Would you report cases of child abuse?
As the territory observes Child Abuse and Prevention Month during April, Health and Social Development Minister Vincent Wheatley is calling on the community to report cases of child abuse to the police and the Social Development Department.
“Let us commit to reporting any suspicious or known cases of child abuse or neglect to the Social Development Department and the Royal Virgin Islands Police Force. As responsible citizens, let us educate about the signs of abuse, learn how to intervene and create a network of support for those who need it,” Minister Wheatley said.
The BVI is considered a small society, thus many people are usually afraid to report cases of child abuse, out of fear of social isolation and their identities being revealed. But in his message to the public, Minister Wheatley reminded the community that parents, guardians and professionals aren’t the only ones tasked with protecting children.
The Minister also said the government is in the process of drafting a Sexual Offences Bill that will benefit children greatly. Among other things, the law will allow for the tracking of sexual offenders who have served time.
“The Sexual Offences Bill will seek to provide a gender-sensitive, legal framework to address a broad spectrum of sexual crimes and will provide adequate measures to minimize trauma, mentoring and tracking of sexual offenders following their reintroduction into society,” the minister said.
With struggling economies, an abundance of single-parent and matrifocal homes, among other factors, many Caribbean countries continue to deal with different types of child abuse. According to research from the United Nations Children’s Fund, 20 to 40 per cent of girls in the Eastern Caribbean have faced sexual abuse.
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Report the parents who dress the young children like adults
You report it and Social Development does NOTHING!!
It’s a who is friend or family with who and who is protecting who in that department.
Who knows knows!!!
What has the way a child is dressed got to do with it? It doesn’t matter how a child is dressed any normal adult would not abuse them. Any adult that does is sick and should face jail time and treatment before rehabilitation. A child is a child regardless as to how they are dressed!
Your argument is completely back to front!
my question is, what happens next? when i go and report parents for abuse what is the next step? are the children taken from the care of the abusive parent/parents? if so, then what? how are they cared for from there, where do they go, what happens?
As with all other crimes here;If they like you, they victimize the whistle-blower, if they don’t like you, they punish you to the full extent of the law.
this from the defender of rapists with money
Parental Alienation ranks as a serious form of child abuse and regrettably, the BVI has one of the worst cases on record.
The term parental alienation had only just been coined when my problems began in the early 1990’s. There were no books on the subject and no guidance for those expected to advise and judge. By fighting for a basic human right, I was deemed an undesirable person and a menace to the public good.
DR JENNIFER J. HARMAN, PHD writes:
“Despite affecting millions of families around the world, parental alienation has been largely unacknowledged or denied by legal and health professionals as a form of family violence. This complex form of aggression entails a parental figure engaging in the long-term use of a variety of aggressive behaviours to harm the relationship between their child and another parental figure, and/or to hurt the other parental figure directly. Like other forms of family violence, parental alienation has serious and negative consequences…”
This UK Report on Parental Alienation is essential reading: https://fad.lu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/pas-uk-study_295.pdf
The church needs to be more active as an institution. Church is more than collecting money and following rituals it is
Taking an active role in helping the healing process of hurting members of out communities
Being a parent is more than having sex and shaking your pants
Girls learn how to close your legs or use condom
Parents take control of your young ones. Dress them properly and know who are their friends
Abusers are often family members and friends
Do not encourage sleepovers there is where things happen
Momitor what your children watch on social media
Sex is for adults who are emotionally matured to handle what comes with the territory
We have dropped the ball. Parents are lead by children instead of children being lead by parents
Let your children know the diginity of hard work , Spoiling is not training BE AWARR
Girls learn how to close your legs or use a condom?!
Parents take control?!
Dress them properly?!
Do not encourage sleepovers?!
NOOOO!
Report any adult that abuses a child and ensure the legal consequences are there. Churches need to report to the authorities as well and not attempt to conceal or deal with ‘in house’. These are kids who should be free to live without the fear of abuse and our job as adults is to protect them from abuse and report to the appropriate authorities on any suspicions we have.
I agree with you @neglect. However, the problem and my fear(based on first hand experience) is that some children are abused in churches by pastors and members or by parents whose church turns a blind eye due to misinterpretation of “spear the rod spoil the child”.
Others who say it happens because children dress like adults are making excuses for sick grown a** men and women who are perverted. Children’s brains are not fully developed and able to make reasonable decisions on dressing like a child vs. adult. All they know is they want to look cool.
Mr. Golden Prince of VG, when are you going to fully address the problem that is going on down at the Hospital? Heard from a reliable source the Hospital feels like a Sauna from a lack of AC.
Before the state embark on criminalizing parents, gaurdians and professionals, it the state must first delinate clear definitions of what are suspicions, what rises to the level child abuse, and inform the public and others of those clearly defined laws and by laws.
As responsible elected official must define clearly the issue and its related laws and by laws. What rises to the level of suspicious childabuse and actual child abuse.
We must be careful what we throw with the bath water and what wereplace it with. The examples of societies who have such foreign child rearing modaities have and are seeing the erosion of their culture and society.
By throwing out sound bites through media does not get to or fix the problem.
If you are going to important policies from over seas, you must first examine and scrutinze them carefully before forcing them down the throats of a culture they were not design to fit.
Tired of politicians beig paid and acquiesce to outsiders to change and reconstrct our cultural and societal ways and morays.
We are an indepednt people of thought and intellect. We should be the sole determinant of what shoud be interjected into our cultural miliue for change. We don no wish to be like the developed countres, but like ourselves.
If there is child onthe magnitude that is being suggested, then inform the public what those diensions are.
Sound bites devoid of information does nothing to address the problem, if itexist, and merely acknowledgesa personality in. charge of a portfolio. Address. the problem with concrete remedies not sound media bites.
The government and law making people should focusing on needed matters within the community and not onn matters that already exist but do need some fine tuning such as the topic.
The drowning of the young child should have everyone out raged about the lack of safety at beaches when large crowds gather.
Why, the poplation has exploded since nineteen seventy and as such numbers at the beach at any given time have also exploded.
Therefore, it is time law makers make the necessary precautions and training and deploying of beach life gaurds where large amounts of people will be gathering for special occasions.
Focus on saving children livesand not on using them for political sound bites.
the penalty for child abuse should be 20 years in jail or death
doing another acting job again , csc said it right , we frigged , Hollywood ain’t got nothing on the pretenders
Yes, sir. I would in a heartbeat. Children should not at all be abused while we all sit around and watch and complain silently. We have a responsibility as adults to protect our children. Social Services should, on this topic, publish periodically what constitutes child abuse so that adults and especially the children and young people can understand their rights and that they can and should come forward and report these atrocities. Child abuse unchecked results in heartache and pain undescribable, especially if left unchecked. Young people and children should know that they have our support no matter what and be reassured that it is never their fault, but their abusers and they can get help by telling a responsible adult around them or just by walking into Social Services or the nearest Police Station or even their guidance counsellor at school. Let us continue to pray for our young people and also for the abusers as abuse of children is a terrible sickness that is sometimes repeated by those abused.
I tired report to you set of don’t care MF’s, it’s already a serious situation but I guess you guys what’s see a death,before addressing the situation!!