Transcript
ANTON LUTZ: There's photographs of the torturers and their names are known to the police, and yet they have not been arrested. It's very difficult for the police to have adequate manpower and resourcing to go in there and deal with the community that vastly out-numbers them and perhaps out-guns them as well, and is not interested in surrendering their suspects.
JOHNNY BLADES: So that's the case with the torturers of that six year-old girl, it's known who the people were, but the police can't act on it in this case, because they would be outnumbered?
AL: Well that may be one of the reason. They may also have other reasons that they're unable to effect those arrests at this time, but I have not spoken with them about that recently. But I do know that all the police in Enga could go to that village and they would still be outnumbered.
JB: How is she, do you know?
AL: She's alright. She's doing well... better than we should be able to expect. I'm not sure where her eventual home will be, if it will even be in PNG. But she will be protected for the rest of her life, and we will keep her identity a secret, and hope that she's be able to live a full life.
JB: Who is doing the protecting?
AL: Well at this point, the state protection services are involved, and they've put her at a placement and so on. They have policies for all of that. So I'm not sure exactly where she is at the moment but she's being looked after in the child welfare system.
JB: And does she have a father or some caregivers from her own family?
AL: Not from her immediate family, no.
JB: The earlier attack (on the girl's mother) in 2013 was in Western Highlands. Did she have to move after that, or was she on the move at the time?
AL: So the way that went down was that the mother and father and this girl - she was just a toddler at the time - were in the house when the mob came, and the father grabbed the daughter and ran, and survived, and the mother was killed. So he took the girl to his home village and raised her there. And she was then attacked at the age of six in her father's home village in central Enga.
JB: Is this what happens, that it goes on, it extends to family members of the accused?
AL: Yep. And this is the hidden side of this crisis. For every allegation or accusation or attack that we see, it affects children, it affects siblings, it affects parents, and the entire family can become ostracised within their own community, and become complete outcasts. This will go on for generations unless rule of law is established and people become educated away from these beliefs. We don't simply rescue one woman. We have to then rescue her children, and we have to then rescue their children. It's just going to be decades of work trying to get these people to safety, whereas the communities will just happily torture them to death.
Meanwhile, PNG's Police Minister Jelta Wong disputed the claim that none of the suspects in the case had been arrested. He said four of the perpetrators of the torture had been arrested and would be going through the court process, while police would continue working to bring the rest of the suspects to justice.
