Australia man who allegedly zip tied young Indigenous children's hands charged with assault

Police in Australia have charged a 45-year-old man with assault after a video clip went viral appearing to show him standing in front of young Indigenous children whom he'd restrained with zip ties.

Western Australia Police Acting Assistant Commissioner Rod Wilde said police received a call Tuesday afternoon from a resident in the town of Broome, who reported that children — later said to be aged six, seven and eight — were swimming without permission in an "unoccupied pool" at a neighboring property.

Ten minutes later, the police said they received a second call from the man, telling them he'd restrained the children for causing damage at the same location.

Officers who arrived at the home found the two younger children "physically restrained" with zip ties, and later found the eight-year-old boy who had fled the scene.

The police said the level of force used to restrain the children "was not proportionate in the circumstances."

The man, who has not been identified by the police, has been charged with aggravated assault.

The video that spread quickly online shows two of the children tied up and crying while onlookers shout at the man, who is white, to let them go.

"That was a very distressing piece of video that we all saw yesterday," Western Australia Premier Roger Cook said at a Wednesday news conference, according to the French news agency AFP. "I understand that raises very strong emotions in everyone but just please, everyone, let the police get on and do their job."

Cook said police would continue to "monitor the situation in terms of the community emotions up there and deploy resources appropriately."

The man was granted bail and was due to appear before the Broome Magistrates Court on March 25. 

The three children are under the age of criminal responsibility in Australia, which is 10, so even if they had been trespassing, they could not have been charged with any crime.

The treatment of Indigenous children is sensitive in Australia. Thousands of young Indigenous Australians were taken from their families and placed in foster care with white families or white-run institutions under government policies that continued into the early 1970s.

In 2008, the Australian government issued a formal apology for the decades of degrading and abusive policies.

"We apologize for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians," then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in Parliament at the time.

But incidents of abuse have continued to crop up, including video that prompted a formal investigation in 2016 showing Indigenous teens being tear-gassed, stripped naked and shackled to a chair at a state-run juvenile detention center. 

In:
• Indigenous
• Australia
• Racism
• Children
• Child Abuse