Nigerian society has been described as sitting on a dangerous time bomb due to the high rate of incessant child sexual abuse that has continued to take place in all parts of the country.
The Executive Chairman of Ika South Local Government Area, Hon. Fred Ofume disclosed this during a one day sensitization seminar tagged, ‘Stop Sexual Child Abuse Now’, in Agbor recently, organized by Information Action Centre, Ika South to create awareness on the incessant Child Sexual Abuse going on in our society.
Hon. Fred Ofume who disclosed that based on the rate of child sexual abuse going on in the country that tomorrow might become too dangerous, posited that those who are supposed to take care of the children are the ones abusing them.
The Chairman pointed out that due to the current situation in the country, parents have left their duty of taking care of their children while hustling for money and other cares of the world, thereby allowing some group of adult to take advantage of their children and abuse them sexually.
He further averred that we will be richly blessed if we are able to take good care of our children whose upbringing will definitely affect the society negatively or positively because when children learn good values the society at large benefits.
Resource person of the seminar, Nkemakonam Linda Ijeh, the Director of a non-governmental organization (NGO) that deals with issue relating to child sexual abuse, revealed that 300, 000 children are abused sexually in Nigeria every year.
She said that when one opens pages of newspapers every day, one continues to read different cases of child sexual abuse which are always perpetuated by the children’s caregivers or even relatives or people who are well known to the families of the victims.
She further disclosed that many of the cases of the child abuse are not reported by parents due to the fear of stigmatization while children continue to grow up with such horrible experience.
She advised parents not to keep quite in cases of sexual abuse of their children because it does not help the society and the victims who may not receive the necessary counselling he/she needs in such situation.
She further disclosed that adults can stop this abuse by curtailing the early signs while reiterating that adults will be held responsible for the offense if they notice the early signs and decide to keep quite.
Describing sexual abuse, she said, “all sexual touching between an adult and a child is sexual abuse, sexual touching between children can also be sexual abuse when there is a significant age difference between the children or if the children are very different developmentally.”
She further revealed that sexual abuse does not have to involve penetration, force, pain or even touching rather that if an adult engages in any sexual behaviour (looking, showing or touching), with a child to meet the adult interest of sexual needs, it is sexual abuse while positing that this include the production, distribution and viewing of child pornography.
She also advised parents to take note of the child various protection laws that are in Nigeria and apply them while always seeking the services of NGOs and other relevant agencies in cases of child abuse
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