The Director of Public Prosecutions has decided not to lay charges against former Barkly Regional Council mayor Jeffrey McLaughlin for sitting on a child while another man abused him, in what he later claimed was a citizen’s arrest, NT Police said.

The NT Independent published two videos, one on October 6, 2023, and the other on October 7, 2023, depicting Mr McLaughlin sitting on a 12-year-old Indigenous boy who was lying face down on the grass while being abused by himself and another man. The mayor had said the incident happened two months earlier on August 21 last year.

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