Sydney Morning Herald: 140 Kids Grabbed In Raid On Sect
140 Kids Grabbed In Raid On Sect
Sydney Morning Herald/1992-05-16
By DEBORAH CORNWALL
More than 140 children - aged between two to 16 - are being held in custody following a series of dramatic dawn raids by police on homes in Sydney, Melbourne and country Victoria yesterday.
The raids, which targeted six communes believed to be linked with the controversial sect Children of God began at 6 am.
In Sydney's north-west, 72 children were taken into custody from four houses in Cherrybrook and Castle Hill while another 70 were taken from two houses in Victoria - one in the Melbourne suburb of Paton Hill.
Working jointly with police, social workers collected the children, many of whom were still sleeping, and took them to waiting buses while police marshalled the adults into one room and searched the houses.
Lawyers defending the parents of the 72 NSW children taken into custody last night demanded that the State Government return them to their parents immediately, claiming that the NSW raids - initiated by the NSW Department of Community Services - had been a "ghastly misjudgment".
However, NSW department sources last night defended the raids, saying that the children had been removed under the powers of the NSW Children's (Care and Protection) Act. This provides that children may be taken from their family if there is any reason to believe that they may be subject to neglect or emotional, physical or sexual abuse.
Social workers had been instructed not to take any children under the age of two unless there was clear evidence of physical abuse. Under the act, the department now had the right to keep the children in custody for a maximum of 72 hours before charges are heard before the Children's Court.
Police also seized a number of documents and videos during the raids, allegedly implicating the commune members in a number of illegal activities.
To date, only one adult has been charged over the raids after attempting to stop police from taking custody of several children at a home in country Victoria. Police, however, say they expect to lay further charges.
The Sydney lawyer Mr Chris Murphy, who is defending the parents of the NSW children, accused the department of "legally kidnapping" without any evidence that the children had been mistreated.
He also rejected claims that the parents were members of the Children of God sect, claiming that while some of the parents had been former members, they now lived in Christian communes which had no association with the sect.
"These raids were conducted with callous insensitivity," Mr Murphy told the Herald. "It really smacks of fascist lunacy".
In Victoria, where the matter went before the Children's Court last night, a Community Services Victoria official told the court that some of the children taken in the raid had suffered stress and trauma and the house they were living in was infested with rats and flies.
The two premises raided, the official said, had been used by a Children of God group.
The Children of God sect, formed in Dallas in 1968, has long been a target of local welfare authorities because of its alleged involvement in bizarre sexual practices.
The sect, which claims some 12,000 members world-wide, first arrived in Australia in 1972 and by the late 1970s had established communes in every State.
During a custody battle in the Victorian Family Court last March, a father of nine claimed that his children - aged two to 14 - would suffer emotional, physical, educational and sexual damage if they remained with their mother, a sect member.
The court was told that the sect advocated children having sex with adults and that pre-pubescent girls act in a "provocative, enticing and pleasing way".
The court was also told that young female members were encouraged to seduce men to gain money for the cult, a practice known as "flirty fishing".
