By Zara Nicholson
Perpetrators of sexual abuse against children are as young as nine years old and there has also been an increase in the past year of younger victims of sexual and other forms of abuse, according to two of Cape Town's organisations.
Synnov Skorge, director of the Sarah Baartman Centre for Women and Children near Manenberg, said they had seen an increase in the number of younger children being sexually abused with a "large number" of victims under five years old.
"The behavioural problems are frightening when you start seeing young children showing signs of depression, sleep and eating disorders. We are dealing with very, very traumatised children," she said.
Continues Below ↓
'The behavioural problems are frightening...' Skorge said their centre had also seen a 30 percent increase in the past year of women coming to their shelter while the number of women seeking legal advice had doubled to 420 this year.
She said in the past year their centre alone had seen 253 women about different forms of abuse.
"We have also seen an increase in abuse related to drugs, not saying that it is a cause but where it has definitely been a factor," she said.
She said in the past year it had become obvious that drugs, and especially tik, played a part in various forms of domestic abuse.
Skorge said the link between drugs and sexual and other forms of abuse had become clear in the past year with tik being used in many houses where these incidents occurred, mostly by perpetrators but also by victims, to cope with the effects of the abuse.
'There is a huge problem for women around assistance from police...' She said there had also been an increase in boys who were addicted to tik abusing their mothers.
Skorge added that it was a well-known fact that in most instances the perpetrator was known to the victim, but said a "frightening" increase was the growing number of young perpetrators.
Continues...
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
