Little Children are Sacred, or Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle (derived from Arandic languages), is the report of a Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, chaired by Rex Wild and Patricia Anderson. Commissioned by the government of the Northern Territory, Australia, the report was publicly released on 15 June 2007.

Background and description

The inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, chaired by former Director of Public Prosecutions for the Northern Territory Rex Wild and human rights advocate Pat Anderson was established in August 2006 and investigated ways to protect Aboriginal children from sexual abuse. The report was publicly released on 15 June 2007, the latest commissioned by the Australian government to investigate this topic. (The first report that raised public attention was written by Janet Stanley in 2003. ) The report, entitled Ampe Akelyernemane Meke Mekarle: "Little Children are Sacred", known commonly as the Little Children are Sacred report, concluded that neglect of children in Aboriginal communities had reached crisis levels, demanding that it "be designated as an issue of urgent national significance by both the Australian and Northern Territory governments".

Recommendations

The Little Children are Sacred report makes 97 recommendations regarding alcohol restrictions, the provision of healthcare and many other issues relating to child abuse and neglect in regional Aboriginal communities. The first two recommendations are:

Response

The Australian Government was accused of misinterpreting the significance in the distinction between neglect and abuse, a misunderstanding which led to their Northern Territory National Emergency Response, also known as The Intervention, or NTER, on 21 June 2007 (which was in turn replaced by the Stronger Futures Policy of 2011). The Clare Martin Northern Territory government denied inaction on its part, and released its detailed response, Closing the Gap of Indigenous Disadvantage: Generational Plan of Action in August 2007. The Howard government took few of the report's recommendations and particularly went against the advice given that action should not be "centralised," but "local". Quoting Fred Chaney, the report stipulates that: The government received much criticism for the reaction to this crisis, with many viewing the responses as a political manoeuvre. It has also been said that the government's Intervention was no more than another attempt to control the Indigenous community. The Australian Human Rights Commission's Social Justice Report 2008 said that, despite the likelihood of under-reporting, the 2005−2006 ABS statistics for confirmed child abuse did not appear to support the "allegations of endemic child abuse in NT remote communities that was the rationale for the NTER".