GALLE, 1 July 2007 (IRIN) - Fifteen-year-old Natasha Fonseka (not her real name) is once again a happy child. Orphaned by the December 2004 tsunami and a victim of subsequent child abuse, she now lives in a children's home where she receives emotional and psychological support.

Natasha used to cry herself to sleep after her parents and younger brother were killed in the tsunami. And things got worse for her when she moved in with her aunt, Beatrice Perera, and her aunt's boyfriend, Sarath (not their real names). Natasha says Beatrice, who was given legal custody of the girl by Galle District Magistrate's Court, used to beat her regularly.

"My aunt didn't like me talking to Sarath," Natasha said, adding that Sarath treated her well. "She began hitting me every night, saying I was a curse." According to Natasha, Beatrice also stopped her from going to school. "She told everyone I was ill." Natasha dropped out at grade 7.

Transfer to a children's home

According to Natasha she was forced into increasing isolation, leaving home only to accompany Beatrice and Sarath to temple and forbidden to talk to the neighbours.

Natasha lived like this for almost two years until, after a night of severe beatings, she slipped out of the house and lodged a complaint at Galle Police Station on 13 December 2006. The police immediately transferred Natasha to the safety of a children's home in the area. Her aunt was remanded but later released on bail.

Today, Natasha still lives in the children's home and is happy to be back in school. She never saw her aunt and Sarath again.

To deal with the psychological scars from both the tsunami and her abuse at the hands of her aunt, Natasha receives psycho-social support through programmes and workshops conducted by a variety of organisations, including the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF), Sarvodaya and the Christian Children's Fund (CCF) - Sri Lanka.

"I am glad to be alive," said Natasha. "I was scared to speak out for almost two years but I'm not afraid any more." She added that she is aware of many other children "whose parents are no longer living and who are beaten like I was".

Over 250 children orphaned by tsunami in south

According to the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), 635 children were orphaned in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami. In southern districts of the country - including Kalutara, Galle, Matara and Hambantota - 137 boys and 129 girls were orphaned.

In its summary report of children affected by the tsunami, published in 2005, the NCPA said all these southern children were living with relatives, guardians or in children's homes in the area. There are 12 children's homes in southern Sri Lanka.

"Children who have been orphaned by the tsunami cannot be adopted unless they receive a foster care order from court. If the guardian or relative wants to adopt a child, he or she must request foster care parenting, according to the tsunami special provisions act," the NCPA report said.

The NCPA is currently conducting psycho-social projects in collaboration with the Department of Childcare and Probation Services in the south in order to safeguard children at risk. The Authority said there were no statistics on the number of children who had been abused.

CCF-Sri Lanka is also implementing programmes, collectively called Children First, for children who lost one or both parents in the tsunami. It launched an emergency programme in the southern provinces just weeks after the tsunami struck to help children and their guardians address issues such as abuse and psychological trauma.

Tackling child abuse

"There are some children who continue to fall prey to some level of physical abuse," Nayomi Kannangara, CCF-Sri Lanka's Children First project manager, told IRIN. "Through our programmes we hope to minimise this and, to a certain extent, we have been able to curb the problem."

According to Kannangara, one of their key objectives is to support government officers from the Probation and Child Care Services Department and also child rights promotion officers in their child protection activities. In 2005, CCF-Sri Lanka introduced a one-year diploma in child protection for such officers to help them understand and deal more effectively with children at risk.

The Child First project, funded by UNICEF, will continue until March 2008. After that, the government will be chiefly responsible for such activities, using the child rights officers who have been trained and have worked closely with the programme over the past two years, according to M. Asad-ur-Rahman, the head of the UNICEF office in Galle.

jn/bj/cb/ed

© IRIN. All rights reserved. More humanitarian news and analysis: http://www.irinnews.org

IRIN news