A 37-year-old man has been arrested and charged with child abuse offences after allegedly sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl at a Darwin residence multiple times on Saturday, NT Police said.


A 37-year-old man has been arrested and charged with child abuse offences after allegedly sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl at a Darwin residence multiple times on Saturday, NT Police said.

Officers with the NT Police’s Territory Response Group were sent to Alice Springs over the weekend to assist with the town’s current crime surge that appeared to continue unabated, with a woman having her face slashed with glass in the street early Sunday morning, teens stealing a taxi, another woman being assaulted by two men and a man being knocked unconscious with a weapon the night before.

Police cars were rammed by a stolen vehicle during a pursuit through the Darwin northern suburbs overnight, that saw stolen liquor bottles thrown at police during the chase and a 14-year-old having his face cut up by a 13-year-old during a night of terror that also involved ram raids on a Leanyer bar and a woman being carjacked and threatened with a knife by the group.

Police Commissioner Michael Murphy flew to Singapore on holidays Thursday afternoon, after spending just a few hours in crime-stricken Alice Springs, a police source has said, while NT Police confirmed he was on “scheduled leave”, which came ahead of the Chief Minister also leaving town early.

Two men are in Katherine Hospital after being stabbed during a Thursday night home invasion, with one of the men suffering “stab wounds to his chest”, NT Police said.

The Finocchiaro CLP Government has announced a “Circuit Breaker Program” for Alice Springs in the wake of a surge of violent crimes in the troubled town that it says will address the “root causes” of crime, but the program as described is exactly what Labor announced in April.

Another planned arrest of an alleged domestic violence perpetrator in a remote community has gone wrong for police, this time with two officers having a large cup of a boiling liquid thrown on them, that required medical assistance, NT Police said.

A suspected member of the Mongols Motorcycle Club had his Darwin accommodation raided by police following allegations he assaulted and threatened to kill his partner, NT Police said, resulting in charges for the alleged assault, drugs and perverting the course of justice.

Video of a stolen ute in a remote community shows a different story to the one portrayed by police media in late October after a massive pursuit of another stolen ute involved up to 10 police vehicles – including the Territory Response Group – ending in what police described at the time as a “seamless coordination across multiple police teams and communities”, but which was a “volatile” and “dangerous” situation that put the public at risk.

Police are looking for a man who allegedly raped a woman in Lajamanu on Monday, NT Police said.

Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has committed to taking no action against five senior police officers who lied to the court about their involvement in the racist TRG awards, despite evidence the joint investigation by the ICAC and NT Police executive failed to properly review the officers’ criminal conduct.

A man has been charged after allegedly verbally abusing and physical threatening a flight attendant before punching him in the face when the plane was about to taxi before take off in Alice Springs, NT Police said.