'Police child protection unit will stay'

Published May 18, 2006

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The police family violence, child protection and sexual offences unit (FCS) will not close.

The assurance came from the head of the unit, Senior Superintendent Anneke Pienaar, on Wednesday during the seventh annual national conference on child abuse by the South African Professional Society on the Abuse of Children.

Pienaar was asked to speak at the conference after rumours persisted for the past several months that the unit might be shut down.

Child organisations feared they would be left alone in the battle to protect children and unit members feared they might "disappear like SA Narcotics Bureau members" when deployed to police stations.

Pienaar responded: "Tell the stressed members and those spreading the rumours to contact me for the real information."

She said that just like any other organisation, the unit was going through normal restructuring and re-organising to bring resources and expertise closer to the community.

"Everything is still just proposals that will take a while to become reality. The FCS will continue.

"The service they deliver will go to police stations, but the identity of the unit will still remain."

Pienaar explained that the child protection unit was established in 1986 to render a sensitive service to child victims.

It then became clear that there was a need for the expansion of this service to adult victims and the FCS unit was established in 1995.

Currently, there were 49 FCS units and 17 child protection units.

However, the child protection unit only operated in two provinces as there were no FCS units nearby.

Pienaar said: "The proposal is to not work in areas anymore, but to bring the resources closer to the communities. A suggestion is to divide the more than 1 200 police stations in the country into clusters, the size depending on the population density, the crime threat needs and the environment.

Each cluster will have an accounting station to report FCS cases to.

Some clusters will have full FCS units. Others that do not have a unit and receive little FCS-related cases will have specialised individuals who can work with these cases at each station.

Pienaar added they were also training 250 members, including detectives, annually to be able to work with FCS cases, while also providing in-service training to police and prosecutors on the policing of child pornography.

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