Over past five years there has been a 40% increase in reported cases of child sexual abuse

Dear Editor,

Reflecting on Child Protection Awareness – in September every year we highlight education, our indigenous people and activities across the regions that seek to safeguard children from all forms of abuse. Over the years there has been a paradigm shift – a new norm has emerged; children and families are reporting all forms of child abuse. This is evident in the annual reports from the Police and Child Protection Agency. This is directly as a result of public education and awareness which enabled children and families to have easy access to services and to feel safer to report.

The Child Advocacy Centre (CAC), is a vision of the Childcare and Protection Agency (CPA), and is currently in its sixth year of operation. The CACs were established under a European Union grant in partnership with the CPA to provide intervention services to children who have been sexually abused and their families. These services were delivered in Regions 3, 4, 5, and has since been expanded and sustained by the CPA in Regions, 2, 4, 6, 7,10.

The CPA has been instrumental in engaging and building collaboration with NGOs to develop specialized services for children. Children who were sexually abused require a range of specialized services for their healing and coping with the trauma of child sexual violence. Over the years the CACs operated by ChildLinK in Regions 3, 4, 5 and 6 have worked with over 400 children. Last year we documented our work on child sex

ual violence, please see http://childlinkgy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/10/Cries-inthe-Dark-Child-Sexual-Abuse-inGuyana-Today.pdf. From January 2019 to June2019, these four CAC’s received 343 referrals of children who were sexually abused. Ninety children were referred for forensic interviews and 253 children were referred for counselling. Children who were sexually abused are able to tell their stories once in a forensic interview with the police and the child protection officer and a family member. A forensic interviewer trained to gather data from a child conducts the interview and prepares the child statement for the police prosecution with the support of the police officer.

Our report in these four centres showed that the highest number of referrals came from Regions 4 and 3 respectively, and 15 out of the 90 children that were referred for forensic interviews were boys, the overwhelming majority of 75 were girls. Over the past five years there has been an increase of over 70% in the number of reported cases of all forms of child abuse and an increase of 40% of reported cases of child sexual abuse. In the corresponding period there has been an increase of 300% in the reported cases of child sexual abuse against boys.

Counsellors in the CACs have observed and reported that children who were counselled have reported to have experienced improvement in their day to day lives after individual and or group counselling. Nonetheless, not every family which has reported the abuse of their children will follow up to ensure that the child received the emotional psychosocial care they need to heal and cope from child sexual violence. Further, whilst there is an increase in reporting, the reality is that children are still being abused and for every reported case there are perhaps two or three unreported cases. There is still a need for prevention and for families to be vigilant to protect children from all forms of abuse including child sexual violence.

The Child Advocacy Centres form part of the larger child protection system and work with regional authorities including police, health and education officers to create more awareness in schools and communities to prevent and reduce child sexual abuse. The success of the CACs has been credited to the support from donors EU, UNICEF, British High Commission, government and corporate sponsors. Last week the Gafoor Foundation made their contribution to the CACs, Mrs. Ameena Gafoor noted her “concern of the high incidence of violence against teenagers in our society”. Mrs. Gafoor, is ChildLinK’s Patron and she indicated that “The Gafoors’ Foundation is encouraged by the Delegation of the European Union, the Government of Guyana and the Childcare and Protection Agency working collaboratively with ChildLinK to address the incidence of violence against children”. ChildLinK and its partners have made significant efforts at the community level to raise awareness for the prevention of all forms of abuse against children. In reflecting, we reiterate that every child deserves the right and opportunity to grow up safe with loving families and that safe families will not abuse their children and will take action and report all forms of abuse against children. Yours faithfully, Shaquita Thomas Communications Officer ChildLinK Guyana Inc.