Violence against children on the increase

Mrs Marilyn Amponsah Annan, Acting Executive Secretary of the Ghana National Commission on Children (GNCC), on Wednesday said child abuse had assumed an alarming rate in the country leading to a higher number of children being emotionally and mentally traumatised.

She said from 1998 to 2000, statistics from the Women and Juvenile Unit (WAJU) of the Ghana Police Service indicated that 329 children were defiled, 235 assaulted and battered, 44 threatened, 76 raped and 911 lacked maintenance and care.

Mrs Amponsah Annan who was addressing a press conference as part of activities to mark Mental Health Day, said even though Ghana was among the first countries to ratify the Convention on the rights of the child, laws for their protection were not being properly enforced.

She said it had been confirmed that sexual abuses that children suffer were most of the time perpetrated by their loved ones, people they are familiar with and trust resulting in most cases not being reported because of the stigma and shame.

Mrs Amponsah Annan said though every child was at risk of abuse, the most vulnerable were those staying with stepparents, those who lacked parental care and those deemed less intelligent and most often left to their fate.

She said the trauma these children went through after being abused was enormous, adding that there was the need to set up centres and programmes all over the country to address their physical and psychological rehabilitation.

Mrs Amponsah Annan said it was important to establish WAJU in all the regions to make it accessible to many people since it had only two offices in the country at the moment.

Dr Joseph Bediako Asare, Chief Psychiatrist, said mental health workers were worried about the trauma and the long-term effect the abuses had on children hence the need for parents to ensure that their children were given the love and care to make them grow into responsible adults.

He said the state had a major role to play by ensuring that structural abuse where the state imprisoned mothers carrying children were avoided otherwise these children may end up becoming liabilities rather than assets to the nation.