The mother of the young Indigenous children who were allegedly restrained by a man with cable ties in a driveway has spoken out about the traumatic situation.
“I was sad, upset, and very emotional,” the mum, Rowena, told A Current Affair. “I was afraid of him as well; he was very big, a big male.”
The incident took place on Tuesday afternoon outside a home in Broome, Western Australia, and came to the public’s attention because it was live-streamed on Facebook by one of the children’s relatives.
In the video, two children can be seen sitting next to a garage tied up, as the 45-year-old man argues with members of the public who are pleading with him to untie the children. In the footage, the six-year-old girl and seven-year-old boy can be heard crying.
Police were called to the home about 2.15pm on the day, and later found a third child, an eight-year-old boy, who they said had been detained but fled before police arrived.
The man who restrained the children alleges the three children snuck in to use his pool. He’s now been charged with three counts of aggravated assault as police allege the force the man used against the children was “disproportionate to what is reasonable in the circumstances”.
“They are small children, and they went for a swim,” Rowena said about the situation with her children, noting that she couldn’t begin to comprehend why the man did it.
“My boy was crying for water and I couldn’t even get him water,” she said, recalling that she had begged the man to let her children go and even tried to reason with the man by asking if he would like it if anyone would do that to his children.
The man has been granted bail and is due to appear in court at a later date, however, Rowena pointed out that she believed the response would be very different if the incident was the “other way round” and an Aboriginal man had been holding three white children hostage with cable ties.
“If he goes to court, the [hypothetical] Aboriginal man, I’m talking about,” she said. “He would have been gone, they wouldn’t even let him out of prison.”
On Wednesday morning, WA police acting assistant commissioner Rod Wilde said that after they went to the house to investigate, the man was taken into custody at a Broome police station, and “children under 10 are not going to be criminally responsible” for the man’s allegations of trespassing.
Officers called St John Ambulance to assess the children, who were then reunited with family members afterwards.
“Whatever force you apply to arrest someone needs to be reasonable, given the age of the person involved, the vulnerability, and all of those things that be taken into account by the court,” said Wilde, regarding how the police will allege the man’s force used to restrain the children was not appropriate.
“We’re engaging with the children’s parents … They’re certainly keen for the court process to run its course.”