Australian police have charged a 45-year-old man with “aggravated assault” for allegedly binding three young Indigenous children with cable ties after they swam in a pool without permission.
Social media images appeared to show the tearful children, a six-year-old girl and two boys aged seven and eight with their hands tied together outside a home in Broome, Western Australia, during the incident on Tuesday.
One video on social media, widely broadcast by Australian media, showed locals shouting at a white man on the property, demanding in vain that he release the two youngest children after the eight-year-old had already fled.
“That was a very distressing piece of video that we all saw yesterday,” Western Australia Premier Roger Cook told a news conference on Wednesday.
“I understand that raises very strong emotions in everyone but just please, everyone, let the police get on and do their job,” he said.
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“Obviously the police will monitor the situation in terms of the community emotions up there and deploy resources appropriately.”
The treatment of Indigenous children is particularly sensitive in Australia. Thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their families and put into foster care with white families or institutions under assimilation policies that continued into the early 1970s.
Police in Broome told reporters they had received a report that children were swimming in an “unoccupied pool” at a home in the Broome suburb of Cable Beach.
“They arrived to find two of the children still cable tied”, said Western Australia police’s regional acting assistant commissioner Rod Wilde.
“They later located the eight-year-old boy who had fled before they arrived,” police said in a separate statement.
The man was taken into custody, charged and released on bail ahead of a court hearing in Broome Magistrates Court on March 25, police said.
Police said they acknowledged the challenging circumstances of the incident but urged the community to allow the court process to run its course.
