Writing in Quadrant last November, Bubbles Segall, a worker for 36 years in Northern Territory community health, instanced these cases of violence:
“A woman is repeatedly evacuated from a remote community health centre to hospital with multiple fractures to the bones in her hands and burns to her vagina. On each of these occasions, her husband, in fits of jealous rage, has put burning sticks into her vagina and broken the bones in her fingers…
“A nurse is called out at midnight to attend to a woman who has been brutally bashed by her husband. She is six months pregnant with her first child. In a jealous, drunken rage, her husband accused her of talking to another man earlier in the evening. She is bleeding profusely from a head wound caused by a partial avulsion of her scalp. She has also sustained a partial tear to an earlobe. She is bleeding copiously from her vagina. Her husband has kicked her repeatedly in the abdomen. Her wounds are treated, she sustains a miscarriage and is evacuated by air ambulance to the nearest hospital that night.”
Segall finishes:
“These situations are not unique or far and few. They are everyday occurrences in many communities, and there are thousands of similar examples which to health workers gradually become overwhelming and disheartening.”
These instances could be called anecdotal. For those preferring data, see the NT crime statistics for 2007-12, released late last year by the new CLP government.
www.nt.gov.au/justice/…/nt_annual_crime_statistics_2012.doc