Robert Bropho

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Robert Bropho (born 1930) is an indigenous Australian and activist and serial child sex offender from Perth, Western Australia. A judge described his crimes as the "lowest form of abuse imaginable", Bropho told the court that "I am the shadow of Martin Luther King and Gandhi."

He was leader of the Swan Valley Nyungah Community settlement for over 40 years. He organised the protest against redevelopment of the Swan Brewery, and was involved in the repatriation of Yagan's head. In 1986, he published Fringedweller.

In 2003, the Swan Valley Nyungah Community settlement was closed amidst claims of widespread sexual abuse, rape and substance abuse, after a 15 year old girl named Susan Taylor committed suicide. Taylor's mother, Lena Spratt, accused Bropho of sexual misconduct against herself and her daughter. In September 2004, Bropho was found not guilty of two charges of raping a teenage girl nearly thirty years before, after Mr Justice Mazza ruled to downweight DNA evidence that alleged the child was 3,134 times more likely if Mr Bropho was the father than a random person. In December 2005, he was found guilty of indecently dealing with a girl under the age of thirteen, and sentenced to twelve months' jail. On January 30, 2006, he was to be tried on a similar set of charges relating to another young girl who lived at the settlement. His appeal against his conviction was rejected by the Court of Criminal Appeal in June 2006.

Bropho was convicted in relation to five child sex incidents in the early 1990s, and sentenced to a further three years' prison. The judge, Peter Nisbet, found Bropho's longtime supporter Margaret Jeffrey, who testified in his defence, to have been untruthful, loquacious and evasive.

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