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Elder's 'camp of misery' to close
By Colleen Egan
The Australian,May 14, 2003
Reviewed by David Hughes-Jones
Mss Egan reported that the urban Perth Aboriginal community run by prominent elder Robert Bropho will be shut down by the West Australian Government amid concerns that women and children there remain at risk of sexual abuse and violence.
(It is also reported that the State Government took a closure plan to cabinet and the Director of Public Prosecutions, Robert Cock QC was considering reinstituting criminal charges against Mr Bropho aged, 73. Five counts of rape and one of indecent assault against Mr Bropho were withdrawn by Mr Cock in September 2000 after statistical deficiencies in DNA evidence. Mr Bropho denied all charges at the time. )
However one of his nieces claimed in 1999 that the Swan Valley Noongar Community leader fathered her child more than two decades earlier when she was 13 years old. New DNA tests provided by a Queensland laboratory could be used to resume the case.Mr Cock flew to Darwin last week to interview the alleged victim, and is expected to announce the result of his investigations this week.
Anecdotal evidence presented to the W.A. Government suggests that conditions at the Bropho camp had not improved since the Gordon inquiry into child sexual abuse and domestic violence in the state's Aboriginal communities.
That inquiry, which was called after an inquest into the death of 15-year-old Susan Taylor at the Swan Valley camp in 1999, and recommended a “memorandum of understanding” between Mr Bropho and the Government be established.
Instead Aboriginal Affairs Minister Alan Carpenter demanded the community – which was built on Crown land with $1.3 million in public grants – to be shut down as "a place of misery".Evidence had been given at the Taylor inquest claiming Mr Bropho swapped solvents for sex with young girls – an allegation Mr Bropho firmly denied.
As an indication of the conditions at the camp, two of his nephews were jailed earlier for the rape of a toddler at the camp. and a teenage boy's legs were allegedly broken by one of the Swan Valley community men aged in his 30s.
Despite changes to the community's management order, which ensured physical access to the property by police and community workers, Department heads believe that the risk to children's safety was still unacceptably high.
The Nyungah Circle of Elders, which is also controlled by Mr Bropho, released a statement yesterday predicting that all Perth's three other urban Aboriginal communities would also be shut down ,claiming that this action by the Government was "the White Australia Policy all over again" and "genocide".
Of course Mr Bropho has denied all allegations, maintaining the old charges and the Taylor inquest were born from a conspiracy against him by white welfare workers, the Government and Aboriginal organisations.
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