Children's Safety and Protection:Patterns of Exposure
- Constance Ogonna Egwuatu
- Mar 16, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 17, 2022
video credit: @noteforself
With the continued increase in the number of children missing, raped, kidnapped and murdered in Nigeria, it has become imperative to look at the various ways parents and child caregivers inadvertently expose them to dangers.
Ways A Child Is Exposed To Danger:
1. Unguided movement or loitering: children that are often left to loiter without any adult supervision are more exposed to one form of harm or the other. I’ve lost count of how many women I have cautioned in different locations, especially the open market. The women are often too busy attending to customers that they fail to notice when their child strays.
Recently, a child was almost hit by a reckless driver and when he was rescued, it took a while to locate the mother whose shop was about 100 meters away from where the incident occurred. The question everyone asked that day was, how did she not realise that the boy had gone that far alone?
2. Leaving everything to the domestic staff, nanny or school: over-dependence on nannies and the school in grooming your child is another way a child is exposed to danger. Parents are too busy trying to make ends meet that they relinquish their duties to a nanny or school facility thereby making themselves unavailable for the child to talk to or for them to notice any signs of distress in the child.
3. Lack of safety information for the children: children become more vulnerable when they don’t have information on the dangers lurking around and what to do to avoid them because parents and caregivers don’t provide them with such information early. A good example is sex education which many of them still consider awkward to discuss with their children based on religious and cultural beliefs.
4. Not being informed as parents and caregivers: not having sufficient and regularly updated information about the types of dangers children are exposed to, the pattern and how to protect the child is another way children are exposed to harm.
5. Maintaining the same routine: the child becomes an easy target once you have a predictable routine because the perpetrators who are watching, already understand your routine. Three children were kidnapped from their house in Lagos recently because the kidnappers knew that their parents often left them alone in the house at that time every day after the school bus drops them off at home.
6. Accepting suggestive and inappropriate compliments: laughing off every compliment or comment with subtle sexual, violent or unsafe undertone about your child is another way of exposing that child to danger. A woman shared this experience with her daughter’s class teacher with me. Her 6 years old girl came home from school one day to tell her she was “uncle’s sweetheart.” Probing further, she realised that by ‘uncle,’ the girl meant her class teacher and this infuriated her. The woman went to the school and visited the class without initially letting the teacher know her intentions just to get his reaction and to her surprise, the teacher excitedly asked the whole class what the girl means to him and the pupil’s chorus "uncle's sweetheart.” It wasn’t a good sign so she reported the issue to the Headteacher and it was handled appropriately. Don’t consider such compliments harmless because they could escalate to sexual violation.
7. Thinking the perpetrators are far-off: failure of parents and caregivers to realise or accept that the perpetrators are usually people they know or close by further puts the child at risk. Children have been kidnapped from school by relatives or friends because since the children could identify them, they were not considered threats. The story of 10 years old Emmanuel comes to mind here. He had just finished having breakfast with his mum and while his mother went to her room to get dressed, Emma left the house. A causal stroll soon escalated to a full-blown search for young Emmanuel who didn’t return home for lunch after leaving the house that morning. His lifeless body with arms and legs tied was discovered the next day in their neighbour’s sewage. This pattern is similar these days and parents need to be guided.
8. Cover-up: failure to report cases of any abuse done to your child because of stigma or trying to protect a family member is a way of telling the perpetrators that they are free to come again. Don’t be like Cynthia’s mother who upon realising that her younger brother Samuel was making sexual advancements at her 8 years old daughter only verbally scolded him and begged Cynthia not to tell her father which remained so till Samuel raped her and all hell was let loose.
9. Trivializing the signs and Ignoring the child: more often than not, there are warning signs that something is wrong or could go wrong but are often ignored or dismissed by parents and caregivers. There’s nothing like being too careful not to raise a false alarm. Many children have had to suffer long periods of sexual abuse before their parents realised because they didn’t see or they simply trivialized the signs and changes. This incident is a good example of how parents ignore signs. Mr Jimoh Rafiu’s sexual abuse of his 6 years old daughter in Lagos continued for a long time because her mother ignored the signs. Each time she got back from work, she noticed that her husband was in the habit of undressing her daughter but was often told that it was as a result of the hot weather, till the child revealed she has been sexually violated severally by her father after her mother noticed signs of pain in her lower abdomen and vagina when bathing her.
There is also the problem of parents ignoring their children. It is not every change in a child’s behaviour that should be ignored or regarded as tantrums or age-appropriate. They could be signs that something is wrong and ignoring them means exposing the child to danger. Some children don’t even get the attention of their parents when they decide to speak about what’s bothering them because they are either hushed or told that they are too young.
During a counselling session at a school, 14 years old Stella narrated how she was greeted with a slap on her face and called derogatory names by her mother for daring to ask her about dating. In Mary’s case, her mother couldn’t understand why her menstruation came at 10 years and she told Mary that it was because she was too playful and ate certain foods without educating her on proper hygiene during her menstruation.
10. Thinking that offenders are of a particular gender: one mistake parents make that leads to dire consequences is to assume that the offenders are of a particular gender; often male leading to them trusting the female more thereby exposing the children to different harm.
Lastly, these are just a few ways out of many that parents and child caregivers expose the children to danger leading to an increase in cases of child molestation, abuse, kidnapping, rape among others. Are you guilty of any of these or others?
Check the next post for suggestions on how to protect and save the children.
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