EDITORIAL COMMENT: Strengthen child abuse prevention services

Police recently released chilling sta­tistics on cases of child rape countrywide. A total of 2 405 children were raped countrywide out of the 3 421 cases reported between January and October this year.

What is worrying is that according to police statis­tics, neigh­bours perpetrated the bulk of the assaults accounting for 41 per­cent, while rela­tives followed with 27 percent of the cases reported.
The question many are bound to ask is who will protect our children when those closest and trusted are the perpetra­tors?

There are many challenges fac­ing today’s society and one of the reasons we are wit­nessing an increase in child sex­ual abuse cases is the careless­ness by parents who, first of all, trust and leave their children with would-be rapists.
Secondly, most parents have lost their parental bond with their children as they do not spend much time with them. This leaves room for would-be rapists to fill that missing link, though in a terrible manner. Simple things such as accompanying chil­dren to school and trying to take time to know what is hap­pening in their lives will make a great differ­ence.

Many times, young children in school uniforms are seen walk­ing alone in the Cen­tral Business Dis­trict. Most of these children come from areas like Chitung­wiza, Norton and Warren Park to learn in schools on the other side of town, which their par­ents deem better. It is such children who are exposed to sexual abuse as would-be perpetrators can pounce on them at any time. Par­ents should ensure that they at least try to pick up their chil­dren from school or have someone to pick them. The best way is making sure that chil­dren learn in schools within their zones so that they do not travel long distances unac­companied.

Because of the economic meltdown experienced in the country in the past decade, most children have also helped in the running of the family by contribut­ing some form of labour.

Some parents in the vending business have let their chil­dren sell various wares on street corners, shop­ping centres, growth points, highways and res­idential homes where they could be sub­jected to sexual harassment and abuse. Some of the children sell these wares in the dead of the night at night­club entrances, putting them at high risk of being sexu­ally abused.

While technology has been welcomed by many as it puts the world in one place, it has come with some challenges of its own as young boys explore all sorts of things including pornography. According to the police, boys less than 18-years-old are develop­ing a habit of sexually abusing young girls below 12 years.
These teenage boys are said to be taking advan­tage of unac­companied minors left in their custody or waylay them in secluded footpaths, bushy areas and maize fields as well as along the distances between schools and homesteads, espe­cially in rural areas, something that is worrying.

Another challenge is that of accommodation where in crowded places like Mbare hostels, up to three fam­ilies share a single room. This has resulted in children sharing bed­rooms with male rela­tives and neigh­bours and thus subject­ing them to abuse.

Government, through the Ministry of Public Works and National Housing, should ensure that peo­ple have decent accom­modation to minimise such incidents. The Depart­ment of Social Welfare should be capac­itated so that they visit such areas just to observe the implications of such living arrangements. While some NGOs like Childline have been doing quite a lot, the mes­sage seems to fall on deaf ears as children con­tinue to be abused.

A new powerful public education campaign and message should therefore be conveyed to the gen­eral public encour­aging all sectors of society to know that child sexual abuse is both every­one’s problem and responsibility.
The aim of such public education efforts will be to eradi­cate any approval for sexual abuse or confu­sion over what society overlook as appropriate rela­tions between adults and children.

To accomplish this, all Zimbabweans should strengthen child abuse prevention services that sup­port children, espe­cially the orphaned and vul­nerable. There is need to enforce existing laws that protect children from child sexual abuse.
It is also important for the nation to promote research, training and public education to address the risk factors that can lead to child sexual abuse.

The wide broadcasting of accurate informa­tion to the public, especially to policymakers, will help break the silence and taboo that surrounds child sexual abuse, and may facilitate the formula­tion of effective solutions to the problem:
Therefore, while strengthening existing child sex­ual abuse pre­vention programmes, attempts should be made to craft pro­grammes that shift the responsi­bility of child sexual abuse pre­vention to adults and public institutions.

An example of such an approach is widespread and intensive public education of the warning signs of child sexual abusers and how adults should act to safeguard children from sexual abuse. But the sig­nals of child sexual abuse are often sub­tle and fre­quently defy detection even by knowledge­able par­ents and sea­soned professionals.

Additional efforts are needed, including parental education, to reduce the risk of child sexual abuse and train professionals and other caregivers who work with children to recognise and appro­priately respond to sexually reactive behaviour.