Coordinated effort to address abuse:

NCPA formulates Draft National Child policy

By Majula Fernando

The little girl who drifted into the Police Children and Women's Bureau Director's office accompanied by a Women Police Constable looked like a carefree butterfly just out of a cocoon, fluttering her tiny pastel coloured wings in the first fresh gush of air.

Seeing me, the nine-year-old's lips parted in a timid smile with her big bright eyes taking a cue. Nothing about her was out of the ordinary.

She was a bubbly little thing, a doll of a figure any mother would long to have and any father would be proud to show the world. She spoke a few words with the Director, the bright smile never leaving her face, and left the room holding the WPC's hand, leaving a heart as heavy as steel within me.

There were no tell-tale signs and nothing in her demeanour gave away the tragic story behind those smiling little eyes. How could people be so cruel? The question reverberated endlessly in my mind.

I visited the Children and Women Bureau some months ago to interview the Director. The little girl was there with her father to lodge a complaint.

It was one of a number of visits she made to the Bureau with her father. What she had endured was so unpleasant that the memories could not be hurried. By then she had made several visits to the Police Bureau and gathered all the bitter memories into a statement. In the meantime, the little butterfly had won the hearts of everyone there. In reality the little girl was a victim of sexual abuse and the perpetrator was none other than her own maternal grandfather.

To tell a long story short the girl's parents had separated sometime ago. Gayasha's (pseudo name) mother had walked out of her father taking Gayasha and her two younger sisters along. The father who was a respectable gentleman employed in Colombo could not cope with the wife's numerous extra marital affairs. She was hard to tame and was never at home.

Taking the children along was her way of punishing the husband. She settled in with her old father in Kalutara. The girls were compelled to put up with an uncle who was a retard and in a vegetative state and a grandfather who is a child molester. The grandmother had passed away. When their mother was away, which was often, the grandfather was entrusted with the care of the three siblings aged nine, six and four.

Gayasha told the horror story of how her grandfather would fondle her and how her little sister who disliked his behaviour was chased by the grandfather around the house.

They had to endure this sickening behaviour for months until one day her mother sends Gayasha to stay with the father.

After a few days of building confidence, with him, she brings herself to relate the happenings to the father. He immediately brought Gayasha to the Women and Children's Bureau in Kotte. Handled by experts Gayasha recalled the incidents in her own childish vocabulary. The officers feared from what they gathered that she may have been raped by the grandfather.

It was not an easy case, the police had to gather enough evidence to arrest the old man and ensure that he did not find a loophole in the law to give them a slip. When I last heard about it, the Police Children and Women Bureau officers were preparing to file a case to grant the total custody of the three children to their father.

It is fortunate that Gayasha lived to tell her story. But in recent times we have heard and seen child molesters not hesitating to silence their victims forever.

Abusive acts against children seem to have increased in the Sri Lakan society, which once deemed caring and protecting offspring not only those belong to them but even others’ a top priority. In addition to parents, relatives and close friends, even strangers cared if a child clad in school uniform was seen on the road at odd hours. They took the trouble to ask him

the reason and call a guardian to inform. Protecting children used to be a collective social responsibility.

But people's compassion, care and love towards children have evaporated or replaced by overrated expectations, malice and lust. The children have become commodities, medals and the result- of-accident in a highly mechanised world which is run on targets.

If not we will never hear about a mother, burdened with numerous household problems throwing her two- year -old into the Kalu Ganga to see him suffer a horrendous death; a father burning a child with a hot metal rod frustrated that he scored poorly at the Grade 5 Scholarship Examination, ignoring child's heart wrenching pleas for mercy; an uncle helping to abduct and kill a

kindergarten child in a failed ransom case or fathers and grandfathers lusting after infants and toddlers.

Last week President Mahinda Rajapaksa raised the issue of the Grade Five Scholarship Examination when he said that the Education Minister should re-evaluate the examination as a means to allocate better schools for rural students, at the Annual prize giving of Panadura Sumangala Balika Vidyalaya.

The year Five Scholarship Examination has long deviated from this virtuous goal. The examination has been commercialised in Sri Lanka more than any Christmas or Mother's Day.

As a result young children are caught up in a mindless rat race – this too is child abuse the National Child Protection Authority maintains.

The need for a coordinated effort to protect Sri lanka's children have been felt more than ever before.

Some hope in this direction has been seen with a recent intiative by the National Child Protection Authority. A draft National Child Protection Policy has been formulated by the NCPA and is now up for public comments.

The aim is to create a protective and caring environment for the country's girls and boys to shield them from violence, exploitation and unnecessary separation from the family.

All right thinking people should make their contribution to make this effort a success.

The draft policy is built with the guiding principle ‘Giving our children a childhood they can be proud of'.

The NCPA Chairperson, Anoma Dissanayake said the recommendations call for a complete overhaul of the existing organisational set up in the child protection, probation and other care services and call for a better coordinated effort by all state and Non- Governmental bodies as well as the Media.

This includes the Police, Children and Women Bureau, Health institutions, the Judiciary and child care institutions. Households too need to undergo changes.

“We have looked at all the good practices of child protection in the world before the policy was drafted,” she said adding that it was felt that the country needed an improved child protection set up in the light of changing needs in a post conflict phase.

Sri Lanka is in the midst of rapid infrastructure and economic development after a protracted period of conflict. She says this leads to rapid changes that affects the way the society thinks, behaves and reacts.

The policy which banks on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, recognizes a child as every human being below the age of eighteen years. NCPA has embarked on the project as the mandated body to propose new laws and policies in the area of child protection to the Government. “Our hands were full for the past 30 years and the child protection sector was somewhat neglected as a result of the war.”She said children also became invisible due to the open economy. “The country has a vision and a mission now to become the Wonder of Asia and is in a rapid development phase, the NCPA want to ensure a vision and a mission for the childrenand the future of the country, as well .

In 2009, an initial Child Protection Policy draft was sent to Cabinet for approval but it was turned away in lieu of a comprehensive policy.

The new policy is comprehensive and has been formulated to fill the void. “This is not intended for 2-3 years, our expectation to have the new policy effective for the next decade,” Mrs.Dissanayake said.

The NCPA has studied child protection policies in Australia, England, Malta, Ireland, New Zealand, a few Scandinavian countries and South Africa.

I visited and studied system adopted by the Foster parenting care and adoption Centre in Thailand.

Special attention was given to Thailand since we can relate to their culture and situation. As for best practices Malta policy was considered very impressive.

"If a child is given away for adoption. Our priority is to keep the child within the country. For a child's physical and psychological growth material comforts play a small role. The environment, love and care are more important. These are entrenched in the new policy."

Among other things proposed are maintenance of a 'Child Abusers Registry'and National Database on Child Abuse. When a man is convicted of child abuse, his name will be included in this registry maintained by the NCPA.

If the policy comes into effect child abuse convicts will not be invisible in the society hereafter. The criminal liability for child abuse has also been proposed to increase from 10 years to 12 years and the compulsory schooling period will be raised from 5-14 years to 5-16 years. She said one of the key proposals in the policy are the changes proposed to primary school curriculum. Children need more leisure time and space to take part in extra curricular activities. The present curricular which force children to become book worms have made children vulnerable to abuse.

"We have to stop Grade 5 scholarship exam for the sake of the children. At ten years or less they fell into the exam race. At 30 years they will not have any friends. They don't trust friends because they have been trained only to compete with the peers. All these things are very bad indicators."

"If this curriculum continues, we have to teach our children about the rainbow in a school text book, they will grow up to be mentally unstable doctors and engineers who cannot be responsible for their actions."

She stressed that schools with the existing curriculum will make robots of children and not sensitive human beings, since leisure is an important component of a child's development.

The draft policy will be in the public domain for one month from November 1 for suggestions and public comments. "We will discuss and accommodate public proposals.

We need their input to fine tune this proposal," she said.