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AFTER THOUGHTS GUESTVWOIRCITEER
Everyday we wake up to reports on missing children especially in the busy towns like Manzini and busy townships of Manzini and Mbabane. Sadly we are asked to be on the look-out and share posts of missing kids on social media, we are never told whether those children are found or they go missing forever. I remember one time when my then three-year-old, now four, went missing for 30 minutes, I couldn’t eat nor stop crying for the whole week.
I kept imagining the horrible things that could have happened to my child had I not found him. So sharing these posts of missing children, and getting warnings about child abduction incidents via media are a trigger, and I always put myself in the shoes of those parents who never get to see their kids again.
Well, after their abduction, what happens to them? How does the abductor treat these children? You can never be sure that they do not go through the worst, especially when they start crying wanting their mum or dad. I do not want to imagine the kind of abuse these kids must be going through. Although anyone responsible for child abuse of any sort is treated with public condemnation, the issue of ‘paedophiles’ and the potential for their destructive behaviour towards these kids is hard to imagine. Some of them actually get caught and they either go with impunity or they are rehabilitated and subsequently re-introduced into society.
Punishment
Indeed, when it comes to punishment for those convicted of sexual offences against children, the notion of rehabilitation and human rights is confronted by a social desire for punishment and retribution. But how often does that actually happen?
I personally know a man from Manzini who chocked his own child to death because the mother kept nagging him for child maintenance, and when he was threatened with arrest, he claimed insanity and today he is roaming the streets freely like any normal person. We have read stories of fathers who have killed their kids and then killed themselves because they failed to maintain those kids. For me, that in itself is escaping with impunity because that person
never suffers the consequences, instead it is the people who are left behind that do.
The public outcry and the criticism of social services which followed high profile cases of child abuse, such as the lawyer who impregnated his own children multiple times and went on to live freely for a very long time until he was round up recently, leave us with little faith in the justice system.
It seems that, more than the sexual abuse that children face in our society, there seems to be an increase in child labour, child neglect and other forms of abuse that would normally go unnoticed because people have normalised it. It is almost an expectation for a man to get someone pregnant and leave almost immediately leaving the woman to take care of a child she made with the help of a fully capable adult. When the help of the DPM’s Office, child welfare, is solicited, it never yields to much because if that said parent doesn’t want to pay child maintenance, they just will not.
Too often questions are asked if rules and procedures have been met but not whether this has helped children. Everyone in the profession can think of meetings and forms that don’t actually make a child safer. While some regulation is needed, we need to reduce it to a small, manageable size. Professionals should be spending more time with children, asking how they feel, whether they understand why the social worker is involved in their family, and finding out what they want to happen.