Alex community fails its children

Many children are raped, sexually molested and traumatised daily in Alexandra, signalling failure by the community to protect its future.

This was revealed by Lifeline, an organisation working to improve the psycho-social well being of children and their support systems – parents, guardians, educators and others. The organisation provides 24-hour telephonic or face-to-face rape, trauma, HIV/Aids counselling services and life skills training.

This in response to many cases of sexual and other abuse, as well as suicide, incidents of robbery, murder, muggings, hijackings, assault and car accidents.

Centre co-ordinator Mavis Rathogwa said her staff of 13 counsellors and 10 peer educators attended to as many as 10 cases of child sexual abuse daily presented by creches, schools and through home visits.

She said this concerned them as it involved very young children – toddlers and primary school children who were unable to distinguish right from wrong.

“They are then forced to live with the traumatic impact and effects of this abuse for days, months and even years until some signals emerge – either through behaviour change, deteriorating school performance and sickness,” Rathogwa said.

“Most of these cases are raised by schools when they notice a deterioration in the child’s school performance. Very few are presented by family members for fear of exposing the perpetrator, who in many cases, is either a parent, sibling, uncle or neighbour.

“They would rather protect the perpetrator to avoid bringing shame to the family or loss of income if he is arrested.”

She added that the children were also lured into the abuse by money and presents which were easier to accept from a relative than a stranger.

“Always after such an incident, the abused child is further traumatised through threats of loss of these goodies, eviction from the home, or divorce of the mother,” she said.

“The child would rather remain silent than be faced with any of these choices, especially the loss of a mother who they rely on for emotional support.”

Rathogwa also lamented the limited capacity of children’s rights organisations in the area, saying this could appear as if they were colluding with denying emotional healing for the children.

“But the biggest challenge is for the community not to be apathetic to child abuse. They should attend court cases and give evidence to avoid perpetrators being released. Also they should support their abused children against threats of further abuse by gangs if they persist with their cases,” she concluded.

Details: 011 443 3555; 0861 322 322.

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