New Data Exposed

Published Aug 13, 2024, 3:25 AM

In episode 10 hosts Amy McQuire and Martin Hodgson discuss a new set of data figures they have pieced together. The numbers highlight trends and patterns that defy the accepted status quo and challenge mainstream media assertions about the issue of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women and Children. 

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Podcast Unite Our Voices.

This is Curtain, a podcast where we expose the disappearances of Aboriginal people across this country, shining a light on the darkest parts of our justice system.

We ask who are the victims?

I'm aiming Macquire and I'm Martin Hodgson, Senior advocate at the Foreign Prisoner Support Service. And a warning. This series contains the names of deceased people and includes distressing content that may upset some listeners.

Hello and welcome to season two, episode ten of Curtin the Podcast. Last week you may have noticed that it was Missing Persons Week. There are several news reports across different mastheads about the need and the necessity for public support to help locate missing persons, and of course on this podcast, we've had a lot running focus this season on specifically the disappearances of Aboriginal women. Often, when these stories are spoken of and in Missing Persons Week, the racialized nature of these disappearances are not drawn out or are not the focus. And so last week my co host Martin Hodgson spent a lot of time during this week actually going back into the data that he's previously looked at before and looking specifically at the questions that are not often posed, and so we're going to have a discussion this week about some of his results that he found.

Martin.

I first wanted to ask you, why did you want to go back into the data, because I know that you've looked at it before and maybe you can provide our listeners with context about what that data is and what it can actually reveal to us. Yeah.

Absolutely so. Obviously, being Missing Persons Week, we saw a lot of information coming out from right across the media spectrum, as you mentioned, But the thing I've found really missing was the presence of Aboriginal women and children, despite them being the cohort that is most likely to go missing due to foul play in particular, and so to me that was obviously very troubling. But worse than that, in a way, was that the only mentioning of Aboriginal women and children I saw was being done by the families themselves. And once again we see Aboriginal families having all that onus placed on them to ensure that their loved ones are not forgotten and doing the work themselves that really, we pay enormous sums of money to police, search and rescue the Australian Federal Police Missing Persons Units to be doing and it just isn't done. And like so many of the social justice issues that Aboriginal and Terrestraate Island people face, too often, we see this huge burden of labor placed on Aboriginal families themselves to be doing the work. And it's so stark when you have a whole week dedicated to this issue and yet you just don't see the faces of the Aboriginal people who are missing. And to me, what really stood out was the Aboriginal women who are known to be missing, who are listed in the Missing Person's Register and the Australian Federal Police data, and yet there was nothing about them. And so part of what I wanted to do was to look at every single case in Australia that is listed with the police of a missing Aboriginal woman. We've done this before, but start to see again what really stands out in the data.

And I think you raised a number of important points, particularly around the erasure of Aboriginal women, and I think it's important to note that these stories are driven by the police, and so it's I feel there are certain reasons why Aboriginal women aren't spoken about as often a missing person's week. But I was just wondering, Martin, what were the first things that stood out to you when you went back into the data, particularly because I know you've looked at it before, what things stood out for you compared to the last time that you actually looked at it. Yeah.

So, I mean, some of the common factors still remain, and one of them is the enormous problem of missing Aboriginal women in Western Australia. So thirty nine percent of all missing Aboriginal women come from Western Australia, and the vast bulk of those are from the Broom Kimberly region. And there's a few things that hits you on the eat immediately about that, and one of them is actually in relation to another case we've spoken about, that of Jo Rivers, because despite the fact that Jo, a young Aboriginal man, went missing in Queensland, because of the way the system works, the missing person's command is run from whichever police station that person is reported missing to, and his family, being from the Kimberley somewher in the NT, reported him missing to the Broom Police And so immediately what I knew is a the Broom police, having worked with Jo's family, have done nothing whatsoever to help them. And now I see this enormous number of Aboriginal women still going missing from that area. So clearly the police in Broom, not only are they not doing their job in terms of looking for Aboriginal women, looking for any Aboriginal people, using their social media platforms, using the media itself, especially during things like missing persons weak to raise awareness, but they're clearly not also aware of the fact, or maybe they are. I mean, they're either incompetent or lazy beyond belief. And that's being nice about it, that the real hotspot is in their jurisdiction and they're doing absolutely nothing about it. And so a few things stand out there that how can you have in such an enormous country, this one area where nearly forty percent of all Aboriginal women are missing are coming from. And the fact that none of those women have been found. And then again, as we know, the second major hot spot was the Northern Territory, largely around Alice Springs, and that stood out again because we see so much about tough on crime around Alice and all this nonsense rehtric that gets whipped up and targets Aboriginal people with extra police being sent to the community. And again, none of the women who are missing from that area were featured in any of the police press releases during Missing Persons Week, so you know, they seem more than comfortable to go into communities and claim they're doing it for law and order and all of this nonsense that's really just driven around electoral politics and winning votes. It's not about helping people. And yet all the missing women, Aboriginal women from that community are given no assistance and nora of their families, and very little effort was put into any of these cases in the beginning, let alone now when the police have all the information they need and just can't be bothered. And then the third hotspot is of course Queensland, and there's a number of cases we've spoken about so in terms of the areas that Aboriginal women are going missing from, rural and remote Western Australia and the Northern Territory just amount for more than fifty percent in total. And then Queensland has quite a unique issue that continues to stand out, which is Aboriginal women who are going missing and many of whom have been murdered and that appears to be quite a unique issue to Queensland, and again the police are doing nothing about it whatsoever.

Yeah, I was just going to say that, Martin.

One of the things that constantly, you know, particularly around this week, is just seeing the pictures and the missing person's lots, and that they're the alerts that I've kept seeing for years now that come up on social media, but the words.

Never really change.

And when I see these images and I've become so like it's like I recognize these women because I recognize their photos because I see them so often in certain times of the year, usually around Missing Persons Week, where people on social media are sharing it.

But I keep thinking, because we just see the same.

Lines and the police aren't doing anything, I keep thinking it's entrenching that disappearance of the woman.

You know what I mean.

And I feel that with a lot of the women that I know have been disappeared from Queensland. And I think you're right in bringing out that there are these geographical areas that are particularly hot spots and there are very specific circumstances that are affecting each women and I think it falls back on that history. But it also falls back on the police, and I think that's where we see the erasure of these stories because in every single story, at every single case of disappearance that I've looked at, the police are behind the reason the disappearance. The women have not been found. You know, there are reasons that they have not been found. And so I was wondering whether the data says anything about the police complicity or their failure to actually adequately search or actually do everything they can to find the women, because I think that's what's also you know, to use the word missing, that's what's also missing in a lot of this coverage Missing person's week.

Yeah, so something really big jumps out when you analyze the data and compare it to the over five hundred long term missing people in Australia. So when you look at that cohort of everyone across the board in Australia who is missing, the vast majority are missing either after leaving their workplace, leaving school, or leaving their home. And so one thing police often look for is what did the person either leave behind in their home or what did they take with them, And so one of the things we know is that if someone leaves their home, leaves behind their wallet and their mobile phone. Then there's really sort of two possibilities, which is that they were taken against their will or they've left and left tragically, usually as a result of a mental health episode, which means that finding them is immediately is very important. But again, so what we're seeing is that a huge number of the entire missing person's population leaves from places known to them and someone has seen them not long before they leave, and that information and data can be very localized and put out very quickly across the board, both to police circles, local medical centers and hospitals. But in the case of Aboriginal women, of all the Aboriginal women who are missing around Australia, fifty percent have gone missing outside of their own community and a considerable distance outside of their own community and away from their family. Firstly, this shows something quite disturbing to me, which is that Aboriginal women, when they're away from their family and their community, become very vulnerable and become targets. And that's something this nation has got to grapple with that Aboriginal women away from the protection of their family and community become very vulnerable and at fifty percent. This is such an outlier and I can't believe that police aren't focusing on it. It becomes an even bigger issue in that the police do almost nothing to search for them because they are away from their family. As I spoke about before, so much of what we see during Missing Persons Week is families advocating for their own loved ones, Aboriginal families. And yet when someone goes missing outside of their own community, in the large part, their own community and family doesn't necessarily know a lot about the town or city where that Aboriginal woman has gone missing from, and it becomes so much harder for them to do that advocacy work. And here we see the police completely fail. And what happens, as I explained, is that, for example, if an Aboriginal woman is from Brisbane and goes missing in Sydney, she's away from her community. Her family will normally report her missing in Brisbane and say we have not heard from her, We're worried she didn't arrive at where she was going, we haven't received any phone calls. And now you have this issue of Brisbane police are supposed to be working with the police in Sydney and it simply doesn't happen, and so there's delays to searchers, there's searches that simply never take place, there is a huge lack of support for the family. There's the fact that there are no broadcasts done to medical services, hospitals, Aboriginal medical centers, to police patrols to be on the lookout in those first twenty four to forty eight hours. And as we know all too often, the fact is that Aboriginal women end up disappear into this system that simply doesn't care about their welfare, let alone locating them. And that just becomes so much harder when they're away from their community and from their family.

And I think when we look at this Martin, when we're looking at all of the reasons in which disappearance is entrenched, or the conditions that allow for Aboriginal women to be disappeared, the most easiest explanation that the police can use or almost like an excuse for their own failures, is to claim this myth of transience or walk about which is specifically connected to what you're talking about. Around the phenomena of Aboriginal women being disappeared away from their community.

It becomes a very very easy.

Way of excusing their own failures and even being able to talk about these cases in ways that they can say that they're always searching for the women. They never stop searching missing persons investigations and never closed. For example, they're always going to talk about transients, but in a way it's framed around walk about, which is seen as this biological trait of Aboriginal women, specifically that they're just going to go walk about. Did that come out in your data as well when you were looking at it.

Yeah, absolutely so. One of the things I was looking at was how quickly is a search commenced? And the longest it took for one search to commence after an Aboriginal woman was reported missing was fourteen months. Over a year. We talk about the first forty eight hours, and really those first few hours being critical. I mean, fourteen months is criminal in its negligence and failure. And again all the excuse making was down to the fact that the police claimed later they couldn't explain really why it took so long, but largely they relied on this myth, as you explain, of this average woman in particular being transient, potentially being in other towns with family members when it simply was not the case. And something that really strikes me when you read these police reports and you look at missing people across the board. When the average Australian goes missing, especially in a rural or regional community, there is this sort of parochial thing from the police where it's almost like they feel an obligation to find an outsider who has either gone missing, is lost, or to some harm inside what they consider their community. And yet when it comes to Aboriginal women, it's total opposite. All of that sort of country hospitality goes out the window and there is a zero lack of care and so just a language from police around that where police speaking about non Indigenous people talking about how important it is to them to find that person because they've gone missing in their community, the police officer's community, and it's a community they know, they know the local geography, they know the issues of that community. And yet and so they commit large amounts of resources. And yet when Aboriginal women go missing, it's almost like they claim they were never in their town to begin with. And there we have another form of disappearance, which is almost to pretend like they were a ghosts who never passed through, and you can begin to understand very quickly why there are so many Aboriginal women and children who are missing. And something that is hard to bring out from the data, but is something that we do know, is that so many of the cases where we've worked with the families we've looked much more deeply into the background, is that Aboriginal women who do go missing outside of their communities and away from their families are much more likely to be murdered. And the police have to know this. And we've seen this with Miss Watchow and Miss Bernard in Queensland just recently, both Aboriginal women who were murdered and where the police have bungled beyond belief investigations. There is now charges in the case of Miss Bernard, but the time it took to get there is completely unacceptable and would never have happened if it wasn't for the pressure that the family and the family supporters applied throughout a coronial process. So again, you know, that's this extra layer of disappearance when it comes to how long a search takes to commence and whether a search is done at all or in a meaningful way.

Madern.

Just in closing, you know we're talking about we just had Missing Persons Week last week, but we're coming up to I think next week the Senate inquiry into Missing a Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls is due to be handed down, and that's.

Been continually delayed.

I think it's even been delayed a month since it was last delayed, so it's been a process of continual delay. I've spoken to the enquiry a couple of times, and I know you spoke to it in Melbourne. You know, this is something that we've been looking at for a long time. We're both intensely passionate about this issue gaining prominence. What do you think could come from this inquiry?

Well, I hope there is a lot that comes from it. One of the calls I made was for there to be a national body that assists families and works with families to help them navigate these hurdles, whether it be when their loved one goes missing in a community outside of their own, whether it be navigating the issue of someone going missing into state where you're having to deal with two, potentially three different state police services as well as the AFP. But you know something that this data reaffirmed to me was the fact that some of the committee members do not understand this issue. So I just don't hold out high hopes. You know, the fact that fifty percent of Aboriginal women go missing outside of their community, and yet when I gave evidence there was an enormous amount of pushback to that, Well, the data just doesn't lie. And the fact there was so much emphasis on what can local Aboriginal communities do again it's a victim blaming of what about the services that are funded to do it? And the other thing I raised, and again it was brought out in the data that we've looked at in the past and that came up this week, and that is the most current data, is that twenty five percent of Aboriginal women who are currently missing had access to medical service just before their disappearance. And so this goes to some of the racism and negligence in the healthcare system. And again, the committee was loath to tackle this issue, let alone sort of accept any written or verbal submission on these grounds. You know, a quarter of Aboriginal women who go missing have just accessed a medical service. You know, they're away from their communities, they're sick, they've tried to seek help, and they are being failed at every level that government is supposed to resource and provide assistance. And so I just don't hold out high hopes. I hope it's good, but I just worry that everything we've been concerned about won't be addressed. So, just in closing, Amy, what do you think might be the outcome or how do you see it coming down?

I think I'm similar to you, and I really hope we're I really hope we're both wrong.

I've always felt that this inquiry has just been a bit of box ticking because when I've appeared before it, I feel like the questions have not been that in depth. When I read the transcripts of the hearings, I don't see, you know, what we're actually looking at and what we're researching and what we're seeing through sitting with families or sitting through in quests. I just don't get a sense that that is coming through. And so I really hope we're both wrong. But yeah, I think what we can take from it as at least it is just one document that we can keep, you know, building to push awareness in some way. I think that's what we can hope for it and keeping in mind that, you know, even the inquiry over in Canada, which was very landmark in so many ways, very historic and came from decades of advocacy from Aboriginal women and families over there, even now that has not led to any changes. I think there's been two recommendations that have been put in place since that landmark inquiry, which came down in twenty nineteen. And so even as you were talking about their refusal to you know, or their disinterest in a lot of the things that you were raising, I kept thinking of, you know, this is box sticking in the sense that they look for recommendations that they can recommend that aren't going to rock the boat too much, and they know that will probably not be ever honored.

By government in any way.

Yet. Hold, I mean, especially when you look at funding, like we know that all of these sectors around community control sectors are always underfunded and in fact money gets taken away so often, and so I feel that you know, these state processes, these reports.

They're not the answer in any way.

And that's almost like a general comment, but it's also a comment directly related to this inquiry. But It's something that's not unique to Australia because we've seen it happen in a much more historic and far reaching inquiry over in Canada, which has still led to no outcome as well.

Yeah, and I think that goes to why we are doing this work, why we need to continue to do this work, and why we want to and will continue to support all the families that we can whose loved ones Aboriginal women and children are missing and have been disappeared and are not getting the help they deserve. So join us on the next episode where we will dissect that inquiry. This episode was brought to you by black Cast and produced by Clint Curtis. For more you can visit us at www dot Curtain Thepodcast dot com, follow us on Twitter at Curtain Podcast, and help to support our work at Patreon dot com backslash Curtain Podcast

Curtain The Podcast

This is Curtain – a podcast where we pull back the blinds to shine a light on the darkest parts of o 
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