Little Children are Sacred is the report of a Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse commissioned by the government of the Northern Territory, Australia, was publicly released on 15 June 2007. The inquiry, chaired by Rex Wild and Patricia Anderson, was established in August 2006 and investigated ways to protect Aboriginal children from sexual abuse. The Wild/Anderson report is 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 concluded that sexual abuse 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."
The release of the report prompted the Australian Government to launch the Northern Territory National Emergency Response on 21 June 2007, which is in the process of being replaced by the Stronger Futures Policy of 2011.
The Clare Martin government responded denying inaction and released its detailed response Closing the Gap of Indigenous Disadvantage: Generational Plan of Action in August 2007
Read more about Little Children Are Sacred: Recommendations
Famous quotes containing the words children and/or sacred:
“In the planning and designing of new communities, housing projects, and urban renewal, the planners both public and private, need to give explicit consideration to the kind of world that is being created for the children who will be growing up in these settings. Particular attention should be given to the opportunities which the environment presents or precludes for involvement of children with persons both older and younger than themselves.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Whenever a mind is simple and receives an old wisdom, old things pass away,—means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it,—one as much as another.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)