Me and everybody else who gets onto OLO have, very likely, never experienced the neglect, abuse and indifference of useless parents.

Indifference may turn out, on the long run, to be the most damaging cause of later delinquency: imagine if your mother didn't even react if you were hurt, or hungry, but simply looked somewhere else. If your parent couldn't care less if you were home or not, were hurt or not, were crying or not, had been abused or not, piss off, she's off to the pokies. Imagine if you were nothing but a meal-ticket - even if you died, the only sadness would be that your mum's fortnightly family benefits may be reduced.

I remember watching a young kid crying in his front yard, while his (presumably) parents sat on the front verandah and stared out into the distance. Maybe he was putting on a turn, but maybe not. After a while, the parents got up and strolled inside.

Another time, late one winter afternoon, a three-year-old was walking about aimlessly crying, dirty. A bloke strolled past, made some half-hearted comment and walked on. It was his sister's boy.

Indifference. Self-absorption. Self-centredness. Obliviousness to others. Whatever you call it, it breaches the obligations that a parent has to take proper care of their children.

In my limited research, I have not found any evidence of improper removal of children - except for that one case: Bruce Trevorrow in 1958. Otherwise, as far as I can tell, there was no such thing as a stolen generation. Neglected children, yes. Even abandoned children, yes. Skinny, starving children and fat adults, yes. [There's a research topic: measure how long, say, twenty parents spend eating, and how long their children spend eating. What would you expect to find ?]

Parents don't own children, they only borrow them until they are on their feet. They absolutely do NOT have the right to chronically mistreat them, and destroy their one and only lives.

Joe

Many learned persons and commentators (including articulate Indigenous persons) stress the vital importance of "culture" in the Indigenous world.

As a non-Indigenous person, I can never hope to fully understand this concept.

What puzzles me however is from what culture these young thugs emerge? It appears not to be from the "culture" mentioned above.

Would that not be a good place for the Royal Commission to start?

Joe, many nurses who came up to Darwin Paediatric ward from the eastern states were appalled to witness what to us locals was a normal scene. Skinny starving toddlers sitting crying in their cots, with their arms stretched through the bars towards a mother who was sitting on a chair next to them, stuffing their face with food.
Or also by the mothers from remote areas who would happily go shopping all day knowing their fully breast fed baby would be screaming in hunger all day because they wouldn't take a bottle from the nurse.
I don't know if it's a cultural hangover from the days when few children survived infancy, either by deliberate killing or illness and women learned to detach from their babies, and I certainly don't think these mothers didn't love their babies, but I do know that their bonding process was totally different to what we are used to.
Mind you, they have a totally different response to pain and violence as well, far more accepting so I get the feeling it's a cultural thing.

This less nurturing style of bonding is then compounded by the fact that in traditional life, and so on to today, children are never disciplined. They were allowed to do whatever they liked, including dangerous acts, without any repercussions apart from natural consequences like injury.
Before settlement, this didn't matter. Children were only children for a few years and at about age 9 or 10 were pushed into adult life and responsibility.
Boys went through initiation and suddenly became bound by an intricate and vast set of rules and obligations, the breaking of which would result in either severe injury or death.
Girls were given into the household of their promised husband and put under the control of the senior wife. Failure to obey any orders resulted in severe physical punishment, including a spear through the ankle to cripple the girl if she tried to run away.
I feel it is the combination of these two cultural hangovers that has contributed to the situation we now have in many areas, compounded of course by poverty, generational welfare and drugs and alcohol.
Addressing both problems would be a start.,

This another symptom of the ABC illness, presenting selected facts rather than accurate details.

Suggest read: http://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/2016/07/30/actions-of-guard-found-to-ensure-safety-of-dylan-voller/

The challenge remains to find a better way of dealing with these delinquents as youths, then later as adults.

Perhaps Australian needs consider the Norwegian corrective system.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-norways-prison-system-is-so-successful-2014-12

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What is the whole truth behind what happened to Dylan? Is this poor youth being subjected to undue force & why?

I just received a report on what was not reported by the ABC.

Here are some of the things which this poor mistreated child has been up to in the past few years.

In 2012 he blinded his mentor Andrew McAlly with a Fire Extinguisher because he didn't bring a Chocolate Bar for him. Dylan had to be secured so they could remove McAlly for emergency Treatment.

A troubled boy with behavioral problems, Dylan Voller has been in and out of juvenile detention since he was 11 years old for car theft, robberies and, more recently, assault. He’s one of the Northern Territory’s most notorious young offenders. Dylan has been convicted of more than 50 offences most of them violent.

He’d spat at detention centre staff hundreds of times and before he was strapped into that chair, footage not aired by the ABC shows the guards telling Voller he’d been chewing on his mattress and had “unfortunately ... put yourself in here by going at risk”. Voller replies: “I’m going to break my hand anyway ... I’ll snap my bone through my skin.” The guard then says Voller must then be strapped to a restraint chair to help him “keep chilling out”.

Voller’s record , showing a pattern of violence from the start
and for at least seven years now. Moreover, many of his attacks were on police and public servants trying to deal with him.