War-scarred Sri Lanka is experiencing an alarming scourge of child abuse and the apparatus for dealing with the problem, UNICEF says, is “grossly inadequate.”
Everyday, three to five children are raped in the island nation. Police statistics show the total number of child rapes in 2011 as 1,463; the figure jumped to 1,759 cases in 2012, according to a parliamentary report. Police records also give a total of just over 2,000 sexual offenses against children, besides rape, in 2011; child molestation cases in 2012 soared to over 5,000 according to parliamentary figures. The total number of all crimes against children — which besides sex crimes include crimes of violence, abduction, trafficking and other offenses — increased by a dramatic 64% between 2011 and 2012.
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But a more important factor may be the growing numbers of Sri Lankan women who seek to alleviate poverty at home by taking jobs overseas as domestic helpers. The children they leave behind are often defenseless against abusive fathers and predatory male relatives. (Even so, a comparison to the Philippines — another country where large numbers of women have been obliged to find work overseas — is disconcerting. Based on available official statistics, there are roughly 17 cases of child abuse for every 100,000 people in Sri Lanka; in the Philippines, there are just 6 cases per 100,000 head of population.)
Typical of the case files that cross the desk of Esther Gnanakan, a child psychologist at a Colombo NGO, is that of a 10-year-old girl sexually abused by her father over a year ago. Sudden movements and sounds still frighten the girl, she suffers from nightmares and cannot control her bladder. With a mother working as a domestic helper in the Middle East, and relatives unwilling to take her in, she now lives in a juvenile shelter in the Sri Lankan capital. “The child has no other place to go,” Gnanakan says. “We’re just hoping the mother will come back.” Full story...
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Everyday, three to five children are raped in the island nation. Police statistics show the total number of child rapes in 2011 as 1,463; the figure jumped to 1,759 cases in 2012, according to a parliamentary report. Police records also give a total of just over 2,000 sexual offenses against children, besides rape, in 2011; child molestation cases in 2012 soared to over 5,000 according to parliamentary figures. The total number of all crimes against children — which besides sex crimes include crimes of violence, abduction, trafficking and other offenses — increased by a dramatic 64% between 2011 and 2012.
(...)
But a more important factor may be the growing numbers of Sri Lankan women who seek to alleviate poverty at home by taking jobs overseas as domestic helpers. The children they leave behind are often defenseless against abusive fathers and predatory male relatives. (Even so, a comparison to the Philippines — another country where large numbers of women have been obliged to find work overseas — is disconcerting. Based on available official statistics, there are roughly 17 cases of child abuse for every 100,000 people in Sri Lanka; in the Philippines, there are just 6 cases per 100,000 head of population.)
Typical of the case files that cross the desk of Esther Gnanakan, a child psychologist at a Colombo NGO, is that of a 10-year-old girl sexually abused by her father over a year ago. Sudden movements and sounds still frighten the girl, she suffers from nightmares and cannot control her bladder. With a mother working as a domestic helper in the Middle East, and relatives unwilling to take her in, she now lives in a juvenile shelter in the Sri Lankan capital. “The child has no other place to go,” Gnanakan says. “We’re just hoping the mother will come back.” Full story...
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