JOHANNESBURG, 12 March 2008 (IRIN) - Burgeoning unemployment, rising inflation and trade deficits are signs of a weak economy, but could child abuse be added to the list? As rates of this crime continue to climb, experts say economics is no longer just about numbers.

Sexual violence against children in Zimbabwe has increased by more than 40 percent in the last three years, according toUNICEF country spokesperson James Elder; studies cited in the South African Medical Journal report the country's own stats have shot up 400 percent in the last decade.

"There's no doubt the economic crisis, social stress and orphan emergency are large factors," Elder said. "One in four children are orphaned, and that means more than 1.5 million vulnerable children. Their vulnerability is exacerbated by unemployment, economics and the ensuing stress on families."

Cases of child sexual abuse - like those of their adult counterparts - are often under-reported; some countries, such as South Africa, may not aggregate crime statistics by age, making the exact scope of the problem debatable.

Dr Rachel Jewkes, director of the health Gender and Health Unit at South Africa's Medical Research Council, argues that there has been no increase in sexual violence against children in the last ten years.

Joan van Niekerk, the national coordinator of Childline, a South African child advocacy organisation, admits the rising numbers might be partly due to better awareness of the crime but, like Zambian activist Katembu Kuamba, says the increasing number of children at her organisation's door are hard to reason away.

The myth of the virgin myth

"The numbers of children being [abused], sometimes by their own fathers, brothers, uncles, teachers or even our men in the church [pastors], are getting out of hand," said Kuamba, executive director of the Young Women's Christian Association in Zambia.

"One assumption is that our awareness programmes are working and, therefore, more people are reporting such cases; the other assumption is that abuse is on the increase because of the myth that sleeping with a child or a virgin could cure HIV."

In 2001, sexual violence in the region made headlines with the rape of Baby Tshepang, a nine-month-old girl in South Africa's Northern Cape Province, who was brutally raped. Although infant survivors of rape usually undergo immense physical trauma, Baby Tshepang survived and her case created media frenzy around infant rape as well as its links to the region's HIV epidemic.

However, Jewkes said infant rapes made up a very small portion of reported child rapes. A 2001 study on child rape survivors, published in the South African Medical Journal, found a 1 percent seroconvergence rate, despite the lack of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) - antiretroviral (ARV) treatment administered to victims to decrease their chances of acquiring the HI virus after assaults - in most cases.

She has used this to argue that the virgin myth is not a prevalent cause of rape; if it were, seroconvergence would be much higher.

Economically driven

Maxwell Matewere, a child rights activist working in Malawi, said many of the abused girls he saw came from poor families, some of whom encouraged their daughters to seek out older men as a way of providing an income.

Matewere's organisation, Eye of the Child, reported a 43-year-old man who was accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl. The relationship started with a cell phone, he said, and it took a teacher to report it.

At a nearby halfway house for abused children in Blantyre, Malawi's commercial capital, child rights activist Marcel Chisi has just released six children back into the care of their parents. Most of the children he sees come from broken homes where parents work away from home, often for days at a time.

"There are cases where parents leave children, some as young as eight, on their own to fend for themselves," he said. "This creates room for abusive people to come in."

In Lusaka, capital of Zambia, it was the death of 9-year-old Elizabeth's* parents that put her at risk. Forced to stay with her uncle, she endured four years of abuse in silence, afraid he would fulfil his threat to kill her or throw her out on the streets if she told anyone.

Now 21 years old, with a design career in Lusaka, Elizabeth struggles to maintain relationships with men or talk about her experiences. "Whenever I remember it, I feel the same pain I felt then."

In Zimbabwe, the problem of absentee parents has been taken to another level as the crumbling economy forces many to leave the country in search of opportunities in neighbouring countries, compounding the effects of HIV/AIDS on the country's children.

"In such an environment of economic hardships, where children are left in the care of friends and relatives after parents go to the diaspora in search of better opportunities, children are left at the mercy of abusers," said Idine Magonga, national director of the country's Victim Friendly Court, which was established after it was found many children were too scared to face abusers in court, leading to acquittals in their cases.

"A new trend that has emerged is that in a majority of cases children are not being sexually abused by strangers but by people known to them, such as relatives and family friends."

According to Jewkes, poverty does more than just take parents out of the house; it changes the way children - like those in Chisi's care  - are viewed by society.

"It's more likely that a poorer child will get raped than a wealthier child," she said. "There are men to whom poorer children may assume a lower social status, and they may think there are less likely to be consequences when raping a poor child."

Childline's van Niekerk said the families of children like these may not report rapes, opting instead to accept payment or "damages", as it is sometimes referred to, from the perpetrator.

"(Child abuse) is a complex problem and it has multiple roots," she said. "It's rooted in our history of violence in the country [South Africa] that hasn't been dealt with, and it's rooted in many factors in the present."

The region responds?

Faced with rising figures on the crime, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, South Africa and Zambia have all made efforts to establish child-friendly courts for abused children.

South Africa recently adopted its new Sexual Offences Act, extending the definition of rape and imposing harsher jail sentences for acts such as anal rape, and allowing survivors to demand perpetrators take mandatory HIV tests.

Namibia's Combating of Rape Act became law in 2000, ensuring that survivors or their guardians were informed of the trial date and - perhaps just as importantly - of bail applications that might lead to the perpetrator's release.

In Malawi, rape can be punishable by at least 14 years imprisonment with hard labour, and sometimes even a life sentence. However, in South Africa tougher sentencing has meant little, as principle is often a far cry from practice.

"There are massive challenges in the justice system, and laws are not going to solve these challenges," Jewkes said. She alleged that judges continued to doll out lenient sentences in cases of sexual violence against children - a crime they saw as not particularly serious - and dismissive attitudes like these filtered down.

"Reporting procedures are not working," Childline's van Niekerk said. "We are still coming across children turned away from reporting at police stations, and this means the child's health needs are not being not attended to."

It may also mean children are not getting access to PEP in public hospitals. Van Niekerk said the country was administering PEP without specific child guidelines, which had still not been approved by the health department. The health department was unavailable for comment.

In Swaziland, Save the Children, Interpol, and the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA) have partnered in training the police to take statements, open dockets and collect evidence that would lead to convictions in a sensitive manner. But SWAGAA director Nonhlanhla Dlamini said it was an uphill battle, as the specially trained police were soon transferred to other departments.

In Malawi, where there is no such training arrangements for councillors, the survivors - and perpetrators - of child sexual abuse have little to turn to in the way of emotional support.

Van Niekerk said more than 50 percent of perpetrators she saw in South Africa were children themselves, who, if sent uncounselled into the adult criminal justice system, were only too likely to become victims themselves.

As the region struggles to cope with what many say are rising levels of this kind of child abuse, there is a need to focus not only on laws but also on treatment, counselling and protection of the children involved in these crimes, she said. "All of these do cost money, but it's an investment in our future."

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