Govt blames parents over high  sexual crimes during lockdown

The high sexual offences committed against children throughout the country during the lockdown last year primarily resulted from parental negligence, the government has said.

On Tuesday, while meeting probation and community development officers across the Acholi Sub-region, Mr Martin Kiiza, the executive director of the National Children Authority, said the government was cognizant that parents failed to protect their children during the lockdown.

In March last year, the country was plunged into a lockdown intended to stop the spread of the Covid-19.

However, Mr Kiiza said the lockdown kept children and perpetrators of child abuse under the same roof and community for long.
“Ideally, cases spiked as a result of poor parenting. Parents out there neglected their roles in nurturing children and little attention was paid during the lockdown,” he said.

Mr Kiiza called upon parents to seek family planning methods so as to bear children they are capable of taking care of even during emergencies such as the one caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Parents should avoid bearing children just for the sake of it. It becomes a huge problem because children with no sense of guidance easily fall victims to abuse,” he added.

Quoting the authority’s latest report findings, Mr Kiiza said the levels of violence against children have significantly spiked across the country as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ravage livelihoods of communities.

“Child marriage cases, for example, have gone up. Our report on the state of the children 2020, indicates that 14,230 girls and more than 140 boys have been defiled across the country.”

According to the report launched in March, the closure of schools resulted in gaps in the provision of health and psychological services, since education institutions serve as platforms for prevention, diagnosis and counselling.

Many cases of child abuse were underreported during the lockdown, with reporting mechanisms being inaccessible by children and families, according to the report.

“As a result, many vulnerable children experienced both loss of essential services and lack of social protection mechanisms. Children had no access to sexual reproductive health services and counselling, which they would obtain from senior women and male teachers,” the report states.

According to the Uganda Children Helpline Service (UCHL) July 2020 Report, 430 (298 females and 132 males) cases of violence against children were recorded, an increment of 75 cases from the 355 cases recorded in June.

Education institution closures led to increased risks for women and girls who are more vulnerable to multiple types of abuses such as domestic violence, transactional sex, underage and forced marriages.

Child neglect was the most reported form of violence against children, which made up to 36.8 per cent of all reported cases.

In Gulu District, for example, there was a 500 per cent increase in defilement cases in 2020 compared to cases recorded in 2019.

Ms Evelyn Akello, the assistant district probation and welfare officer, said many parents and caregivers resorted to negative survival strategies such as child labour and child marriages to meet the basic needs of their families during the lockdown.

“Besides sexual violence against children, the rising child labour during the pandemic was attributed to rampant child neglect since many families found it hard to meet the needs of their children,” Ms Akello said.

Statistics from the district probation office indicates that the district registered 1,030 defilement cases in 2020 compared to 238 in 2019. In the same year (2020), 163 boys were defiled compared to 98 recorded in 2019.

Whereas the district recorded 1,064 cases of teenage pregnancies in 2019, the figure sharply rose to 3,166 in 2020, with 112 child marriage cases registered.

During a visit to Gulu last week, Ms Rosa Malango, the UN Resident Coordinator, blamed the high cases of sexual and gender-based crimes against women and girls in Uganda on the country’s social fabric.

Ms Malango was concerned that sexual and gender-based violence kept increasing despite several interventions.

Police report
Sexual offences recorded by police in 2020 indicated an increase in the number of cases. For example, there were 14,134 defilement cases, a 3.8 per cent increase from the 13,613 cases reported in 2019. 
According to the report, 1,528 women were reportedly raped in 2020, a 0.5 per cent increase from 1,519 registered in 2019.