COMMENT: Parents, talk to children about sexual abuse

BEING a parent, you talk to your children about various topics to educate and to keep them safe. Some topics may be easier to talk about than others. One uneasy but most important topic is Child Sexual Abuse (CSA).

But the reality is that a large proportion of children worldwide do face sexual abuse.
CSA is something that exists all around us, yet we don’t speak about it yet studies repeatedly show that children who receive accurate, comprehensive information on sexuality from multiple sources go on to have healthier relationships and lower rates of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and sexual abuse.

As parents it’s also important to not treat the subject like it’s taboo or dirty (which is how we often treat anything related to sex). This is because for many reasons, it is very hard for children to disclose.

CSA comes in many ways. It can be inflicted by other children and adolescents, whether it’s friends, siblings, other people that the child knows, and in some cases they only barely know or don’t know at all.

In this week’s edition we carry a story about a conversation about child sexual abuse between a mother and her 12-year-old in which the daughter ends up revealing  that their neighbour sexually abused her before she started pre-school.

The girl claimed the alleged perpetrator repeated the act for a week and she did not disclose the matter to anyone.

The matter however, came to light this year when the victim was talking with her mother about matters of sexual abuse and that is when she decided to disclose the incident.

The case is just a “tip of the iceberg” as a large proportion of children never disclose their abuse.
The story also shows how sex education at schools can be one of the main preventive forms to protect children from abuse, undesirable pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Sex education also gives young people the knowledge and skills they need for a lifetime of good sexual health.

They learn how to have healthy relationships, make informed decisions about sex, think critically about the world, be a good ally to those who are marginalised, and love themselves for who they are.

In 2017, Zimbabwe launched its second National Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy amid calls for stepping up interventions to address a myriad of challenges facing adolescents and young people, who constitute a third of Zimbabwe’s population.

Although the Government has enacted laws to protect the rights of children and punish child abusers, conversations about CSA will also help to encourage children to abstain from early sexual activities and also teach them on engaging in these activities responsibly.