A child’s safety: Home is where the harm is?

Ishara Jayawardane

A mother or father is a defender of a child. They defend the child because of love and also because survival of the species is their instinct. As humans we are complex creatures, more complex than any other animal in the animal kingdom. We want our children to do well at school, secure a good job, get married and have their own families. In that respect our aspirations for our children separate us from other animals. Our society has been structured to support these aspirations. In many countries a person who is below the age of 18 is a child. Compulsory education is up to age 14. Fairy tales recited as bedtime stories such as The Grimm's Fairy Tales hide a darker and sinister world that little children today are oblivious to. In truth the world that our children live in, is more similar to the world of the Brother's Grimm whose stories were originally full of fear, violence and with sexual references. Unfortunately the monsters in the closet are very real. The wicked old witch may not be dead after all. The world our children are exposed to is a world where sexual, physical and emotional abuse come out of the closet. Hiding and waiting.

Aspiration and Abuse are the two qualities which separate us from other species. Daily News spoke to Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for Advanced Studies (NCAS) and Senior Professor Department of Demography University of Colombo,Professor Indralal Silva and Director Advocacy, Save the Children, Menaca Calyaneratne to find out how tangled the path of a child in modern Sri Lankan society and hope that this article may make a small difference.

The mother's role

"The cases that are being reported are largely at the extreme level. For example, if the child is taken to the hospital and some bones are broken, there is an investigation as to how it happened. Doctors can identify a genuine case of child abuse where someone has been beaten. But there are a lot of cases within the households that are not being reported; the child is neglected, sufficient amount of food is not given, child is threatened by the parents, an elder brother or an outsider. In many cases the child is innocent and does not know what to do. In some cases of course child may report. Like in foreign countries children take the telephone and complain to the police saying my father is beating me. In Sri Lanka this kind of thing happens very rarely," explained Professor Indralal. Sri Lankan population is 20.3 million. According to the 2012 Census, almost two million Sri Lankans are working in foreign countries for two to 6 years in a semi permanent manner and then they come back. From these two million, 60 percent is females. "That means 1.2 million females are away from Sri Lanka, working elsewhere and most of them are married and have children. Ninety percent are married with children, fairly young children. They go to foreign countries to work before the age of 40.

There is another group of females who go for higher education. There is another group of females who migrate internally but unlike the international migration those who migrate internally they can see their children very frequently but not every day. Suppose a mother who is in Anuradhapura migrated to Colombo because of employment, she may go back to her family during weekends. That may be the case with the father also. Because of international migration large numbers go to the Middle East and elsewhere and they are away from the country and children are left behind. Because of the globalisation and employment opportunities available elsewhere, people now tend to work not in their own village and town but maybe in some other country or in some other city. That trend has increased very much. In this particular environment we observe several types of abuses: physical abuse, mental abuse, neglect, sexual abuse and exploitation which is happening very frequently." Who are the caretakers of these small children when their parents are away from home? In most of the cases, suppose the mother has gone to the Middle East, the caretaker of the younger children are the father. If the father is also regularly going out, the caretaker would be the elder brother or the elder sister.

Therefore you can observe that when the mother is not there, that protection mechanism for young children is weakened. "The mother has a greater knowledge of how to protect the children. That is the power given to her by nature. The father and elder children may not be able to look after the younger children. The mother's role is much solid.

Many cases

We know that in these kinds of families, when the mother goes to the Middle East, she regularly sends money and we have noticed that in most of our studies, husbands who stay with their children receive this money. Once they receive this money, a sisable proportion is spent on alcohol. With the consumption of alcohol, the child abuse is sometimes happening within the family itself. Therefore in many cases the father is responsible for child abuse. From newspaper reports or the police reports, it has been observed that children left behind in these households are physically, mentally and sexually abused sometimes by the father. Not each and every case, but there is an increasing trend coupled with the alcoholism.

Sometimes the father invites some of their relatives and some of his friends to the household - a small party for his friends. Once his friends come there is another danger to the children in the family. Those outsiders may engage in some child abuse. They may engage in some sexual abuse, physical abuse or psychological abuse. We can observe this trend in many parts of the country, urban as well as rural. Therefore, the migration issue has caused a lot of problems in the social fabric of the country."

"Suppose the mother is not there and only the father is there, he needs to manage the entire household activities on his own. But as a man he needs to go and work and earn some money.

Then he has to look after the entire household. Not only the household activities but the children also. It is more than a double burden on the husband. Therefore he consumes alcohol. There is a heavy stress on him. Therefore he beats and scolds the children, verbally and physically abusing them.

He may not be in a position to cope with this problem. A sisable number of cases have been reported of incest - the mother has gone to another country, father engages in sexual activities with daughters and these daughters get pregnant. And the danger is that this jeopardises the entire family. I have seen in some places where daughters tend to deliver children with all kinds of abnormalities. Congenital abnormalities are there, because of the incest.”

Important issue

There is another danger associated with the sexual abuse of children. The People who engage in sexual abuse of children have a fear that they may be traced somehow by the police or the neighbors, if the child is alive. They think that if the child is killed there is no one to tell. “Therefore the predator kills the child. That is the situation we are observing now. The media has to handle these cases very carefully. If the predator comes to know that he can be identified by the witness, he will destroy the child.”

The migration issue is linked with another problem which is called family change in Sri Lanka. “What is meant by family change is that in the past, we had extended families. We had grand parents, uncles, relatives in the same building or the same household. But now 80 percent of the families are nuclear; husband, wife and few children. Therefore that is a style we can even observe in the remote areas. Families are getting smaller and they are getting nuclear. Therefore the total safety network which worked in the past for the benefit of the children has disappeared. Father has to go to work, mother has to go to work and children are neglected, in some cases, abused by someone else. The Social Network is very much loose now. There are only a few members in a family and those members tend to go out very frequently, for employment and education. Therefore children are left behind.

This leads to another very important issue. The family bonds within the nuclear family have also deteriorated. Father engages in business activities all the time. Children are occupied with the TV or the Internet most of the time. Mother engages in routine household activities and during her leisure time she is also occupied with the TV. The child maybe in his own room looking at the computer or the Internet. He is exposed to all the websites available. They do not sit together at the table even at dinner time. That also has an impact on the child. That kind of family environment is not conducive to develop a good family protection mechanism. But some countries like Singapore and Malaysia have developed many programmes. They encourage people within the family to come together and eat together.”

Safeguarding the child

Director Advocacy, Save the Children,Menaca Calyaneratne commented on several other sources of child abuse.

“The state of public transport is indeed appalling for all Children. Children are most vulnerable as they are unable to raise their voices in such situations and no one comes forward to support them. Media too should take responsibility for this situation, because some of the programmes especially on radio continue to humiliate female presenters as well as call-in female listeners. This endorses eve teasing in our society. But it is a huge problem for girl children. Some even drop out of school due to harassment in public transport. Men and boys need to understand that starting from ‘Eve-teasing to molestation, it makes girl children very uncomfortable. Parents and teachers should bring up boy children to respect all women. It is indeed sad that those who are there to protect children abuse their power, authority and trust and abuse children. Parents and other adults need to believe children when they report such behaviour. School Development Societies, Past Pupils Associations should also be more vigilant about what goes on in a school other than academic achievements. I must stress on the fact that children’s safety should be ensured when the schools take them on trips. I think our education system should take measures to safeguard children at all times, but especially when they are in the care of teachers and principals.

Save the Children, urges every parent to know where their children are at all times, what they are up to and develop close relationships with their children. “Developing a close relationship will help parents to notice anything that is unusual in their behaviour and take remedial action without delay. In this techno-age parents also need to keep up with their techno-kids. Electronic media has to take more care about the content of their programmes. Our tele-dramas may block out scenes of alcohol consumption and smoking. But they show violence and abuse against women. All these make a huge impression on young people.”

The most important thing is safeguarding the child. “We also have a separate code of conduct for staff, partners and anyone associated with Save the Children, about their behaviour when working with children. Within our project areas we have set up Child Protection Groups (CPG) in the villages to identify children who are at risk of abuse and take action to protect them. These groups which are made up of village elders, government officials, parents and children have proved to be very effective. We have been able to resolve hundreds of cases through these CPGs. Punishments vary due to the crime.

However, we as Save the Children would like to see cases where children are abused are expedited within the legal system. Much has been done in this regard by the Ministry of Justice. We have even supported them to set up a special children’s court which is child friendly. Judges and magistrates also are trained on the best interest of children.”