Child abuse rife in Pta

2004-05-18 13:30

Pretoria - More than 80 child abuse cases are reported in Pretoria each month, said Captain Shiluvane Malunyane, a member of the family violence, child protection and sexual offences unit.

Malunyane was attending a conference hosted by the South African Professional Society on the Abuse of Children at the University of Pretoria on Tuesday.

"We can't say why it's increasing. The more effort we put into fighting the problem the more incidents come to the fore," he said.

Malunyane said there was a great need for more funding and staff. For example, there was only one forensic psychologist in Gauteng trained to interview abused children.

"And she can only deal with children who speak English or Afrikaans," he said.

The three-day conference, which dealt with child trafficking and the role of the internet in child sexual exploitation, was attended by over a 200 mostly female psychologists, social workers and police detectives.

Guest speaker Susan Kreston, from the US National Centre for Justice and the Rule of Law, said the internet had "exploded" the child pornography industry worldwide.

"Whereas in the past a paedophiles only had the option of maybe looking at 15 or so polaroid photographs, now they can go onto the internet and have thousands of images at their disposal," she said.

She said the internet had also removed the sense of alienation often experienced by paedophiles because, through the use of online websites, clubs were often formed.

"There is an organisation called the North American Man Boy Relationship that now goes so far as to advise on how to abuse children and how to conceal evidence," Kreston said.

She explained that through "deviant psychology" they often claimed to be helping children by having sex with them.

Children regarded as 'sexual beings'

Approximately 18% of offenders in the US denied harming the children and many put much effort into not physically injuring the child as this often incited the victim to testify.

"There is a sense among paedophiles that children are sexual beings and that it's society who is behind the times," she said.

Malunyane said in most reported child abuse cases the abuser was someone within the child's home set-up and the extent of internet-based child pornography in the country was not known.

Kreston, while addressing an earlier conference at the Institute for Security Studies, stated that South Africa was a major destination and source for the international child trafficking.

Citing a 2003 migration study, she said the country seen as a "main destination" for child traffickers within Southern Africa, with between 28 000 and 38 000 children being prostituted in South Africa.

Malunyane added that the SA Police Service (SAPS) often lacked the experience needed to deal with child trafficking and that many cases were handed over to Interpol because they often resulted in cross-border investigation.

- SAPA