Women Against Child Abuse on Tuesday called on the justice system to prevent abused children from having to testify in court.
Director Miranda Friedmann was speaking during the visit to the Women Against Child Abuse clinic in Boksburg by Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa and Gauteng safety and liaison MEC Nomvula Mokonyane.
Friedmann said that although Child Protection Week was launched two months ago abuse against children continued to rise at an alarming rate. She said she would like to see children who had been abused testify on camera instead of in court as this was traumatic for them.
Shilowa said Mokonyane and his own office would speak to the justice department about the loopholes in the system as well as the importance for the department to use family courts effectively.
The only family court operating effectively is the one in Randburg, Friedmann said. Presently, the justice system exposed children to further trauma. At the clinic there was a therapy room, an intake room, a medical examination room and a court preparation room. Friedmann said the court preparation room was used to prepare child witnesses for appearance in court.
A three-year-old child allegedly raped by 24-year-old in January was forced to testify in the Temba Magistrate’s Court last week.
The man was acquitted after the dumbstruck child was unable to testify. The department admitted last week that it was negligence on the part of criminal justice officials to force the child to testify in an open court, as it was standard procedure that intermediaries be used to assist child witnesses.
Friedmann said the justice department was still using an old Sexual Offences Bill which protected criminals rather than the victims.
She said she wanted the premier to not only come and see what the clinic did but to feel what the children went through. Mokonyane said the results coming from clinics such as Women Against Child Abuse would assist courts to get full evidence and help in the prosecution.
”At the clinic children become survivors not victims” said Mokonyane.
Asked about the perpetrators’ register which was suggested last year, Friedmann said she had been lobbying for it as she thought it would bring shame to the perpetrators by exposing them to the public.
The government had decided that the register would be expensive.
”The child’s life is more expensive,” Friedmann insisted.
Although Mokonyane was encouraged by what she saw at the clinic she said the register was not the answer. ”The danger with registering the names of perpetrators for the public is that their names will remain even after they have paid the price for their actions”.
Mokonyane said it was important to rehabilitate criminals back to society.
Shilowa admitted that he did not know about the clinic until a friend told him about the work they did and the needs they had. He said what needed to happen was for morals to be restored and for the community to work together in order to stop child abuse. – Sapa