Fed: Police may report next week on Woomera child sex claim

AAP General News (Australia)
12-15-2000
Fed: Police may report next week on Woomera child sex claim

PERTH, Dec 15 AAP - An inquiry by police into child-sex abuse claims concerning a 12-year-old
boy at the Woomera detention centre could report early next week, Immigration Minister
Philip Ruddock said today.

South Australia police and the state's Department of Family and Children's Services
had recently found, after investigating child-sex allegations against the boy's father,
that there was no evidence to sustain the claims, Mr Ruddock said today.

However, he said the department had reopened the investigation upon learning it had
not had access at the time of its inquiry to an incident report which may have been relevant
to the case.

Mr Ruddock said the allegations at the centre of the case were that the boy's faster
sold the youngster for sex so he could buy cigarettes.

The claims centred on "assumptions" from a nurse who reported last month that she was
concerned upon seeing the boy leaving a toilet block "holding his bottom", the minister
told Perth radio 6PR.

SA police were not immediately available to comment on when the outcome of their investigation
would be made public.

A separate, federal government inquiry, headed by former Foreign Affairs and Trade
Department secretary Philip Flood, is being held into procedures regarding abuse allegations
at detention centres.

Among a range of issues, that inquiry is probing why SA authorities did not have access
to an incident report concerning the 12-year-old boy at the time of its initial inquiry
into the sex-for-cigarettes claims.

AAP sd/wjf/cjh/br

KEYWORD: WOOMERA

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