Reported Child Abuse on the Rise Greg Smith, The Gleaner, November 5, 2011

Reported Child Abuse on the Rise - Greg Smith

The Gleaner
November 5, 2011

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20111105/news/news4.html

Rt Rev J. Oliver Daley, moderator, United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, and Mary Clarke, former Children's Advocate, unveil the project banner for the child abuse and prevention project during The United Church in Jamaica and The Cayman Islands launch of the project, held at Knutsford Court Hotel, New Kingston, on Thursday.- Gladstone Taylor/Photographer

OCR says many cases go unreported, launches public ed programme

THERE CONTINUES to be an increase in the number of reported cases of child abuse, the Office of the Children's Registry (OCR) has disclosed.

Registrar for the OCR, Greg Smith, said of the more than 20,000 cases of abuse that the office has received since 2007, close to 6,000 occurred since the start of the year.

He was speaking at the launch of the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands' child sexual abuse awareness and prevention project aimed at combating the wave of anger and hostility against children on Thursday at the Knutsford Court Hotel, New Kingston.

In 2007, there were 400 reported cases, with the figures spiralling in 2008 to more than 4,000. The figures continued on an upward trend, as in 2009 and 2010, some 6,000 cases were reported each year.

Up to the beginning of this month, there were already 5,743 reports of child abuse.

public education necessary

Smith said, however, despite the hike in the figures, the cases are underreported.

"Despite the significant increase, we believe that there are still many people who are not aware of OCR and their responsibility to report child abuse to the registry, and Section 6 of the Child Care and Protection Act clearly outlines the prescribed persons and the necessary steps that need to be taken," he argued.

Former children's advocate, Mary Clarke, said while more persons are seeing the need to report the heinous act, there is still a dis-connect between the number of cases reported and the number of incidents.

"Section 8 of the Sexual Offences Act of 2009 has expanded the categories of sexual abuse against children, which must be commended, but the law can only be effective and adequately enforced if we all play our part, starting with compliance to report," she charged.

The 11-month project dubbed 'Our Children, Our Responsibility' will be addressing the crippling issue of child sexual abuse through community education by increasing the capacity of the public to interact with children in a non-abusive manner and to call for more witnesses of child abuse to report abuse.