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MOST Recently, we’ve been blasted with distressing accounts in the news of abuse rife in Aboriginal communities. While there’s no arguing the truth in these stories, YEN met with an Aboriginal woman with a terrifically positive outlook on life. Meet Auntie Ethel, an elder from NSW
Imagine the scene: You’ve been convicted of stealing and smashing up a car. But instead of standing silently in a court, listening to solicitors and magistrates, you have to face your aunties and grandparents, together with the owner of the car.
You have to explain to them why you did what you did, face their reprimands and then shamefully accept the sentence they impose on you.
Sounds incredible? Well it’s actually happening amongst Aboriginal communities all over NSW. Known as Circle Sentencing it has been set up in a bid to put a stop to the huge percentage of Aborigines repeatedly committing crimes and ending up in jail. And what’s more – despite the fact it’s only been in existence for four years, the results have been dramatic. It really does work.
A LEAP IN FAITH
The first Sentencing Circle was set up in Nowra under the guidance of Project Officer Gail Wallace. Gail was raised in the Jerringa Aboriginal Mission and remembers it as idyllic. “Everyone supported everyone else. Every adult was our auntie or uncle and it wasn’t only our parents who parented us it was our elders,” she says. After getting married and starting a family, Gail went on to study law and ended up in the Department of Public Prosecutions, advising on how to deal with Aboriginal witnesses in court.
It was there that she noticed how disturbing the statistics were. “My people made up two per cent of the community, but 29 per cent of the men, 30 per cent of the women and 40 per cent of the juveniles in prison were Aborigine.
“The problem was drink and drugs and once people got on the offending cycle, they found it hard to get off again. White people drink to socialise. Aborigines drink to drown their sorrows and we have a lot of sorrows.”
KEY CIRCLE MEMBERS
Gail believed that the key to breaking the cycle would be to identify the sorrow but there was no system in place for doing that – until she heard about Circle Sentencing. Originally started in Canada as a way of dealing with the similarly displaced Yukon Indians, it had been a phenomenal success.
“How it worked was that instead of being sentenced by a normal court, an Aboriginal offender could choose to come before a circular ‘court’ of his own elders, his victims, the police prosecutor and the magistrate,” says Gail. “The circle would discuss the offence and the offender and come up with a rehabilitation program and sentence that might stop him offending again.”
Gail began by picking the 20 elders who would sit in the Circle. She picked men and women from different areas but who also had different experiences and sorrows.
Uncle John Stuart, for instance, had been an alcoholic but had given up drink around 15 years previously. “I told him you can challenge offenders with drug and alcohol problems in a way a court never would,” Gail says.
She also chose Auntie Ethel Little who had lost a son through suicide, another through drink and had seen a grandson murdered over an argument about a girl.
“I said, ‘How can I go in and tell other people what to do when I couldn’t help my own sons?’” remembers Auntie Ethel but once she found out more about it, how it gave offenders a chance to talk in court and get help for their problems she decided to give it a go.
“I’d had a lot of experience with my own problems. I couldn’t help my sons or my grandson but I thought maybe I can help some other kids,” she says. And so it has proved.
HARD TIMES AHEAD
No-one involved in setting up Circle Sentencing would say that it was easy. “The first day was horrible,” admits Gail. “We had the magistrate with his doubts, the elders with their fear and mistrust... even though we were in a cultural centre so they felt comfortable, it was still panic stations. I just told them to be themselves and most importantly to speak in their own language. In court, they speak to Aboriginal offenders in standard English, and a lot of it goes over their heads.”
“It was hard when we started,” agrees Auntie Ethel. “We didn’t know what we had to say or do. Often we didn’t agree with each other but we found we could always talk it around and gradually we got our confidence and now we know how far we can go.”
MAJOR SUCCESSES
An example of the sort of case that comes before the group is that of the Aboriginal father-of-two with an alcohol problem. He was charged with assault and malicious damage and wanted to go into an alcohol program. “One of the aunties had been in such a program herself and was able to discuss it with everyone,” says Gail.
“That auntie also ended up supervising the offender through an anger management course while the male elders showed him how to be a better father to his children. “After serving six months home detention with a nine months good behaviour bond, the offender had completely broken his cycle of offending.”
The other huge, and perhaps unexpected, advantage of Circle Sentencing, is that it doesn’t only benefit offenders, it benefits victims too. One of its biggest fans is Geoff O’Connell who owns the Ford dealership in Nowra. His showroom was broken into by an Aboriginal offender who drove a ute around it Dukes of Hazzard style causing $86,000 worth of damage.
Geoff went to the Sentencing Circle and listened as the offender was given a two-year good behaviour bond. “I told them I didn’t think that was acceptable,” Geoff says. “That offence wasn’t just a shame for me, it was a shame for the whole community. Because of the loss of money, I’d had to abandon my plans to take on an apprentice, I’d had to withdraw a lot of my sponsorship of local sports teams. In all I’d been donating around $100,000 to the community and now that had to be cut by half.”
The elders agreed. They discussed the matter again and the offender was given weekend detention for a year.
“When I left, I felt this amazing sense of achievement,” Geoff says. “From a selfish point of view, I felt I had retribution. But I also felt it was wonderful that the elders had this input and, as a father myself, I raved about it for months. I thought we should be doing this for our kids. A young offender would feel vastly different if they saw the victims of their crimes, saw a young mum weep as she told them she didn’t feel safe in her house any more because someone had broken into it.”
Three months later, Geoff had a visitor to his garage. It was the offender who had broken into his showroom. “Mr O’Connell, I wanted to tell you I am sorry for what I did,” he said. “I appreciate how you felt and if you’d like me to work for you after hours, I’ll do it free to make it up to you.”
“You could’ve knocked me down with a feather,” Geoff says. He didn’t take the lad up on his offer, telling him the best way he could repay him was to stay on the straight and narrow but admits he was hugely impressed.
The Circle certainly isn’t an easy option, agrees Auntie Ethel. “It’s hard for a young person because down here we know everyone and they have to look us in the face and say what they’ve done. We really go crook at them at times and they have their cry and we give them their sentence and get them help with their problems.
“There’s only been one I’ve sent to jail and it was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life but he realised what we did was fair. There was no animosity because we are elders and he respected elders.”
The figures from Nowra are impressive. During the past four years, around 30 serious repeat offenders who were on their way to jail have come before the Circle. Five have still ended up going to prison but 26 people – some of whom had more than 150 convictions – have been saved and been turned back into valuable citizens.
As a result, Gail and other elders have been asked to set up similar programs all over NSW.
“I can retire happy because of what we’ve achieved here,” says Gail, 53. “I have such a love and respect for my people and now I feel I have contributed something to my community and all that nurturing and sharing and caring that I was raised with in the mission has been reincarnated in Circle Sentencing.”
Words Beverly Hadgraft
