Child Protection: Action Plan to focus on abuse prevention:

'Parents should be more vigilant'

by Isuri Kaviratne

In a set up where children are not taken care of is and left to their own devices is when they fall victim to abuse. This is the contention expressed by parents, the police and other stakeholders.

"What we want is for parents to look after their children. Children are attacked when they go home after school, or while staying at home alone when parents are at work. We want parents to be more aware," secretary to the Child Protection Committee, Chandrani Senaratne, who is also the Secretary to the Ministry of Women's and Child Affairs said. Acknowledging that it was a difficult task in the current economic context, she however advocates parents to be more vigilant.

The recent atrocity reported in the media was about a 13-year-old girl being sexually abused by a hotelier in Matara. This is the latest in a long list of crimes against children reported in Sri Lanka. The murder of a four-year-old girl in September last year compelled the government to set up a child protection committee comprising Ministers Lakshman Kiriella and Sudarshini Fernandopulle.

We have beautiful, descriptive epithets describing the innocence of children ' They are like flowers, they are the future of the world' and many such. However, society often forgets that these innocent children are voiceless and helpless thus making them also the most vulnerable.

Senaratne said an Action Plan prepared earlier this year has been approved by Cabinet and will be implemented along with stakeholders- the, Ministries of Education, Justice, Media and the Police.

"The Action Plan is focused on preventive methods," Senaratne said. In addition to raising awareness among the public, the Action Plan includes adding sex education to the school curriculum. Senaratne explained that the current syllabus on sex education and reproductive health was inadequate because it did not touch on the sensivities of the subject and most teachers skipped this particular lesson, either out of embarrasment or because they felt children were too young to be taught the subject. Therefore, the whole picture needs to be looked into when changing the school syllabus, she said.

A special programme will be launched in the rural areas to tackle the issue, she said, where the police and members of the Civil Protection Committee work closely with the communities to discuss their issues, identify problems related to child abuse and take action to prevent them. "What we mostly want is for parents to look after their children properly. Children are attacked when they go home after school, or while staying at home alone when the parents are at work.

We want parents to be more aware," Nadishani Perera, a consultant at the NCPA said.

Sajeeva Samaranayake, Deputy Chairman of the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) explained that protection for children comes with a long list of requirements that the current system is lacking, especially in a society where children do not go to police to lodge complaints - hence the society doesn't know what the larger problem is. "What we see today are several reported cases of abuse, but on a larger scale, we don't know what type of abuse children go through, to supply them with an adequate level of protection," he said.

That is why the government and other stakeholders need better understanding of the communities, feel their pulse and know what the problem is. For that to happen, positive relationships need to be built between the community and the government, so that the latter has the right information to carry out prevention methods.

He said "Women and children were overlooked in our society when carrying out assessments, that even during the recent natural disasters, the Disaster Management Centre failed to include separate statistics on women and children in their reports."

NCPA consultant Perera said that there wasn't enough statistics to compare whether the number of abuse cases against children have increased over time or not, though it is obvious that there are more cases as published in the media.

The awareness programmes should be compelling enough to get people to point out child abuses, she said. "There are more instances of that happening, therefore, the current awareness programmes have achieved something but it is not enough. What should be done is prevent the abuse, not capture the culprit after the abuse," Perera said.

Strong networks should be built within communities with multiple grassroots level activities to build the kind of protective environment the children in our society need. This includes, she said, a complete overhaul of the portrayal of men and women on television, objectifying the female body and giving a wrong message to children that men need violence to be heroes and women need to be submissive to be perfect. "Children who grow up with these norms, one day become adults and accept them as reality and little girls who see submissive women on TV, don't speak of the violence inflicted upon them," she added.

NCPA deputy chairman Samaranayake said that there were far reaching social, cultural and economic reasons that need time to assess and address but there is no political interest in addressing these issues.

Therefore, they remain unaddressed. Due to these social and economic reasons, welfare systems do not directly deal with affected communities victimizing them further, and as a result, giving the perpetrators a platform to engage in abusive activities.

Clinical Psychiatrist Dr. Nayanananda Kumaranayake said that one third of the High Court cases involve a child victim and 27% of all court cases are related to some sort of violence against children. In most instances, the crimes are committed by a person known to them.

In addition to social, economic and cultural reasons, society overlooks what happens to these children when they grow up. "Most of these abused children fail to lead a normal life, and have a tendency to hurt themselves and/or commit suicide," he said.

Agreeing with Samaranayake, he said the welfare system lacks certain elements when dealing with criminals and victims, Kumaranayake said after the criminal justice system gives a verdict, the mental health system does not take over to look at the mental health of the patient and what compelled the criminal to engage in this kind of criminal activity.

However, at the time of going to press Police data regarding these issues was not available.