Sunday, August 26 from 9am-11am
SHAME JOB

You’ve heard revelations of child sex abuse in Aboriginal communities from Crown prosecutors and politicians – cases of unthinkable depravity. The recent ‘Little Children are Sacred’ report found child sex abuse in all of the 45 communities it visited in the Northern Territory. That triggered a $500 million federal takeover of indigenous affairs there.

Now – for the first time – we hear those stories from Aborigines themselves.

In a remote Red Centre community, SUNDAY reporter Sarah Ferguson uncovered a series of child sexual assaults across three generations which ended with a recent attack on a five-year-old boy.

“My cousin came and kicked the door and he saw me having sex with the little boy...”

We hear from the perpetrator who was himself raped when he was a young boy, along with three others, at a community fair.

“We all take our clothes off, then he told us to lay down face against the wall, like floor, on the ground. Then he started hurting us…”

He became a rapist seven years later. The mother of his victim now fears that without any help her own little boy may grow up to commit similar crimes.

“He’s got anger inside him still. I need counselling. I worry he might do the same thing…”

“Shame Job” reveals how decades of official neglect have left countless victims without support or counselling. They are crying out for help – they know how victims become perpetrators.

“Yeah that’s it, like it happen to me. So I done it the same...”

This week SUNDAY presents a compelling and brutally honest account of life for the most vulnerable people living in our indigenous communities.