The Indigenous affairs minister has called on the Northern Territory government to be open and transparent about the circumstances preceding the alleged rape of a toddler in Tennant Creek, as dual investigations are launched into claims welfare services were repeatedly contacted in recent weeks.
The two-year-old girl was hospitalised in Alice Springs on Friday, before being transferred to Adelaide women and children’s hospital. She was released on Wednesday.
Police have charged a 24-year-old man with sexual intercourse without consent of a minor and he is due to face court in April.
Family members of the child have accused Territory Families of not acting on multiple notifications about the safety of the child and younger brother, who lived with their mother.
The NT Department of Territory Families has launched a review, and the NT children’s commissioner has launched an own-initiative investigation.
Nigel Scullion told Guardian Australia he had asked the NT government to be “as open and transparent as possible about the circumstances leading up to this incident”.
“Every child is entitled to live in a safe, happy and healthy home,” he said.
Territory Families has confirmed there were notifications - reportedly more than 20 and including six that were substantiated - but said none related to sexual abuse.
“In terms of the notifications we received, there were no specific concerns that came to Territory Families about particular harm to this child of a sexual nature,” the department’s chief executive, Ken Davies, told the ABC. “They were not substantial enough to take the child out of this household and away from the mother.”
A spokeswoman for Territory Families told Guardian Australia earlier this week it had “engaged with the family to provide a range of programs and connect them to family support services”.
Tennant Creek residents attended a community meeting on Wednesday with the police commissioner, Reece Kershaw, and the acting chief minister of the NT, Nicole Manison. The meeting was held five days after the alleged rape. NT police did not inform the public of the alleged rape until media made inquiries.
The police commissioner, the minister and the chief executive of Territory Families, as well as the NT chief minister and his deputy were not aware of the incident until Tuesday, the day media reported it.
According to attendees of the community meeting, many raised the worsening levels of alcohol and substance abuse in the town, and related crime and violence. They also expressed dissatisfaction with the government’s response to their months-long calls for assistance, including direct entreaties following a spate of suicides in November.
Several called on the government to improve their interactions with the Tennant Creek community and in particular its Indigenous community, which made up more than 50% of the town’s population.
On Thursday Scullion said the federal government stood ready to support the family and community.
“To be absolutely clear, while many facts about the tragic circumstances are still unknown, incidents like these are not unique to or characteristics of being Indigenous,” he said.
“These are often circumstances influenced by factors such as endemic poverty, poor health including mental health as well as substance abuse among other things. The reality is the vast majority of Indigenous families love and care for their children, raising them in healthy and happy homes, connected to their land and their culture.”
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, June Oscar, said she was “deeply saddened” by the alleged attack on the young girl and called for the development of harm minimisation and community-led solutions to manage alcohol abuse in Tennant Creek.
“As a community we all carry a responsibility to ensure our children are safe and we must ensure that policies, programs and services adequately support the safety of women and children in regional areas, such as Tennant Creek,” Oscar said.
The Indigenous health minister, Ken Wyatt, told ABC Darwin it was easy to blame government inaction but noted equally there were calls for fewer Indigenous children to be removed from their homes.
He said he would like to see a better effort in providing wrap-around services to support families.
