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Bathiudeen maid another grim notch on child abuse tally
The case of the domestic maid who died at MP Rishad Bathiudeen’s house has again highlighted the vulnerability of children and young people in this country.
Recent reports of sexual abuse of children have shocked the country, a notorious case being the 15-year-old girl in Mount Lavinia who was being sold online by her own family.
That case was immediately followed by a report from Nawalapitiya of a 13-year-old girl who was being sexually abused and sold for sex by her biological father and his female friend.
Protests were held across the country demanding justice for the girl who worked as a maid at former minister Rishad Bathiudeen's Colomob residence and died of burn injuries. The protesters also called on the Government to take measures to end child labour. Pic by Manura Sellahewa and G.K. Krishanthan
To crown it all, this week a 19-year-old domestic helper at MP Rishad Bathiudeen’s home committed suicide and died of burn injuries.
The inquest revealed that she had been sexually abused for some time. Police are continuing investigations.
The National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) said an average 8,500 cases of child abuse have been reported in the past several years; a quarter involve cruelty.
In 2020, even during the pandemic lockdown time, the complaints never ceased, with the NCPA overwhelmed with calls: 8165 cases of abuse of children were reported that year. Of these, 2237 were classified as cruelty to children, 518 as sexual harassment, 373 as grave sexual crime, 82 as trafficking and 50 as domestic violence.
For the first half of this year, the NCPA hotline received around 48,000 calls, of which 4,000 involved complaints of child abuse.
The NCPA has been accused of not coming up with a comprehensive program to combat the problem but it has also been pointed out that the body is hamstrung by vastly inadequate funding.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child which met in May 2019, in its concluding observations noted, from a report submitted by Sri Lanka on the Optional Protocol II (OP) on the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, that this country, although in its final stage of developing a national child protection policy, lacks a comprehensive national plan to address the issue.
It noted that although the country has integrated Convention and OP provisions into the national Children’s Charter of 1992 and Penal Code of 1883, prohibiting several offences as being against the Rights of Child, it has not effectively addressed recommendations made by the OP.
The OP explicitly states that child prostitution, child pornography , sexual exploitation of children be sufficiently addressed in the country ‘s legislation and urges that all acts and activities mentioned in OP be included in domestic criminal law.
The UN pointed out that successive governments lacked concise and centralised data collection systems in line with the OP.
It said the NCPA had failed to maintain orderly data on women and children in relation to offences under the OP. This made it difficult to assess the magnitude of the problem in homes, alternate care centres, religious institutions, the community and on social media.
The Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) audit on the NCPA in January observed that the National Policy on the Prevention of Child Abuse formulated in 2000 had not been implemented.
It pointed out shortcomings that prevented the implementation of the Act including a legal framework to transport schoolchildren safe from child abuse, establishing child protection committees in schools and strengthening the law enforcement and legal division of the NCPA.
It was noted that of the 89,405 complaints received in the past 10 years around 40,668 cases remained unsolved.
COPE member and MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, said poor budget allocation over the years had hobbled legal process.
“There have been only minimum allocations made for NCPA to carry out its work,” he said; the body was understaffed and its legal department overwhelmed with the number of cases. It could only attend to about 100 cases a year.
When cases from the backlog were eventually addressed the children in question had grown to adulthood and refused to face court proceedings.
“The main strategy should be creating awareness and for that the NCPA needs adequate allocation and manpower,” Mr. Rasamanikam said.
MP Eran Wickramaratne, another COPE member, said on Friday that it was time Sri Lanka revisited the requirements of the 1956 International Labour Organisation (ILO) Charter on the Employment of Women, Young Persons and Children.
He said Sri Lanka had come up with 47 hazardous forms of country-specific labour but had not included domestic workers due to pressure from trade unions and employers.
“It’s about time to revisit the Act. This will solve many issues of children facing hazards when working in households,” Mr. Wickramaratne said.