Excessive exposure to internet making children vulnerable to sexual abuse
Republica
KATHMANDU: The increasing use of information and technology has been found posing risk to children, including sexual abuse.
At a programme organised by Voice of Children here on Wednesday, information was shared that incidents of child sexual abuse have increased due to use of social sites including facebook, viber and twitter, as well as while playing games using internet.
Programme coordinator of Voice of Children Kriti Bhattarai said children have fallen victims to incidents of sexual abuse in recent period due to wrong use of technology, making friendships with unknown persons, posting unnecessary photos and information, among others.
The organisation had recently carried out a survey on 400 children from 10 years to 18 years of Kathmandu valley in this regard. Of them 72 per cent children were found to be using social sites and two-third of them spending around four hours a day on social sites.
The survey also found that many children were looking for pornographic sites and sharing it with their peers.
Dealing with Sex Crimes Against Children in Malaysia
The government has rolled out laudable measures but the public understanding of such heinous crimes remains woefully inadequate
By Dominique F. Fernandes
On September 8, 2017, with his head bowed low to avoid the press, a father was led into Malaysia’s Special Criminal Court on Sexual Crimes Against Children to hear his sentence for 623 counts of sexual abuse and sodomy. The man, whose victim was his own 15-year old daughter, was sentenced to 48 years in prison and 24 strokes of the cane.
This case is one of a growing number of incest cases in Malaysia. It comes on the heels of criticism leveled against Minister of Women, Family and Community Development Rohani Abdul Karim who, in a written reply to a parliamentary question stated that a 16-year old who was raped when she was 12, dropped out of school, and is currently living with her parents, was “doing fine.” The rapist, who is serving time in prison, married the girl on the back of the rape to avoid prosecution, drawing the ire of many Malaysians and exposing an inherent weakness in the law.
These two cases are not by any means isolated. Here are some numbers: on July 28, 2017, Minister Rohani reported that 13,272 children reported having been raped between 2010 and May 2017. Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) data shows that between 2014 and 2016, 11.8 percent of all sexual offenses against children were cases of incest. Of that, 50.7 percent of cases reported pointed toward a father or stepfather as the perpetrator.
Does Malaysia provide a breeding ground for sexual offenses against children? On June 6, 2016, Reuters reported that British pedophile, Richard Huckle, who was living in Malaysia and preying on Malaysian children received a life sentence in the UK for his crimes. Malaysian authorities were lambasted in the media for allowing the abuse to go unchecked for 8 years. Authorities were only made aware of Huckle’s activities after being informed of such by British Intelligence and proceeded to gripe that information relating to an offense taking place on their own jurisdiction was only channeled to them in April 2016.
Malaysia committed itself to international obligations under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on Child Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography in April 2012, but concrete measures to tackle sexual offenses against children were only recently introduced. Prime Minister Najib Razak’s administration must be commended for pushing through the Sexual Offenses Against Children Act 2017, and for establishing a special court to try such cases. While the government has rolled out laudable measures, the average understanding on the heinous nature of sexual crimes against children remains woefully inadequate.
In 2015, Nur Fitri Azmeer Nordin was a student at London’s Imperial College on a MARA (a statutory body responsible for the economic and social development of rural areas in Malaysia) scholarship. His sinister proclivities however cast a shadow on his bright future when he was arrested in his dorm room and convicted for possession of extreme pornographic images and videos of children. In response to Nur Fitri’s conviction in London, MARA insisted that Nur Fitri will be given a second chance to complete his education at a MARA institution in Malaysia because he was a gifted student who could very well become a national asset.
MARA thinks Nur Fitri is worth the risk, but it's not them he will abuse. They are putting Malaysian children at risk. Shame on them.
If, the offense was murder or drug trafficking, one wonders if MARA would be as forgiving. This cavalier attitude with which sexual offenses against children is treated is a reflection of a societal hierarchy present in Malaysia. Experts have suggested that incest is caused by a “pathological exaggeration of traditional patriarchal norms.” Crimes against women and children are treated as “less than” because their position in the patriarchal society is “less than.”
In an interview with Reuters in November 2016, Ong Chin Lan, Head of RMP’s Sexual, Women and Children Investigation Division explained the government’s classification of child abuse statistics under the Official Secrets Act as benign, aimed that not wanting to alarm the public about the possibility of a high number in cases. But shouldn’t society be alarmed and coalesce to arrest the rise in cases before our moral fabric unravels? The spike in cases of sexual abuse against children is either a new phenomenon, the result of an inability to stop feelings of powerlessness present with increasing modernization; or an age old one, only uncovered as a result of society’s ever lower tolerance to such offenses. Both scenarios are equally worrying.
When we forgive or make excuses for the behavior of perpetrators, we are contributing to the unravelling of society. The WHO has found a commonality between sexual violence and sleep difficulties, depression, tobacco and alcohol consumption, and even with trauma counseling, up to 50 percent of victims retain symptoms of stress. Children who have been victims of sexual violence do not go quietly into the night. They grow up. And they carry with them the cruel hand they have been dealt. Should we not be alarmed? Should we not say: “Not one more child”?
Dominique Fernandes holds an LLM from Harvard Law School and an LLB from the National University of Malaysia. She has spent some seven years as a federal counsel, advising the Government of Malaysia on its human rights obligations. She has since entered corporate practice but remains committed to the promotion and protection of human rights.
Rohingya solo children at risk of sexual abuse
More than half of the 370,000 Rohingya Muslims who have made it to Bangladesh since August 25 are minors
Rohingya Muslim refugees disembark from a boat on the Bangladeshi side of Naf river in Teknaf on September 12, 2017
Gulf News. AFP
UKHIA, Bangladesh: The lost Rohingya boy made the journey from Myanmar alone, following strangers from other villages across rivers and jungle until they reached Bangladesh, where he had no family and no idea where to go.
“Some women in the group asked, ‘Where are your parents?’ I said I didn’t know where they were,” said Abdul Aziz, a 10-year-old whose name has been changed to protect his identity.
“A woman said, ‘We’ll look after you like our own child, come along’. After that I went with them.”
More than 1,100 Rohingya children fleeing violence in western Myanmar have arrived alone in Bangladesh since August 25, according to the latest Unicef figures.
These solo children are at risk of sexual abuse, human trafficking and psychological trauma, the UN children’s agency said.
Many have seen family members brutally killed in village massacres in Rakhine state, where the Myanmar army and Buddhist mobs have been accused of crimes described by the UN rights chief as “ethnic cleansing”.
Others narrowly escaped with their own lives — some children arriving in Bangladesh bear shrapnel and bullet wounds.
The number of children who crossed into Bangladesh alone, or were split up from family along the way is expected to climb as more cases are discovered.
More than half of the 370,000 Rohingya Muslims who have made it to Bangladesh since August 25 are minors, according to UN estimates.
A sample of 128,000 new arrivals conducted in early September across five different camps, found 60 per cent were children, including 12,000 under one year of age.
This presents a needle in a haystack scenario for child protection officers trying to find unaccompanied minors in sprawling refugee camps, where toddlers roam naked, children sleep outdoors and infants play alone in filthy water.
“This is a big concern. These children need extra support and help being reunited with family members,” Save the Children’s humanitarian expert George Graham said in a statement.
“At first they don’t talk, don’t eat, don’t play. They just sit still, staring a lot,” Moazzem Hossain, a project manager with Bangladeshi charity BRAC told AFP at a ‘child-friendly space’ run in partnership with Unicef at Kutupalong refugee camp.
There are 41 of these safe zones across Bangladesh’s ever-expanding network of refugee camps. Every day children, some carrying younger siblings, flock to the simple wooden huts for activities like singing, playing with toys and blocks and skipping ropes. It is a welcome distraction from the misery outside, where monsoon rain turns the camp into a quagmire and exhausted refugees compete for dwindling food and space.
But playtime also allows staff to register details about a child’s background, monitor newcomers and keep an eye out for the telltale signs of a child on their own.
One such youngster was 12-year-old Mohammad Ramiz, who found himself alone after fleeing his village and tagged along with a group of adults. “There was a lot of violence going on, so I crossed the river with others,” said Ramiz, not his real name. “I ate leaves from the tree, and drank water to survive.”
There are fears the vulnerable minors could be exploited if left unsupervised in the camps, Unicef Geneva spokesman Christophe Boulierac told AFP. Girls are particularly at risk of being lured into child marriages, or trafficked to red-light districts in big cities where they are forced into prostitution and abused, he added.
But the facilities for refugee children are vastly overstretched. Over just two days, 2,000 children came through a single ‘safe space’ in Kutupalong, little larger than a classroom with just a few staff on hand.
Thirty-five unaccompanied minors were identified over that period, Boulierac said, but more resources were needed to ensure others did not slip through the cracks. “The faster we act, the more chance we have of finding their family,” he told AFP.
“The most important thing is to protect them because unaccompanied children, separated children, are particularly vulnerable and in danger.”
Rakhine State, Myanmar
Ukraine releases Austrian ex-judo champ suspected of child sex abuse
AFP
Austrian former Olympic judo champion Peter Seisenbacher, wanted on charges of child sex abuse, was freed by Ukrainian justice officials pending an extradition hearing, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
The double Olympic champion was arrested in Kiev, at Austria's request, on August 1st after seven months on the run and Vienna immediately asked for his extradition.
The Ukrainian prosecutor's office told AFP the 57-year-old Austrian national had been released on Friday pending an extradition hearing.
Seisenbacher faced trial in Austria last year, accused of sexually abusing two girls he was coaching in Vienna, from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.
He allegedly abused one of them from the age of 11, over a three-year period. He was also accused of having attempted to sexually abuse a third girl.
But Kiev officials say that according to the country's law, the statute of limitations to prosecute him in Ukraine has expired.
"In this regard, the Kiev prosecutor's office... cancelled Seisenbacher's temporary arrest," a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office told AFP in a written statement.
However, the final decision on his fate has yet to be taken, she added.
Seisenbacher's whereabouts were not immediately clear but he cannot leave Ukraine as he has been stripped of his identity documents, Kiev prosecutor's office spokeswoman Nadiya Maksymets told AFP.
Last December the former athlete failed to turn up for his trial in Austria and prosecutors in Vienna issued an international warrant for his arrest.
Seisenbacher, who won middleweight gold in Los Angeles in 1984 and again in Seoul four years later, dropped off the map. In the months before his arrest, there was even speculation that he might have committed suicide.
Seisenbacher, who is also a former world and European champion, has always refused to comment on the allegations against him.
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