Protecting our children, safeguarding out future: Protect your son

JAMAICAN PARENTS are usually very careful about who they leave their young daughters with but they will leave their sons with almost anybody, especially a woman.

The fact is that not many people expect the Jamaican woman to be a paedophile. Universally, a paedophile is thought of as being a man.

Many Jamaicans also see women and girls as potential victims of sexual predators, but do not see the women as sexual predators themselves.

However, clinical psychologist Dr Karen Richards is urging Jamaicans to change their collective idea of what is sexual abuse and who might be a victim.

"I think it is important for parents to give their sons, and for schools to give their male students, the same kind of cautionary advice they give to the girls.

"We must paint the potential abuser as possibly male/possibly female and we should move away from this idea that women are not capable of becoming sexual abusers," urged Richards.

And the police are encouraging persons to report all cases of sexual abuse.

"They should all be reported whether or not it is an adult male or female molesting a boy or a girl," head of CISOCA, Deputy Superintendent Herfa Beckford, said.

"It is still abuse if a woman is sexually active with a teenage boy, under the law, and should be reported," added Trevesa DaSilva, public-education specialist at the Office of the Children's Registry.

Children are suffering

Since 2007, the Office of the Children's Registry has received in excess of 10,000 reports of child abuse and neglect in Jamaica. In 2009 alone, the registry received 6,150 reports of abuse and neglect - 5,690 more than the 460 reported cases in 2007, and 2,100 more than the number reported in 2008.

According to police data, between 2007 and 2009, 3,863 cases of rape and carnal abuse were reported.

Sexual crimes against children are rampant, with girls primarily the victims. Children and adolescents make up a high per cent of all the sexual assault/rape cases admitted to public hospitals.

Over the past five years, more than 300 children, mostly boys, have been murdered.