Censorship by omission has made out-of-home care children and their suffering loved ones invisible, forgotten, nonexistent.
Without their accounts in the public domain, there can be no verifiable credible narrative – just what we are told and not told. Without their accounts – in real-time – there can never be any form of universal community reckoning. As a result of the shrouds of secrecies there is an impenetrable power imbalance.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children account for only about 5.5% of Australia’s child population but are overrepresented in recorded suicides by a wide margin. Suicide can affect anyone but there is a greater propensity to suicidality for people living below the poverty line. Tragically, similarly to the escalating crisis of more First Nations children than ever being removed, this nation tolerates the skyrocketing humanitarian crisis of suicides by mostly impoverished and marginalised First Peoples. Since the turn of the century to 2022, the suicide toll increased dramatically. Within a couple of years, the toll is expected to have increased by 200%.
During the last two decades, there have been countless inquiries and reports and hundreds of recommendations on the unabated, staggering suicide crisis billowing through Aboriginal communities.
Between 2014 and 2018, there was the commonwealth lauded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project, which courageously shone the light. But, like so many before, its blueprint for change, its recommendations were formally accepted, praised – and shelved.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800. Help for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is available on 13YARN on 13 92 76.
Megan Krakouer, LLB, is director of the National Suicide Prevention and Trauma Recovery Project. She contributed to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Gerry Georgatos is founding member, researcher and community consultant to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project.
The staggering suicide crisis billows unabated through our First Nations communities
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21.04.2024
Australia has recorded its youngest apparent suicide in child protection custody – a 10-year-old boy, who had been in the custody of the state of Western Australia, in out-of-home care since age six.
He was a descendant of this continent’s First Peoples. The maternal side of his family was intergenerationally harangued by four generations of child removals – starting with the barbarous Stolen Generations.
The sins of the invader are yet to be atoned for by consecutive governments. Despite 40 significant inquiries and reports, more than 500 findings and recommendations in aggregate, overarched by the gut-wrenching 1997 Bringing Them Home Report, little has been heeded, other than a trail of symbolisms and apologies.
Presently, there are more than 22,000 First Nations children in out-of-home care. Since the turn of the century, there has been an escalation of removals. First Nations children have been removed from their biological families at rates akin to the first and second waves of the Stolen Generations. Eighty-nine per cent of........
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