Rachel Hale, nurse who witness youths laying siege to Alice Springs hotel, breaks silence

A nurse who filmed teenagers punching and spitting on patrons at an Alice Springs pub claims the youths are on the streets so they aren’t raped at home.

Rachel Hale was staying at the Diplomat Hotel in the remote Northern Territory town and feared for her life as dozens of youths caused chaos downstairs.

Alice Springs has been gripped by a crime  crisis over the past few months where gangs of youths roam the streets looking for trouble.

Ms Hale said Saturday was the most terrifying night of her life as the youths laid siege to the hotel from about 7pm until police arrived about 10.30pm.

‘I feared for my life that night, I was petrified in that room because I couldn’t leave because they were down there,’ she told Daily Mail Australia.

‘If you call the police you’re on hold for 30-45 minutes and they may not even come because they’re stretched so thin.’

Ms Hale said after the police arrived and the teens fled, the pub shut early and the staff and security left – leaving no protection for hotel guests like her when the youths returned 45 minutes later.

‘I was worried they could scale the fence and my screen door only had a flimsy lock on it and they could smash the glass,’ she said.

‘So there was nowhere for me to go and there were so many of them.’

Much of the blame for the violence has fallen on alcohol bans in Aboriginal communities outside of Alice Springs being lifted in July.

But Ms Hale claimed the main reason kids were on the street was because of their deplorable home lives and vicious sexual assaults in the communities.

‘None of the children I saw that night were intoxicated, but they were filled with rage and hatred,’ she said. 

Often during her 14 years of nursing in communities near both Alice Springs and Darwin, when she was called to a remote Aboriginal home another nurse was sent because the visits were so unsafe. 

‘Some of these houses have 10-15 people sleeping on the floor of a three-bedroom house. There’s no personal hygiene, there’s lice, scabies, fungal rashes, maggots in wounds, perforated ear drums – the level of care is shocking,’ she said.

‘That’s why the kids are not at home, along with the viscous sexual assaults. The parents, the uncles, the cousins are all drinking and the kids are being preyed upon.

‘The wives are being beaten in front of the kids, check any emergency department and you’ll see the horrific injuries.’

Rachel Hale was staying at the Diplomat Hotel in the remote Northern Territory town and feared for her life as dozens of youths caused chaos downstairs

Ms Hale recalled horrifying incidents and injuries seen by herself and nursing colleagues of children as young as two being raped.

‘It’s hard to talk about, but the physical trauma that these kids have endured is hard to comprehend,’ she said.

‘My colleagues told me about witnessing an eight-year-old girl being raped by a man who had covered her lower half with butter.

‘She didn’t scream or cry or resist because she was so used to it.’

Ms Hale said she saw very young children and toddlers with sexually transmitted diseases, including a whole family with the same strain of gonorrhea – both children and parents.

‘I’ve seen a four-year-old boy in a clinic with anal warts and a sex-year-old girl with vaginal sores,’ she said.

‘Children petrified to come in [to medical clinics] with their mothers as “daddy will find out” and the abuse will escalate.’

Ms Hale said alcohol did play a big role, as it perpetuated the abuse children faced at home and shaped their lives as they grew up.

‘I’ve seen babies dehydrated as their mother wouldn’t breastfeed and were drinking alcohol and pregnant women pickling their babies with a bottle of rum each day while six months pregnant,’ she said.

‘Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are very common and often used as a defence in court to excuse behaviour. 

‘Some feed a toddler a can of Coke and a packet of chips for the day and that’s it.’

As terrifying as the scenes outside the Diplomat were, Ms Hale said many other nights in Alice Springs were far worse. 

‘Locals tell me that some nights the kids will go on a rampage and all the car windows and all the shopfronts in town will be smashed,’ she said.

‘There’s break-ins – they’re not really taking anything except alcohol they just smash up the shops, it’s complete destruction. 

‘Then there’s the constant home invasions – there was a 17-year-old who broke into two elderly women’s homes on the weekend while out on bail. People are afraid to go to sleep, they’re afraid in their own homes.’

Ms Hale lives in Darwin but runs a business in Alice Springs that brings her to the town every two months.

She fears she will have to shut the business down because many of her clients were fleeing the town – though they found it almost impossible to sell their homes. 

The moment the girl on the left in the white top spits through the fence on a young man drinking in the pub beer garden

Before the spitting, the girl and other teens hurled abuse at patrons, including calling a woman a ‘white b***h’ and other ‘white c**ts’

Ms Hale’s footage from Saturday night showed a girl hurling abuse through a fence at patrons as they sat drinking in a pub beer garden. 

‘You ugly, I’m prettier than you with my black skin, you white b***h,’ she yelled before taunting other patrons and calling herself an ‘African queen’.

Another teenage female appeared next to her and spat through the fence on to a young man sitting at a table.

He immediately jumped up in disgust and stormed towards the fence yelling at them and preparing to throw his drink as they ran away, still taunting him.

‘You’re a white dog, you are, ruff ruff ruff,’ she called to him while a younger boy shouted ‘f**k you’.

Another video showed a male youth aggressively confronting patrons at the pub’s gate before retreating outside where a young man was trying to defuse the situation.

The pub patron put his arm out in front of him to protect himself and pushed the first teen away, prompting a flurry of punches in response.

He at first only tried to block the incoming blows and push the attacker away, but it escalated to a brawl after the indigenous teen challenged him to a fight and kept hitting him.

The young white man at first only tried to block the incoming blows and push the attacker away, but it escalated to a brawl after the indigenous teen challenged him to a fight and kept hitting him

The man quickly grappled his opponent and threw him to the ground, but he was able to regain his feet after a friend intervened.

The fight continued until two other youths decided to gang up on him and he retreated from the fray.

Standing alongside the other two, the black youth tried to goad his opponent into continuing the fight but this time he didn’t take the bait.

A third violent video showed a youth approach the pub wielding a large tree branch that he used to try to attack drinkers over the fence with.

One pubgoer tried to block the attacks the a broom, until the attacker hurled the branch into the beer garden and left.

Another video showed a man wearing an Akubra chasing after indigenous youths who allegedly stole items from his ute while he was in it.

He tried to grab one of them before another youth punched him in the head from behind.

A fifth video showed an older Aboriginal man screaming incoherent, angry abuse through the fence of the pub, without any apparent provocation.

A third violent video showed an Aboriginal youth approach the pub wielding a large tree branch that he used to try to attack drinkers over the fence with – prompting one to use a broom to try to block it

A fifth video showed an older Aboriginal man screaming incoherent, angry abuse through the fence of the pub, without any provocation

The last video showed a youth pulling a rubbish bin out of its mounting and carrying it across the road towards the pub like a weapon.

Suddenly a police car arrived at the scene and he and more than a dozen other youths sprinted away before officers could give chase.

‘Kids taunting adults and spitting on ‘white c**ts’, stealing from cars out the front, very young children on the streets, disgusting violence, pack hunting and the level of hate displayed towards people in the firing line will haunt me,’ Ms Hale said.

‘Police struggle to apprehend anyone – they run as soon as they see them. I feel sick to my stomach seeing this and also having to stay here.

‘Everything has closed, police have left, but the kids remain. Not much sleep – one of the most frightening nights of my life. It went on all night long.’

Ms Hale said the town council tried to cover the worst of the problem up when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flew in to Alice Springs on Tuesday. 

‘They rounded up and bussed out all the kids so there was nothing to see. Disgraceful. Confront the problem head on, don’t cover it up,’ she said.

The last video showed an Aboriginal youth pulling a rubbish bin out of its mounting and carrying it across the road towards the pub like a weapon

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Ms Hale’s videos are some of the dozens locals posted of violence and break-ins across the town in the past few weeks. 

Another poster described their terrifying experience when shutting up shop at the Cignall tobacco store when ‘6-7 kids entered the shop’ and started grabbing things.

When the man screamed at them and pushed the last kid out, they started banging on the glass windows.

Crime and lawlessness in the Outback town entered the national spotlight this last with reports up to 200 children roam the streets at night, breaking into homes and businesses and stealing and burnings cars.

Some locals claim the violence intensified when alcohol bans in indigenous villages miles outside the town were lifted, and residents drunkenly came to Alice Springs.

Alice Springs and Tennant Creek have about 25 of the Territory’s 43 town camps in their vicinity. 

Cars are regularly stolen, broken into and torched in Alice Springs, meaning residents cannot leave their vehicles unattended in the street

Locals report seeing people so desperate for alcohol they mix hand sanitiser with water or orange juice and drink it in front of children.

A map of recent properties up for sale shows that locals are fed up and fearing for their safety as alcohol-fuelled violence increases and even the mayor says he ‘can’t blame them’.

Approximately 200 properties are up for sale in the outback town which has a population of 26,000 as some residents express fears the region will become a fly-in fly-out town for workers.

Toni Rowan from Alice Springs Realty said residents were moving out because they wanted a safe place to raise their children.

Crime was the worst she ever saw since she moved to the town in the 1990s and five people a week wanted out.

‘I live in fear. People have threatened to burn my house down, kill my dogs, to rape me. They’re out of control. People come in from the community and yell and scream,’ she said.

‘You go out and say, ‘can you please be quiet’ and it escalates to ‘you’re a racist’.’

As youth crime sweeps Alice Springs sales data reveals 200 properties are up for sale as locals are packing up and leaving town

Supermarket giant, Woolworths, had to close security doors to exits at its Alice Springs store (pictured) while shoppers were still inside to try and curb violent incidents

Mayor Matt Patterson understood why there was a mass exodus as locals couldn’t stay ‘when they’re scared to sleep at night’.

‘Lots of people are just saying that the perception of fear is the reason they’re going — they’re sick of being broken into, can’t afford to continue replacing windows, can’t continue to have their businesses broken into,’ he said.

During a brief visit to the town last week, Mr Albanese announced new alcohol restrictions and promised $48.8 million over two years for programs to address the crime problem.

Measures implemented included a ban on takeaway alcohol sales on Monday and Tuesday as well as limits on bottle shop opening hours.