‘Benign Pessimism’: A National Emergency

Abstract

In 2006, on Australian television, Nanette Rogers, a Northern Territory Public Prosecutor, shocked a national audience with extreme examples of child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities. When asked why she thought such things were happening, she explained:

the malaise is mostly because of the entrenchment of violence in the whole of the community. But there is also a second aspect and that is that Aboriginal people here are overwhelmed time and time again by a fresh new tragedy. (Rogers, 2006)