Natives on Assault Charges

Old NG Bogey Raises Its Head

Prom Our Own Correspondent SEVERAL natives have been charged in Lae recently with assault and at tempted rape against European women and children.

District Office and police have acted promptly but in these cases prevention is better than cure. < The following points, brought out in recent Supreme Court proceedings sug gest how European residents can help: • There are always in towns such as Lae, Rabaul, Madang, etc., native men and youths who have been expelled from their own villages or have left of their own accord because they are unable to conform to village codes of behaviour. • Many labourers come from remote villages and while they have left their own standards behind they have not yet grasped the standards expected of them in the towns. • Many labourers in Lae are men with out female company. • Many European parents are in the habit of leaving young children in the care of native servants for long periods.

Many of these servants have been brought up in villages where sexual practices are common knowledge to all children and where sexual codes are different to our own. In some cases the extent to which small European children use Pidgin sexual terms is shocking. • Standards of dress which are customary and considered decent “down South” are sometimes not suitable for New Guinea. Care should be taken by European women to appear before their servants adequately clothed. • Some social behaviour on the part of Europeans, particularly at parties, lowers white prestige in the eyes of the natives and is likely to have undesirable conse quences, not necessarily to the offenders but to some innocent woman or child.