Pinkenba Six
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The Pinkenba Six is a group of Queensland police officers accused of the abduction of three Aboriginal boys in May 1994. Each of the six (Kelly Hanlen, Anthony Venardos, Barry Donelly, Matthew Johnson, Mark Ellis, Mark Henderson) were charged with three counts of deprivation of liberty.[1] The six were not jailed and the charges were dropped.
The three boys, aged 12, 13, and 14, were ordered into a police car by the six officers in the neighbourhood of Fortitude Valley in the inner city suburbs of Brisbane, Queensland.[2] Each boy was driven in a separate patrol car to a swampy industrial area in Pinkenba at 4 a.m.[3] The officers threatened to throw the boys into the swampy area, and referred to a place where people's fingers were cut off, in order to get them to comply with their demands. The boys were abandoned after their shoes were removed.[4] The boys later retrieved their shoes and began to walk home. They finished the journey in a taxi paid for by a security guard they met along the way.[5]