Mother’s murder of child reveals dark trend of child cruelty
A21-year-old mother has spent this week under arrest over the mysterious disappearance of her child after confessing that she had assaulted her four-year-old daughter and thrown her into the Kala Oya tank. The little girl, from the Neelambemma area in Puttalam, has been missing since January 30 and has still not been found despite a search operation by navy and police divers, with support from local residents.
Last month, police arrested a mother, 26, and her lover, 31, over the murder of her nine-year-old child in January 2018.
The National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) said reports of cruelty to children are on the rise, and these recent cases of extreme cruelty inflicted by parents on their own children have caused widespread horror.
Last year, the NCPA received 2,413 complaints of child cruelty ranging from verbal to physical abuse, DirectorGeneral Anoma Siriwardena said.
Pettah police last month found five children under the age of nine years loitering in the area who, on being questioned, said three of them had left home to escape violence unleashed by their families.
Children are often subject to cruelty when they are left in the custody of the father, Ms. Siriwardena said: informal research showed the greatest contributing factor to child cruelty was the absence of women in the household.
Child abuse is reported from all regions. A 2016 study on knowledge, practices and behaviour of health care professionals in the Jaffna district said child abuse and neglect in the Jaffna district was rampant.
Participants in the survey, including doctors, nurses and social workers, spoke of children suffering beatings causing injury, verbal humiliation, and being admitted to hospital over sexual abuse, bruising, burns and bitemarks.
In the war-affected areas of Sri Lanka, widows have been pushed into seeking employment within or outside the country to care for their families. With low literacy levels and vocational skills they engage in traditional live- lihood methods which yield meagre returns. Children often end up receiving minimum education or care and are encouraged to enter the labour market at a young age to eke out the family income. NCPA statistics from last year state that 1,267 children had dropped out from school and 262 children had taken up jobs.
The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) regulation said mothers of children below five years are not allowed to migrate for work but poverty and promises of financial prosperity drove desperate women to seek jobs overseas outside the protection of the law.
SLBFE statistics show, however, that the number of women going to the Middle East for work is dropping drastically, with fewer than 100,000 women leaving in the past three years. In 2016, only 77,603 women left the country – a huge drop from 2012, which records departures by 132,512 women.
A 2016 UN Supplementary Report on the Rights of the Child said that although the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a mechanism to protect children left behind by parents the initiatives do not effectively reach the most vulnerable children.
The lack of responsible mother substitutes and the absence of a father’s role in childcare led to the neglect of children in such cases, the report said. In most cases, fathers looking after offspring while mothers worked overseas, took to alcohol and drugs, neglecting their charges.
A senior official at the Bureau of Foreign Employment claims the bureau has fool-proof systems in place to prevent cruelty to children, recognising the problems faced by families from which women have gone overseas for work.
Deputy General Manager Mangala Randeniya said the bureau had designed specific programmes at Divisional Secretariat level, overseen by the Ministry of Foreign Employment.
Development Officers made periodic visit to households where there are children under the care of father/grandparents or designated parent. “They develop a good care and development plan for each domestic setting,” Mr. Randeniya said.
There is liaison between the bureau and the NCPA. Any complaints received by the NCPA regarding these families are referred to the bureau, which takes appropriate action. “We even go far as repatriating the mother back to the country as the case may warrant,” Mr. Randeniya said.
This safety net does not, however, protect women with children under the age of five who cannot find overseas work though the bureau and are lured into employment by other agencies, sometimes with the added temptation of salaries paid in advance prior to departure.
This makes the women and their children vulnerable as the families do not enjoy any safeguards provided by the Bureau of Foreign Employment. The women are also trapped into bonded labour, unable to come back to the country even in times of tragic events befalling the family.
Ms. Siriwardena holds the view that women with children under 18 years of age should not be allowed to go overseas for work. She said children need the care and protection of the mother during their adolescence as they are vulnerable and can be easily misled.
“The mother should always be there to watch over them and guide them through their developmental stage,” she said.
Ms. Siriwardena said the NCPA carries out an annual action plan in the rural and plantation sector to educate and create awareness of children’s rights.
She said regular visits are made to schools and government offices to educate and create awareness on child protection. For estate workers, programmes are conducted in community halls where parents are encouraged to gather.