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Sex offence stats indict children
Bronwyn Gerretsen, The Mercury
2007-05-04

More than 50 percent of all sexual offences committed in the country and reported to Childline are committed by children under 18, with the youngest abuser being just seven years old.

Furthermore, according to statistics, at least 70 percent of all sexual crime victims are children younger than nine.

And while this painted an already bleak picture, Linda Naidoo, Director of Childline KZN, said of further concern was the fact that the situation in KwaZulu-Natal was much worse than the national statistics showed.

She said the reasons for this were that KwaZulu-Natal had the largest population of children, with 47 percent of its population made up of children, and the least resources.

In a recent presentation at the Joint Oxfam HIV and AIDS Programme Link and Learn Partner Platform 2007, Naidoo said 99,5 percent of offences committed against children, especially sexual offences, were committed by men, adding that the increasing number of male children committing sexual offences was of "great concern".

"Where do the answers lie? If most crimes are perpetrated by men, then we need to ask why . . . who have boys and young men adopted as their role models?" she asked.

According to Naidoo, the media "glamorised" violence and even sexual violence. Violence was identified with masculinity and problem-solving was identified with weapons and violence.

She said empowerment of the "girl child" programmes generally tended to exclude boys.

"This feeds into the continued exclusion and alienation of male children from the positive attention that they need. The focus has been on encouraging girl children to say 'no' in unequal power relationships, without placing the responsibility for dealing with violence where it belongs," she said.

Boys were also encouraged to play with toys such as guns, war games and knives, and were discouraged from showing emotions, often being told that the expression of "softer" feelings was "unmanly".

Naidoo said Childline's research into the behaviour of young sexual offenders revealed that 88 percent of them had been exposed to pornography and 78 percent to domestic violence.

All of them had experienced some form of emotional neglect or abuse.

She said: "Offenders often do not see their own history of child abuse as abuse. They tend to cut themselves off emotionally from the pain they inflict on children, and their empathy for victims is thus very limited," she said. Many also lacked basic social skills.

One of the reasons for the sexual abuse of children was that masculinity was constructed around the manifestation of power through demonstrations of sexuality, aggression and violence.

The high rate of violence and the rape of women and children in South Africa had been intimately linked to the prevalent culture of aggression and domination.

"Rape appears to be just a part of life. Forms of child sexual exploitation such as survival sex, which is defined as parents exploiting their own children for the family to survive, often involved children as young as six and seven and needs to be viewed within the context of poverty," Naidoo said.

In comparison with figures released by Interpol , South Africa has the highest rape statistics in the world - 117 cases per 100 000 of its population - and of the victims, 40 percent were children.

Naidoo said South Africa had a very narrow definition of rape compared to many countries in the world, and added that when the new Sexual Offences Bill had been passed with an expanded definition of rape - including penetrative sexual offences on boys and men - the country's rape statistics would appear to be even higher.

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