While only 50.3 percent of Philadelphia’s children are black, they comprise 73 percent of children in foster care. Credit: Bigstock

By Kanya D'Almeida
PHILADELPHIA, U.S., Dec 6 2013 (IPS)

It is nearly impossible in this day and age to turn on the news without hearing about systemic racial discrimination in the United States.

Ample evidence shows that disproportionate numbers of African Americans are imprisoned, subject to police brutality, excluded from employment opportunities and denied decent healthcare, compared to their white counterparts."Thirty percent of foster children in the U.S. could be home right now if their parents just had decent housing." -- Richard Wexler

One government agency has, by and large, escaped such scrutiny. It goes by different names in different places: Child Protective Services, the Department of Youth and Family Services, or the Department of Child and Family Services.

In Philadelphia, it’s known as the Department of Human Services, or DHS, and by its own admission it is responsible for moving roughly 3,000 children in this city of 1.5 million people into “out-of-home” care every year.

According to Todd Lloyd, child welfare policy director of the non-profit organisation Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children (PPC), “The most recent annual data shows 9,205 children entering foster care in [the state of] Pennsylvania, with about 71.7 percent of those children being first-time entries, as opposed to re-entries.”

Lloyd told IPS that Philadelphia County has the highest “placement rate” in the state, with 14 per 1,000 children being moved to out-of-home care every year – over twice the national rate of 6.4 per 1,000 children.

The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR), meanwhile, reports that DHS Philadelphia removes children at up to six times the rate of other cities of its size. 

It is not the rate of transfer alone that has families in Philadelphia on edge but the racially lopsided nature of the entire child welfare system: studies show that while only 50.3 percent of Philadelphia’s children are black, they comprise 73 percent of children in foster care.

Officials dismiss this discrepancy with a single explanation: poverty. The poverty rate for African Americans in Philadelphia, according to a survey conducted by Pew in 2013, is 39 percent – exceeded only by the poverty rate in Detroit, Michigan.

Still, to remove a child from his or her home, federal law states that human services agencies must first establish proof of neglect, mistreatment or abuse. [Read Part Two of the series here]

In reality, critics say, this provision is a catch-22 for low-income families. For instance, the state of Pennsylvania’s definition of neglect includes “failure to provide essentials of life, including adequate medical care, that endangers a child’s life or development or impairs the child’s functioning” – in short, a perfect definition of poverty.

According to NCCPR Executive Director Richard Wexler, the correlation of poverty with neglect is so widespread that a full “30 percent of foster children in the U.S. could be home right now if their parents just had decent housing.”

Child protection agencies like Philadelphia’s DHS – which declined IPS requests to comment on the issue – say the vast majority of children removed from their homes were being abused. Indeed, some 3.6 million children were investigated as potential victims of abuse in 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Digging a little deeper, however, the NCCPR found that “2.8 million of those children – nearly four-fifths of them – were subjects of reports that turned out to be false.”

That child abuse is a reality in far too many homes cannot be denied. According to Lloyd, the most recent annual child abuse report issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare found 3,408 “substantiated” reports of child abuse in 2011.

But activists working with families whose children have been taken from them say this data must be carefully examined in the context of racial bias: several studies have shown that toddlers with similar injuries were three times more likely to be reported to DHS Philadelphia if the family was African-American or Latino.

Phoebe Jones, a member of ‘DHS – Give Us Back Our Children’ (DHS-GUBOC) – a Philadelphia-based self-help group coordinated by the Every Mother is a Working Mother Network (EMWM) – told IPS that foster homes have become notorious as places where abuse is rampant.

“In general, children are worse off as a result of fostering,” she said, citing several studies that found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes. “The record of group homes and institutions is even worse,” she added.

Earlier this year dozens of families – particularly mothers, aunts and grandmothers – expressed outrage when the United Nations bestowed its prestigious Public Service Award on DHS Philadelphia for its efforts to “improve the outcomes of children in foster care”.

“DHS is breaking up families in this city,” Jones said in a press release back in June. “We want to know why the U.N. gave this award without consulting families in Philadelphia. Did they decide on this honour from conferring with officials at cocktail parties?  We never heard of them conferring with grassroots people impacted.”

Excerpt:

Experts recommend stricter laws and wider awareness building to stem incidents of child abuse. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Oct 9 2013 (IPS)

Stricter laws could curb the rising trend of child abuse in Sri Lanka, experts say. However, recommendations like witness protection, special courts and procedures to hear abuse cases and more legal assistance to victims are unlikely to be included in a new draft Child Protection Policy that is to be presented to parliament before the end of the year.

Although detailed data are not available, estimates suggest between three and five incidents of grave child abuse are reported daily in this island nation of 20 million.

“The reported number of cases has been rising in recent years,” confirmed Ediriweera Gunasekera, a spokesman for Sri Lanka’s National Child Protection Authority – the main government body responsible for formulating policy on child abuse prevention and monitoring abuse incidence and victim assistance.

“Certainly there is more reporting of cases that is taking place now,” he told IPS.

According to figures tabled in parliament, the Sri Lankan police recorded 1,759 reported cases of child rape, including incest, in 2012, up from 1,463 in 2011.

And in the first six months of this year, according to police statistics, 805 cases of child rape were reported.

In 1995, the penal code was amended to require that sexual acts with minors under the age of consent, 16, be tried under the offence of statutory rape, or under Article 365 of the penal code, which defines unnatural sexual acts and grave abuse.

But delays in legal proceedings, lack of witness protection and lack of assistance to victims are discouraging families and victims from reporting cases or seeking help, says a recent study by the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

“This study indicates, as does literature over the last two decades, that the procedures for investigation and prosecution of child abuse, witness protection, and support for the victim are grossly inadequate,” the report says.

Of the more than 1,450 cases reported in 2011, not a single conviction was reported by end of 2011, and a backlog of 8,000 cases dates back six years. Officials at the UNICEF country office said the justice system remains overwhelmed with backlogged cases and is in need of a complete overhaul.

“The entire system needs to be assessed and rebuilt, through all the stages, with efficiency as a key priority,” UNICEF said in an emailed statement to IPS.

Harini Amarasuriya, a lecturer at the Open University of Sri Lanka and co-author of the report, said the Sri Lankan legal system was focused on prosecution and lacked support services like assistance to the victim and witness protection.

She also recommended that the country reform its laws to introduce special procedures to deal with cases of child abuse.

“Unfortunately, there is no indication that these issues are being given priority,” she said.

While officials at the Ministry of Justice and the National Child Protection Authority confirmed that a new national child protection policy was currently being drafted, provisions for witness protection and special procedures to deal with child rape cases were not among the new recommendations, they told IPS.

UNICEF officials, however, said that efforts were underway to clear the backlog of outstanding cases. The U.N. agency, along with various government offices, launched a programme last year to train police officers and officials at the attorney general’s department to efficiently handle child abuse cases.

The police department has also opened special district-level bureaus with trained personnel dedicated to handle child abuse and rape cases. In 2012, two special courts were also established, including one in Colombo and another in northern Jaffna, to hear child abuse cases.

Amarasuriya said that while increased awareness-raising had resulted in more cases being reported to police, more work was needed to bring about behavioural changes.

UNICEF said: There is a need for much more awareness and discussion on the issue,” adding that “behaviour change reduces incidents of abuse”.

Girls are more likely to fall victim to abuse than boys, Amarasuriya noted. Estimates suggest around 70 percent of reported cases involve girls.

“The social stigma is directed more towards girls who have been abused rather than boys,” she added. Girls who have been abused are more likely to be ostracised by their communities, particularly in the future, when they attempt to find a marriage partner.

UNICEF reported that abuse incidence was high in rural areas, like the North Central Anuradhapura District and the Central Rathnapura District. Officials also said that while the number of cases reported to the police had increased, there was still a significant amount of underreporting.

Research has also shown that child abuse is a contributory factor to rape, sexual abuse and violence against women.

“Men’s experience of emotional abuse and neglect as children was associated with non-partner rape perpetration in two countries, China and Sri Lanka,” says a recent study by the U.N. Development Programme titled Why Do Some Men Use Violence Against Women and How Can We Prevent It?

The report found that almost 18 percent of the Sri Lankan female respondents said they had been subjected to rape, while 32 percent said they had been subjected to physical abuse, rape or both. Twenty-seven percent of the Sri Lanka men interviewed for the study said they had subjected their partners to physical abuse, rape or both.

At least half of these men had been abused in their childhood, the survey found.

“Child abuse was a common phenomenon across the region, with 50 percent of Sri Lanka-national men reporting experiences of childhood emotional abuse and neglect (i.e. being publicly humiliated or insulted, parents being too drunk or drugged to care for child, etc),” the report that interviewed 13,000 participants across six countries in Asia and Pacific found.

Child abuse cases take as long as six years to reach a conclusion in Sri Lanka, heightening the trauma for victims. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Oct 5 2012 (IPS)

In 2011, 1,463 cases of sexual exploitation of children were reported to the Sri Lankan Police, who found every single complaint to be genuine and opened investigations.

By the year’s end, not one case had proceeded to the High Courts, where, according to the country’s judicial system, grave sexual crimes against children are heard.

Judging by this pattern, and similar cases in the past, the wait for justice is likely to be a long one.

In August this year 4,000 cases of child abuse were being heard in the country’s 34 High Courts, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said.

“One third of cases pending in the High Courts are in fact related to children,” according to a UNICEF report.

Child rights activists say that the real figure of cases pending resolution could be higher, if those that are yet to reach the High Court level are accounted for.

When a child abuse case is first reported, police begin by carrying out preliminary investigations and a Magistrate Court decides whether or not to send the cases to High Courts or dismiss the charges.

“If you count all those cases that are still awaiting a conclusion to the investigation, we are talking about a figure as high as 8,000,” Visakha Tillekeratne, an advocate for the local rights group, Justice for Victims, told IPS.

On average, a child abuse case takes as long as six years to reach a conclusion, according to UNICEF officials.

“A 2010 study of 110 cases of child abuse that came to the Forensic Medical Department of the University of Kelaniya for judicial medical examination mentioned that the average time taken to give evidence was 62.5 months (five years) from the day of the examination,” Suzanne Davey, UNICEF spokesperson in Colombo, told IPS.

The delays are not specific to child abuses cases, but plague the whole legal system, which is crippled by a lack of trained personnel in police stations capable of carrying out investigations, as well as a dearth of personnel at the Attorney General (AG)’s Department to handle prosecutions relating to child abuse cases.

“It is a big issue,” Senior Superintendant of Police and Police Spokesperson, Ajitha Rohana, told IPS, referring to the fact that at the end of 2010, 650,000 unresolved cases were being heard in the island’s courts.

Now, “Efforts are being made to give special attention to child abuse cases,” Rohana said.

UNICEF has collaborated with the Justice Ministry, Police Department and the AG’s Department to train judicial officers, police investigators and others in an effort to expedite investigations and child abuse cases.

Over 900 officers have received training since this January and a pilot project is underway in six districts where child abuse cases are treated with priority. Rohana told IPS that the initial results of the pilot projects were positive.

“The plan is to introduce the scheme to all the districts,” Rohana said.

Experts believe this needs to happen sooner rather than later, since the long wait for justice could add to the victims’ trauma.

“It is a brutal wait, especially when year after year nothing gets done,” Tillekeratne said.

“Case delays lead to the further victimisation of those children who have already suffered too much because of abuse and exploitation,” added Caroline Bakker, Chief of Protection at UNICEF, Sri Lanka.

She said that when victims see the offenders out on bail, it heightens their sense of helplessness. “Offenders remain free and continue to commit crimes against children with impunity,” she said.

Rohana told IPS that police are now taking special care not to allow suspects of child abuse to roam free unless granted bail by the court.

“All officers in charge of police stations have been instructed to take immediate action when a child abuse case is referred to them,” he said.

But Tillekeratne told IPS that much more concerted action was needed at the national level, given the enormity of the problem. “What we need is not for the pilot project to be phased into the rest of island, what we need is immediate implementation of the plan without delays.”

Rohana told IPS that, since 2005, when the government inducted special officers dedicated to women and children’s protection into police stations around the country, reporting has increased.

But UNICEF’s Davey said it was difficult to know if the presence of these officers had led to an increase in reporting or simply been accompanied by a rise in the levels of abuse.

The three worst provinces for child abuse in Sri Lanka are currently the densely populated Western Province and the two rural agricultural provinces, Sabaragamuwa and North Central. Police statistics show that most of the abuse in rural areas took place due to children being left unattended for long periods of time.

Citing a 2005 Judicial Medical Officers’ study, UNICEF said that 89 percent of child abuse was sexual in nature.

The study also showed that 70 percent of incidents involved a perpetrator who was a relative or someone close to the family, while 27 percent of abuse cases happened within a relationship. Only three percent of incidents involved offenders who were strangers or someone unknown to the victim.

A recent spate of high-profile abuse cases involving local politicians, and another of a six-year-old girl being raped and murdered by her 16-year-old relative, have once again increased press coverage of the issue.

(END)

Social stigmas against victims of sexual abuse keep families silent on the issue. Credit: Al Jazeera English/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Suad Hamada
MANAMA, Sep 25 2012 (IPS)

A thirty-four-year-old Bahraini teacher, whose son was abused five years ago, has hitherto refused to tell anyone the story, afraid that she will be blamed for failing to protect her child who is now eight years old.

“He was sitting with the maid outside the house. She left him alone for a moment to fetch some milk and some teenagers took him to a building under construction in the area,” the teacher told IPS, requesting anonymity.

“When she found him missing, she searched for him and found him being harassed by those boys.”

“I couldn’t report the case as they (the boys) are my neighbours and I don’t want people to blame me or to a shame my son when he grows up,” she said, expressing the sentiment of countless families.

The teacher didn’t take the child to a physician and stopped his counseling when she was advised to take legal action against the perpetrators.

Sexual abuse of children in Bahrain is increasingly sneaking under the radar, as families anxious to avoid ‘disgracing’ themselves in the conservative society keep silent about the issue.

Others keep the matter top secret out of fear of legal action against abusers, who are very often family relations.

Former head of the state-run Children Protection Centre (CPC), Dr. Fakhriya Dairi, told IPS, “As a government organisation we receive calls from neighbours or close relatives who report abuse cases with anonymity.

“In some cases we manage to prove the abuse but other times parents succeed in hiding the truth,” she said.

Activists and lawyers, however, criticise lenient punishments and the lack of special legislation to tackle child abuse.

Legal protections needed

Dr. Sharifa Swar, head of Batelco Care Centre for Family Violence Cases, has noticed an increase in sexual abuse cases with an average of three reported to the centre every week.

The centre registered 408 abuse cases in 2011, including cases of violence against women. To date, Bahrain has not conducted a comprehensive study on child abuse, so very few official statistics exist.

Swar told the press earlier this month that the increase in reported cases does not mean the end of social misconceptions and stigmas. In fact, she is convinced that the reported cases conceal a much larger number of victims, who are simply too afraid to speak up.

“We need tough legislation to protect children as the current (laws) are outdated and could help abusers escape punishment,” she said in a statement published earlier this month.

Under existing legislation, an adult who sexually abuses a child below 12 years of age is punished with up to fifteen years’ imprisonment, or nine years in jail if the victim is older.

But social activist and lawyer Fawziya Janahi pointed out that many abusers escape such punishment. She cited a recent case in which a court sentenced a 25-year-old man to a single year in jail for raping Janahi’s 16-year-old female client, by convincing the court that the girl agreed to have sex with him.

“I’m still battling another case of a 14-year-old girl who got pregnant after she was raped by four men. Only one confessed and he, too, might escape penalty for agreeing to marry her,” Janahi told IPS. “(Faulty) laws and social misconceptions turn the agony of sexual abuse into a lifetime of suffering.”

According to Janahi, Bahrain needs tougher punishments for child abusers, which could be put in place through an amendment of the penal code.

“The domestic violence draft law that is being reviewed by legislators could protect the rights of abused children, as parents who hide cases could be held responsible for neglect and maltreatment,” she said.

Additionally, the Be-Free Centre, dedicated to ensuring a safe living environment for children, has drafted a code of ethics to promote child rights.

This document enables government agencies, non-governmental organisations, the media, telecommunications establishments and many others to consider children’s safety when designing their strategies and services.

Members of civil society are currently holding negotiations with parliamentarians, in an effort to grant the draft code legal power.

The president of Be-Free Centre, Rana Al Sairafi, told IPS that 50 to 60 percent of all types of abuse against children go unreported.

“To reach out to families with abused children who don’t want their cases to be reported by NGOs or government organisations, we have launched a hotline that offers free counseling in anonymity,” Al Sairafi added.

The centre also offers workshops to children of different age groups to train them on self-protection against abuse and exploitation.

Experts believe the issue has far-reaching social effects, which need to be tackled at a systemic level.

Swar said that males who were sexually abused in their childhood and didn’t receive proper therapy often lack concentration and suffer from short tempers.

“Sexually abused children hate to go to school and are emotionally unstable and shy,” she added.

Dairi, who recently started her own counseling centre, now receives fewer cases, which she attributes to financial constraints that prevent poor families from seeking therapy and psychological support.

The private counseling clinics charge an average of 50 dollars per session and the therapy could take more than one year.

This is often unaffordable for the 14,000 families who live below the poverty line, earning a monthly income of less than 370 Bahraini dinars (roughly 1,000 dollars).

Bahrain endorsed a child protection law this August, which forms a general framework for all aspects of child protection.

(END)