Cuthbert-Flynn: Child sex abuse ‘disturbing’
Published:Thursday | May 18, 2023 | 12:32 AMJudana Murphy/Gleaner Writer
STATE MINISTER in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn, has described recent media reports of sexual abuse involving children as “disturbing”.
She underscored that parents have primary responsibility for the care and protection of their children and urged them to teach their children at an early age to report all types of abuse.
“We have instituted the 2-1-1 hotline for children to report abuse, but I still think we can go a little bit further and do some more as far as getting in the faces of these children to let them understand that the State is there to actually guide and protect them after they have made a report, and the parents have to come onboard,” she said.
Cuthbert-Flynn was speaking on Let’s Talk Justice, a weekly radio programme hosted by Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), on Bridge 99 FM.
She explained that parents must also be exposed to the potential outcomes their children may face if they become victims of sexual abuse.
“We wonder sometimes why we are so angry. There are probably a lot of us walking around who were sexually or physically abused as children and we had no out. We didn’t get any counselling, we didn’t get any kind of mentoring or we weren’t believed. Sometimes kids will tell their parents and they ‘run’ them and so they have to feel supported,” the minister said.She added that parents must endeavour to develop relationships with their children that are built on trust.
Last Tuesday, a seven-year-old girl was the victim of a sexual attack after she was kidnapped for hours in the quiet rural community of Fellowship Hall in St Mary.
She was found bloodied and battered under a mango tree in the community, nearly nine hours after she left home for school.
STIGMA ATTACHED
According to data obtained from the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), 465 children were victims of sexual offences, 371 were victims of sexual intercourse with a person under 16 and 224 children were raped in 2022.
Meanwhile, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Jacqueline Dillon said that the Jamaican society depicts a lot of sexual activities and many children are left to manage on their own, resulting in them taking on adult roles at an early age.
“Children are left exposed to a number of things that they ought not to be exposed to. They are left unprotected, they are not guided by adults, and so the persons who sometimes guide them are persons you don’t want around your children,” she detailed.
Dillon said that the kind of care and protection that a nation ought to give to children is lacking in households, primarily due to poor parenting.
The DSP shared that she has seen videos on social media with adults gyrating on children or cheering them along to do explicit dances.
“There is a stigma attached to being sexually molested or being raped within communities, but on the other end there is no stigma attached to a young girl under the age of 16 who is in a relationship and is sexually active. Many of them are running away from home when they are in a home where they cannot or they are deterred from doing these kinds of activities,” shared Dillon, who is head of the Domestic Violence Intervention Centres.
She added that the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) is actively engaging communities on safe sexual practices, while the Jamaica Constabulary Force has been educating the public about sexual offences and proper parenting.