Kumudini David
I have relatives, students, bosses, and people I know on FB too. I’ve chosen a hard road. I talk about my sexuality and experiences openly.
I’m a child rights advocate and a survivor of child sexual abuse. My quest now is to stop child abuse in Sri Lanka and the world.
Do you know that most abusers are survivors of abuse too? Rapists, paedophiles, ephebophiles, sexual deviants, and abusers of any kind have gone through abuse themselves, and the damage caused is manifesting in ways that are harmful to them and others. So, it’s a very vicious cycle. The only people who abuse without being abused themselves are sociopaths and psychopaths. To stop abuse, many things need to work together:
The laws in place need to change and new laws need to be added. This means getting bills pulled together and sent to Parliament for acceptance, then debate, before at least some of them are added to our penal codes. We tried for 17 years to get the National Child Protection Policy to get accepted in Parliament, in Sri Lanka. It was finally accepted last October. Now we need to wait till a new Parliament is elected before the Policy can be enacted.
As it stands the current laws are woefully ineffective. Cases go on for decades and longer because the laws work in favour of the perpetrators. Kids face re-victimisation by the legal system that should be protecting them. For example, a case got dismissed because the girl couldn’t remember the colour of her underwear the day she was molested. That was enough to cause doubt on the allegations. This is because the child didn’t add the details of her clothing to her statement at the police. Why? Because no one can be present with the child while the statement is given including a lawyer so the child is on his or her own with no guidance. And that statement is taken as the truth during the trial. Anything remembered beyond that is subject to doubt.
What needs to be done? The already traumatised child needs to have been coached by a lawyer, and the statement written by someone on the child’s side needs to go with the child to the police so it can be included in the formal statement. For this to happen, for all abused kids a massive awareness campaign needs to be put in play to educate parents, teachers, and caregivers on how to prevent abuse, identify a child who has been abused and help a child who has been abused.
Our probation system acts as a catchment for deviant children as well as those removed from abusive environments for protection by law. So abused kids are put in with abusive kids and the inevitable happens. The kids in our probation system face even more horror in the very system that should protect them. This is the current system in play. It needs an overhaul and complete restructuring, which again needs an Act of Parliament.
Children feel powerless to protect themselves. Predators will groom them to believe nothing wrong is happening and/or that the child is at fault, so if anyone finds out it’ll be the child they blame. 97% of the time the predator is someone the parents and the child trust. We don’t have any reliable statistics on the number of abused kids in Sri Lanka. The estimated ratio by NGOs, INGOs, and CSOs who work at the grassroots level is one in two kids at the moment. That’s 50% of the country’s children who are facing, or have faced, abuse already.
Most children will not talk about what happened to them because of shame and fear. So they blame themselves, and the culmination of trauma is devastating.
A brain is fully developed by age seven. If a child experiences trauma before that or during the brain development is altered forever. Nothing can reverse it.
That child needs to then learn to live with the altered development for the rest of his or her life. I went into depression before age seven. (I was abused from three till eight.) My brain is now prone to depression forever and I will be on antidepressants till I die).
So now please imagine how many predators we must have lived around us for 50% of the country’s kids to be abused. And most of those predators were victims themselves. Which means there’s a whole host of people who need help.
A punitive system is all we have at the moment. It’s not enough. We need a system of mental health help as well and rehabilitation which means there needs to be yet another Act of Parliament. Also, our country’s mental health system is woefully inadequate to handle the level of care needed, so the skills required to handle a support structure of this magnitude needs to be a national ask. The education system needs to prioritise mental health along with the other skills needed for crisis management.
At the moment Psychologists need a Master’s Degree at least to get a license to practice. Psychiatrists need to go through Medical School. So, for a skilled person, it takes at least six to seven years of training at least, to be able to help.
Along with the law, legal system, and crisis management we also need to educate society to use their vote wisely. As you can imagine, getting any of this done means we need a competent parliament that’s not constantly brawling and money mongering to make A LOT of much-needed acts to put a robust system in place.
This means we the people have to vote individuals with at least two brain cells into the parliament. We have to make it happen. No one else will or can.
We need a robust civil lobbying structure that has a voice in Parliament. It’s non-existent at the moment in Sri Lanka.
On top of all this are the cultural obstacles that we must educate ourselves to get past. A part of good mental hygiene is accepting yourself and being true to yourself. Without this, we can’t get past our own issues to be of any use to the children, our children, and the future, who are already facing horrors you can only imagine. The stigma we face with our sexuality is a big part of deviancy incubating and thriving. A person’s first sexual experience will influence his or her sexuality for the rest of the person’s life. Hence my effort to push conversations on sexuality and acceptance.
Given the above, I strongly believe that people need to be more open about their sexuality. As I see it, it’s the very least we can do to put right an unholy mess that needs to be cleaned up so our children can be kept safe. It starts with us. Letting fear control us is a choice.
