A pregnant 23-year-old Somali woman, who said she was raped on the Pacific island of Nauru where she had been detained by the Australian authorities, has been brought to Australia for medical treatment, rights advocates said Monday. The case had gained notoriety after the Australian government refused the woman’s request to be allowed to come to Australia to terminate her pregnancy. Nauru, one of two islands where Australia detains asylum seekers who arrive by boat, does not allow abortions.Hugh de Kretser, executive director of the Human Rights Law Center, in Melbourne, Australia, said the government had granted the woman a visa to come to the country for treatment.“It’s a welcome move that she has been allowed to come, but it shouldn’t have taken this level of intense advocacy to get that to happen,” de Kretser said.The woman’s lawyer, George Newhouse, had appealed to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to allow the woman to leave Nauru.De Kretser said the woman was around 12 weeks into her pregnancy. Newhouse could not be reached for comment Monday.The woman, who has not been identified, is one of two Somali women who said they were raped on the tiny, desolate island, just south of the Equator, while they were outside the detention center.Australia refuses to accept asylum seekers who try to arrive by boat, instead sending them to Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, where they are held until their claim for asylum is assessed. The camps have been criticized by human rights groups and the United Nations for their harsh conditions. An Australian Senate report in August described conditions at the Nauru center as dangerous and intolerable.During an interview on ABC Radio on Oct. 1, Turnbull described the allegations of rape on Nauru as alarming and said the government had taken a number of steps to better ensure the safety of women and children on Nauru.In Parliament on Monday, however, he defended the government’s policy of turning back boats of asylum seekers at sea and using offshore camps to deter people smugglers who try to bring migrants to Australia, often on unseaworthy boats. He said the government’s policies were working, because fewer boats were arriving and fewer people were drowning at sea.The government’s policies also came under fire from doctors and nurses over the weekend. About 1,000 staff members of Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne picketed in front of the hospital Sunday, demanding an end to the detention of children.The hospital workers opposed the requirement that they release child detainees they treat back into detention. They said that returning children to unsafe conditions conflicted with their medical ethics.“Detention centers are not safe for children,” a group of doctors said in a blog post on the hospital’s website. “Children are exposed to the distress, violence and mental health problems of adults, and parents cannot protect their children from these circumstances.”Ian Rintoul, a spokesman for the Refugee Action Coalition in Sydney, said the police were not investigating the rape of the 23-year-old Somali woman, who had flown from Nauru to Brisbane, before arriving in Sydney on Monday for treatment.“The woman is not OK,” Rintoul said. “It is an extremely disgraceful situation, made worse by the fact the Australian government was so unwilling to transfer someone who so desperately needed medical help, not just for the pregnancy but after being raped.”In a statement released Monday, the police on Nauru said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the rape allegation by the other Somali woman, whom they named. The woman said she was attacked by two men, who had pulled their T-shirts over their faces to conceal their identities.The government’s two offshore asylum seeker centers have long attracted harsh criticism from human rights advocates. The Senate report said the asylum seekers were housed in moldy vinyl tents that trapped the heat and humidity, which was intense and unrelenting.Last week, the government of Nauru said it would relax the conditions at the center and allow the 653 asylum seekers, including 93 children, held there complete freedom of movement around the island, seven days a week.But lawyers from the Human Rights Law Center said conditions in the community were unsafe for women.“There is clear pattern of violence against refugee women on Nauru,” said Daniel Webb, a lawyer from the Human Rights Law Center. “Many of these attacks are happening outside the center in the Nauruan community. These women came to Australia seeking safety but continue to be left exposed to real danger.”Rintoul said the 23-year-old had been released from the detention center and was living on Nauru.Australia prohibits those granted refugee status from resettling in Australia if they tried to come by boat, but about 485 have been resettled in Nauru and four in Cambodia.(c) 2015 New York Times News Service..