Complaints of child abuse, which is usually hushed up due to social stigma, are on the rise but the increase in complaints is not only due to awareness programmes. It is also due to an increase in the number of children being sexually abused or assaulted.
According to officials and child rights activists, children become easy prey at the hands of relatives and teachers. In a number of recent court cases, it is either a relative or a teacher who has or is alleged to have committed the crime of child abuse, which is increasingly being recognized by world child rights activists as a crime against humanity.
Statistics and records at the Children and Women Bureau of the Police show that an increasing number of cases are being reported from rural areas and officials believe that an intensified campaign need to be launched to create awareness among the rural people.
In the latest case, a 30-year-old cadet teacher was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly sexually abusing seven students between the ages of 13 and 17 at a popular school in Ambalangoda. He was arrested following a number of petitions and complaints to the bureau.
The teacher was produced in the Balapitiya Magistrates Court and remanded.
Also on Tuesday, a school principal at Kapugollewa in Anuradhapura was sentenced to 11 years of rigorous imprisonment for sexually abusing a seven-year-old student in his office. He was ordered to pay Rs. 100,000 to the victim as compensation and fined Rs. 50,000.
On May 1, police arrested a man for sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl in Mahiyangana, from where a high number of child abuse and child marriages take place. The suspect was the guardian of the victim and the alleged incident, according to a police complaint, took place in August last year.
In another recent case, a man who allegedly raped his daughter was produced before the Badulla magistrate and remanded.
Children and Women Bureau detectives are also collecting evidence to file charges against parents of a 14-year-old girl who recently gave birth to twins at the Matale Hospital. The parents have given the girl in marriage to a 22-year-old man.
The Children and Women Bureau has recorded 409 complaints of sexual attacks on children from January to April this year -- with the highest number of 31 cases being reported from Anuradhapura followed by 24 cases from Ratnapura.
Last year, some 1,385 child rape cases were reported to the bureau – a 26 percent increase compared to the 1,098 cases reported in 2010.
Children and Women Bureau Director Jayantha Wickremasinghe said that as had been the case in the past, most of the victims were abused by family members, in most cases fathers or step fathers, relatives and neighbours. In comparison, the number of cases, where children being abused by a stranger, was much less, the senior police superintendent said.
SSP Wickremasinghe said immoral behaviour and the lack of commitment to uphold moral values and the dignity of the profession among principals and teachers, family problems and broken families where young children were neglected without proper guidance, love and care were the main reasons for the high number of child abuse and rape cases.
The SSP said poverty and mothers leaving their young children in the care of the father or a guardian to work abroad were also contributory factors for the high incidence of child abuse.However, he said awareness programmes carried out by child rights activists and authorities had encouraged the victims to come forward and report abuse.
The bureau director said another matter that had received their attention was the under-aged marriage. He said that in some rural areas, parents gave their children in marriage at a very young age because such marriages were part of the customs. However, this practice was illegal. The bureau records show that a high number of under-aged marriages take place in Ridigala and Mahiyangana.
SSP Wickremasinghe said there was a lacuna in the law. While the law says the minimum age for marriage is 18 it also recognizes the legal age to have sexual relationship as 16. The law is silent on the age between 16 and 18.
To fill this gap, the SSP said the Children and Women Bureau had proposed amendments to the law and had urged the National Child Protection Authority to look into the matter.
Meanwhile, the high incidence of child abuse and child rape cases also has drawn the attention of children and women rights activists.
Save the Children’s Advocacy Director Menaca Kalyanaratne said incest or child abuse by a family member or relative was not new. Children often became victims because they could easily be exploited and threatened. Besides, the culprits within the family or family circles often had the space and opportunity to abuse children.
Stressing the importance of responsible journalism in reporting child abuse cases, Ms. Kalyanaratne said the way certain media groups dramatize some child abuse incidents encouraged more and more people to abuse children.
Commenting on child marriages, she said one could not find fault with traditional beliefs alone for such practices but social factors such as lack of opportunity for education and employment also contribute to them.
Ms. Kalyanaratne said poverty, dropping out of school, caste-based discrimination, lack of social safety nets for single mothers, mothers working abroad and alcoholism among parents were some of the reasons why children were married off early.
Commenting on the alarming increase of incidents where principals and teachers have abused children, she said this should be addressed immediately.
These people were known as “professional abusers; they misuse their power and profession to abuse children,” she said.
“Children tell us that if they do not attend the tuition class of their teachers, they are marginalized, humiliated and punished in school,” she said.
Mr. Kalyanaratne said another issue that they were seriously concerned about was trafficking of children for prostitution and child labour. Naguleswary Ramachandran, who functions as a child and women’s right activist in the Northern Province, said the cause of a rise in child abuse cases in the region was due to drug addiction and addiction to internet porn.She said children in the age group of 13-16 were the most vulnerable and they could be saved by creating awareness and sex education programmes.
Ms. Ramachandran also said they were also alarmed by reports that child abuse was on the rise in orphanages and children’s homes in the North. |
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