Sarah Duguid
A third of children who leave school this year will have been the victims of some form of sexual abuse, according to an independent study published this week. If the child attends a school in the Western Cape or Gauteng, the figure is likely to be higher.
“It is well into epidemic proportions,” says Dr Neil Andersson, an international epidemiologist who led the research for CTIEAfrica.
“In a class of 40 children, two will admit to having been raped in the past year.” The report, which concludes that there is no doubt that abuse is contributing to the spread of HIV/Aids, is to be presented next week to a three-day parliamentary hearing on the abuse of children and babies.
CTIEAfrica, a Section 21 trust owned by black women, tried for four years to get government funding for the research into the sexual abuse of children. The study has finally been privately funded.
It is a damning indictment of sex education and ignorance in South Africa. One in three of the children surveyed said they thought they were infected with HIV even if they were not sexually active.
One in four thought that condoms did not protect against the virus.
Worryingly, a fifth of the boys surveyed who were over the age of 18 said they would intentionally spread the disease. One in 10 girls, and 15% of boys, thought that sex with a virgin would cure them of HIV/Aids.
The report turned up surprisingly high incidences of sexual violence against males. One in 20 boys of school age admitted to being sexually abused either by an older male or female or by gangs of girls of school age. But it is not considered acceptable for boys to admit abuse and so such cases are not being publicised. Children in focus groups said that the police would laugh if boys reported that they had been raped.
The majority of people believed that women were to blame for being abused and 15% of girls and 20% of boys believed that it was unacceptable to refuse to have sex with a boyfriend. The study showed that schoolgirls would often have the same cavalier attitudes towards sex as men between the ages of 30 and 50, suggesting that adults are passing on dysfunctional beliefs.
The report argues for a plan to curb abuse of children by teachers and headmasters, including sending SMS messages that such activities will not be tolerated. At the cost of R500 a school, a guidance counsellor could be hired to administer questionnaires to an entire school, to root out abusive teachers.
When interviewed, older woman in communities would deny that abuse could take place because the people were “godly”, although when pushed they would admit that there were some “bad fathers”.
“[Child abuse] is a hidden epidemic but my guess is people in communities know about it. It is not that hidden,” says Andersson. It occurs in all economic bands and more than half the abusers are known by the children. The problem, he says, is getting worse because abusers know that they can get away with it.
Without good conviction and sentencing figures there is no deterrent. Andersson admits: “Vigilantism is not a solution but it is more of a deterrent than government intervention.”
Deputy President Jacob Zuma has called for moral regeneration, but Andersson says that turning abuse into an issue of morality will not solve the problem. “The moral problem is that the government is getting involved late in the day. We have got to get away from wishy-washy morality stuff. Abuse needs to be treated like other forms of corruption. You make programmes and you clean it up,” he said.