An Australian man who allegedly bound the hands of young Aboriginal children has been charged with assault

Australian police have charged a 45-year-old man with assault after a video went viral showing him standing in front of young indigenous children whom he was restraining with zip ties.

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

Ten minutes later, police said they received a second call from the man, telling them he had restrained the children because he had caused damage at the same location.

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

Police said the level of force used to restrain the children was “disproportionate to the circumstances.”

The man, who police did not identify, was charged with aggravated assault.

A video that has gone viral online shows two children tied up and crying as onlookers shout at the man, who is white, to let them go.

“This was a very distressing video that we all watched yesterday,” Roger Cook, the premier of Western Australia, said at a press conference on Wednesday, according to Agence France-Presse. “I understand this raises very strong feelings for everyone, but please, everyone, let the police do their job.”

Cook said police will continue to “monitor the situation in terms of community sentiment there and deploy resources appropriately.”

The man was released on bail and was due to appear at 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 trespassed, they could not be charged with any crime.

The treatment of Aboriginal 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 until the early 1970s.

In 2008, the Australian Govt He issued an official apology For decades of humiliating and abusive policies.

“We apologize for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and Governments that have caused profound grief, suffering and loss to our fellow Australians,” then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in Parliament at the time.

But incidents of abuse continued to arise, including… The video prompted an official investigation in 2016 The film shows indigenous teens being tear gassed, stripped and shackled to a chair in a state-run juvenile detention center.