Child abuse moves into the spotlight this month
Child abuse and homocide is a topic that has been receiving a lot of media attention lately.
If you open a newspaper anywhere in our country, you are sure to read a horrific story about child abuse. Only this week I read about a little boy who was beaten, burnt with cigarettes and shocked with an electric cord by his mother’s boyfriend while she and her brother watched on. They are all standing trial and his seven-year-old brother will have to testify against them in the near future.
In another incident a mother accused of killing her three-week-old baby, committed suicide this weekend. In our own midst a former day-care mother appeared in court for the neglect of children in her care this week. So even though children’s rights to care and protection are stipulated in the South African Bill of Rights, it are still failed.
Very few statistics are available that tells us exactly how many children in South Africa either die or are mistreated every year. In 2012 the South African Medical Research Council released a study in which they also stated that it was alarming that so little was known about child homicides. Of significance, studies from high-income countries indicate that a substantial proportion of child homicides are due to abuse and neglect, including physical and sexual abuse and neglect. In 2008 more than 1 000 were killed, but it is estimated that at least three children are murdered in South Africa every day.
The study revealed that child homicide in our country had a distinct gender pattern with more younger girls being murdered and an increased figure in male homicide during adolescence.
About 16 per cent were due to abandonment within the first week of life and overall most were killed by a known person who was not related, most common for boys. Overall the second most frequent perpetrator group was mothers and nearly half of all girl homicides were killed by them.
An interesting finding was that there is still an inadequate number of social workers in the field who can help identify these cases earlier and respond quicker. Lowvelder has found this to be true and is currently investigating a series of complaints on this issue.
