More than 80 cases of child abuse are reported in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, each month, said a member of the family violence, child protection and sexual offences unit, Captain Shiluvane Malunyane, on Tuesday. He also said there were more cases being reported every month.
Malunyane was attending a conference hosted by the South African Professional Society on the Abuse of Children at the University of Pretoria.
”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 white 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 200 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 websites, clubs were often formed.
Malunyane said in most of South Africa’s reported child abuse cases the abuser was someone within the child’s home setup and the extent of internet-based child pornography in the country was not known. This was mostly due to a lack of police skills.
There was a high success rate in most abuse cases in which the abuser was known to the child, Malunyane said.
Kreston, while addressing an earlier conference at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), 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 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