Sexual abuse among girl and boy school children is on the increase, a survey conducted among 9 000 youths in February 2002 revealed.
”Boys under the ages of 16 are as likely to be victims of sexual abuse and an alarming 22% of girls say they do not have the right to refuse sex with her boyfriend,” CIETafrica executive director Dr Neil Andersson told the national conference of the SA Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (SASPCAN) on Thursday.
CIET (Community, Information, Empowerment and Transparency) started in 1985 as the Centre for Tropical Disease Research, a postgraduate medical institute in Mexico. CIETafrica is one of the CIET group of foundations dedicated to building the community voice into planning.
Andersson said that despite these statistics CIET has found signs of hope. Communities were organising themselves in a number of ways to address the effects of sexual violence and HIV/Aids, he said.
”There is also a willingness on the side of the youth to participate in the reconstruction of the broken communities they come from.”
The CIET study also asked youth about their views on HIV/Aids.
”One in four (26% of boys and 23% of girls) said they did not believe condoms could prevent the infection.
”Asked if they believed having sex with a child or a virgin could cure HIV/Aids, 12% of girls and 14% of boys said yes. Nearly one third (31% girls and 29% boys) said they believed they could be or were actually infected with HIV.
”For something as pressing as the Aids pandemic you can?t build hope around programmes of moral regeneration,” Andersson said.
”Hope must be built concretely and systematically.”
He said CIET had two mechanisms for doing this.
The first was to collect comprehensive and reliable information across the country on youth views to feed into education programmes.
The second was to involve the youth in providing solutions by discussing the findings from studies like the national pilot with them.
The national pilot was the beginning of a national database on youth experience of sexual violence and their views on HIV/Aids.
A full study targeting some 500 000 youth would start within the next two weeks. – Sapa