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Protect children from abuse, before it’s too late

COMMENT Two shocking cases involving child abuse recently featured in the news, prompting us to ask whether we as a nation are doing enough to protect the most vulnerable among us from the worst experiences imaginable.

The first case made the news on Saturday. In this case, custody of a seven-year-old girl was transferred by the Sessions Court from her grandaunt to her father and grandmother.

Three years before, custody had been given to the grandaunt after accusations that the girl’s father and paternal grandparents had been sexually abusing the child.

The abuse was verified by medical examinations, but the police ultimately dropped the case against the three accused due to a lack of evidence.

Of note was the desperate manner in which the girl tried to hold on to her grandaunt, while her grandmother pulled her away, after the court made its ruling. It took 20 minutes before the girl was dragged into the car and taken away.

The second case involves a woman charged with murdering one of her children and abusing two of her others. The dead child was 11 years old, and one of a pair of twins, the other whom the woman has pleaded guilty to abusing. She has a nine-month-old daughter as well, whom she pleaded not guilty to abusing.

Stop any more children from meeting this fate

Reading of two such cases in such a short time raises urgent concerns for the safety and well-being of the seven-year-old girl in the first case.

It is important that as outsiders without a full knowledge of all available facts, we should not presume anyone guilty until proven as such.

That said, the many facts apparently surrounding the case, which we shall discuss below, should certainly give the authorities pause.

The main question I believe we must ask is - have the courts put a young girl in a situation where she might eventually meet the fate of the children from the second case? This is the most appalling possibility that we must take every effort to avoid.

One of those three children from the second case has paid the ultimate price, and is no longer with us. Victims of abuse who have survived however, face almost equally distressing futures.

The trauma and long-lasting psychological scars from such abuse often stretch long into adulthood, sometimes resulting in cycles of destructive behaviour.

There are few greater tragedies when victims of abuse are unable to process through their experiences, and end up becoming perpetrators of abuse themselves, as has often happened.

We need not even discuss at length just how many wounds abuse inflicts on children in the long term; that any child abuse happens at all is appalling and should be prevented at every cost.

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