"When did you become sexually active?"

Not really the sort of question you expect to be asked by Queensland's first female Premier and for once I didn't have a ready answer. Well I did but it's not fit to print here.

Anna Bligh had just finished a media conference during which she was asked about Opposition revelations that Aboriginal girls, some as young as 12, in the Central Queensland Woorabinda community were being given long lasting contraceptives.

In Queensland it's illegal to have sex with anyone under the age of 16.

During the course of her media conference Ms Bligh endorsed the practice saying that doctors and parents are fully involved in the decision and that they face a choice. "It's about teenage pregnancy or contraception."

She then went on to say, "I think that the community would be concerned by any serious outbreak of underage sex, frankly this is something that's not restricted to Woorabinda."

The Opposition claims that as many as 12 girls under 13 years of age could have undergone the procedure.

Jann Stucky says the 'temporary sterilisation' of the juveniles allows them to indulge in under-age sex.

She also accused Queensland Health of condoning rape and says at least one of the girls had three sexually transmitted infections.

Child Protection minister Margaret Keech told MP's in Parliament that, "it is not always an indication that a child is being harmed or at risk of harm or that they are even being neglected by their parents."

Ms Keech's office doesn't know how widespread the practice is among underage children because there's no obligation for parents or doctors to report the treatment.

Woorabinda mayor Roderick Tobane is also a fan of the practice.

"I'd say it's mums and dads acknowledging that their children are sexually active and they're putting measures in place to make sure that those children don't get pregnant, those young girls don't get pregnant.

"And I think that's a very, very, very, very mature attitude to take."

Nicole Britcher, a mother herself and a former councillor, said, "If it is with parental consent then that's fine. But let's not lie to ourselves the children mature here very quickly."

With at least one of the youngsters reportedly having a sexually transmitted disease are these girls being sexually abused? No-one seems absolutely certain.

Mayor Tobane offered this explanation. "There have been 18 reports to the Department of child safety since March 2007.

"Six of these were suspected for sexual abuse. It is believed that none of the reports related to the children trading implants."

But let's imagine for a moment if it was revealed that a-dozen non-aboriginal children had received this treatment. I'd suggest the hue and cry would reach the heavens and stretch around the globe.

The Opposition's Jan Stuckey quite rightly points to a pending legal case which could see a man go to jail for having sex with a girl under 16 years of age.

So the big question for me is this.

If the Government knows that children as young as 12 are being injected with contraceptives that last for three years to stop them from getting pregnant why isn't an investigation underway into who is having sex with these children who are not even teenagers yet?

Your Comments

10 Comments

. yankaussie - Apr 22 01:07pm

Clearly, a very difficult, moral decision. But certainly only individual families can tackle this one depending on their circumstances.

. nessa_sarily_so - Apr 23 09:25am

Better question - what will happen to all the 12 year olds and their sexual partners if the government does start investigating them?

I'd say they will not go to the doctors at all.

. cobnjob - Apr 23 03:05pm

Excellent blog entry on a complex issue. Keep going Patrick.

. aleksey_tkachenko - Apr 24 07:40pm

Does anybody know what was the average marriage age of girls in Great Britain 300 years ago? If the humans live among the nature, they follow the nature. The problem here consists in the fact that these girls cannot be normally married in this society. So they are poisoned by chemicals, keep changing partners, become whores, etc. It is a big problem for their health and it is big problem for everybody's health also.

. halotestin - Apr 30 11:34am

To write this off as very mature just because pregnancy is somehow avoided is such an insult to the girls who really are victims, and also to society who would tolerate and even permit allow such a travesty to happen, more so to children.

. doctorwho1966 - Apr 30 07:48pm

get a life will u

. ronkpken - May 05 02:48pm

I am disgusted that Anna Bligh of all people is trying to justify this abuse to save her government from embarrassment. "Parental consent" does not make eeverything OK. Especially when the father is unknown/absent/abusive and the "parental consent" comes from a mother or "aunty" who herself has a history of abuse.

. suzanne_earley - May 07 11:31am

Clearly, the spectre of teenage pregnancy has not stopped underage sex, so why not be realistic about the fact of it and just remove the pregnancy option? Why allow a child who's making innumerable other mistakes in their life, to compound them by getting pregnant at such a young age? You can't stop people shagging, it's just what they do. What can be controlled should be.

. suzanne_earley - May 07 11:35am

Obviously it is an entirely different question if there is abuse involved - adults should not be given carte blanche with kids just because now they can't get pregnant. But again, the threat of pregnancy hasn't stopped much if any of that before, so removing the threat probably won't make that much difference to those statistics.

. bundy000bear - May 12 11:43pm

It's certainly a difficult problem, but I'm sure you're right in saying that if this was happening to white girls there'd be a major howl about it. Is it strictly confined to Aboriginals? Child abuse? Parental consent? Who could possibly know? Some might even plead cultural differences. At least the children aren't having children and facing all the medical problems of pregnancies and births in bodies that are too immature to deal with them.

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