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Revealed: the horrific sexual assault of children on Nauru

Warning: you may find this distressing. But it’s something you need to know
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A helpless little boy had a guard put his hand up his shorts and “play with his bottom”.

A girl, not yet 10, undressed, bent down and invited adults to insert their fingers into her vagina.

A boy with a speaking disability sobbed to his father, trying to find the words to say he’d been slapped in the face by a guard.

A young girl shyly gestured to her vagina, because a male asylum seeker had “cut her from under”.

These are just four of more than 2000 leaked incident reports from Australia’s detention centre in Nauru, published by The Guardian today.  

The devastating documents detail the assaults, sexual abuse and self-harm of adults and children in detention. From May 2013 to October 2015, there were 59 reports of child assault, and 159 of threatened self-harm involving children. Not to mention the beyond-disturbing treatment of women, with one rape victim told by a guard that “rape in Australia is very common and people don’t get punished”.

The Guardian released the files as they believe we all have the right to know what’s going on in our offshore processing centres.

Because while tales of torture from Nauru and Manus Island are sporadically exposed, most of these stories remain untold, shrouded in secrecy. This raw evidence is impossible to ignore.

You can view the full database here.

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