Former Child Protection Unit Officer and director of The Guardian Group child abuse investigation company, Marc Hardwick, 44, this week launched an application (app) to fight child abuse.
The app, called The Guardian Schools, which is a world first, is specifically designed for use in schools and will give children a safe, instant and anonymous tool to report bullying, sexual assault, physical abuse or any of the many challenges facing children today.
Schools that sign up for the app will pay a monthly fee and all learners at that school who have downloaded the free app from either the Play Store or Apple App Store can report on issues they or their friends may be experiencing. The system is setup to ensure that only predefined staff at the school can access these reports and the investigation is managed by a senior staff member using the reporting system technology.
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“Member schools appoint a staff ‘ambassador’ for the app. A team of staff members called investigators then supports the ambassador. When a report is submitted, it will arrive as an email to the predefined staff members informing them to log into the system to access the details of the report and take the necessary action to safeguard the child. The staff member has the ability to request further information from the reporter but will never know their identity. This is extremely important to us, as the power of this app is ensuring the anonymity of the reporter,” Hardwick said.
If the investigation done by the school dictates that an internal investigation is insufficient and forensic investigation is needed, like in a rape or sexual assault case, then the school can choose to either use investigators from The Guardian or the police to investigate further.
Hardwick said, an additional feature built into the app is the ability for the school to use the app to send push notifications to learners, in other words a blanket message about a sports fixture or an event at the school. “We encourage schools to send out messages on the app at least every two weeks, as this then means that learners will have to have the app on their phone. This is important because in a case of bullying for example, if the bully checked the reporter’s phone and found that the anonymous reporting app was on the phone, the bully would know who had made the report, however if every learner has the app to receive the push notifications this further protects the anonymity of the reporter.”
In 2016, The University of Cape Town conducted a study on child sexual abuse which revealed that in excess of ¾ of a million children will have been abused by the age of 17.
The study went on to find that this equates to about one in every three children being sexually abused. This statistic is way below the conviction rate and therefore some serious questions must be asked of the system we are currently using. Childline SA estimates that only one in 10 cases are reported and internationally only one in seven cases are successfully prosecuted. The app goes directly to addressing that by placing in the hands of the investigator information that they potentially would never get and secondly potentially assist in reducing the time it will take to receive that information.
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