The shortcomings of the social services

Jan 07, 2016 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Toward the end of last year, the Ministry of Social Protection reported to the nation that the cases of child abuse had passed the 3,000 mark. It is as though the people in this country had reached a new low.
Indeed, many of the older people had grown up in a society where floggings were the norm. Teachers flogged children in school; parents whipped their children and the courts thought nothing about sentencing criminals to a session of flogging and whipping.
Somewhere along the way the people were taught that beating was cruel and that it scarred children for life; that it made children grow into abusers and continue a cycle of abuse. The educationists in our midst attempted to follow trends in the United States where the sociologists claimed that they had done their research and that flogging was barbaric.
As an aside, some of the states in the United States have reintroduced flogging to counter the growing indiscipline.
But flogging is the least of the child abuse problem in Guyana. There were more than six hundred cases of child sex abuse. That is perhaps the most distressing situation in the country. A man gets a prolonged jail sentence for inserting his finger into a little child’s vagina. This is just one case of child sex abuse that ended up in court.
There were others; men who opted to have sex with little girls because such acts boosted their ego; allowed them to feel superior to another human being. Then there were those men who preyed on family members.
Unfortunately, because of the sloth in the judicial system, many of the victims grow into young adults and would decline to lead further evidence in the matter. The perpetrator therefore walks. That is all well and good except that the society does not see the scars on the minds of the young victim.
We have had cause to criticize those parents who literally pimp their children. Some uncaring adult opts to make a child his sex toy; the parent gets wind and reports to the police. The man may have the option of compensation and he makes an offer. The parent leaps at it unaware, that while money may temporarily offer some solace, it does nothing for the child.
But there is another aspect to the problems of the child. Many of those neglected seek love away from the home. These are the children, who, in the absence of role models, gravitate to the first prominent adult they meet. The result is that these days there are no shortages of criminal recruits.
Just recently two 21-year-olds were shot and killed by the police. These had been members of the criminal enterprise long before they had attained the age of majority. There are many more. Scarcely a day passes without a member of the Social Protection agency ends up sitting in court on behalf of a child who is either a perpetrator or a victim.
The Chief Probation Officer recently said that the department has come to recognise that placing a child into an institution, is not the best thing unless that institution is a school or some other place of learning.
In the same way that the country has a shortage of people capable of dealing with mental health issues, in the same way there is a shortage of people capable of rehabilitating children and young adults. The courts have not been helpful in penalizing those parents who neglect their children. And in a few cases it has penalized those parents who abuse their children yet the extent of the penalty is far from enough.
A woman brutalizes her six-year-old son to the extent that his body looks like a chequers board and she gets a few months in prison. But the child is having a torrid time living with anyone. He has had to change two foster parents. Only time will tell if he would be a normal adult. Such is the case of our social problems and they are far from over given that there are more than a dozen reports of child abuse each day.

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The shortcomings of the social services

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