Concerns about child abuse and GBV in Pretoria West
"We have countless parents in the area not interested in their children’s right or their responsibilities. Entitlement is the word that comes to mind.”
The Pretoria West Child Protection hotline is one of the busiest hotlines locally.
The cases reported to the hotline range from kidnappings, children being used as weapons during and after divorce (including parental alienation), rape, child pornography, neglect, abuse and drugs.
Child Protection Hotline’s founder Danie van Loggerenberg said in the last week, they had numerous calls, WhatsApps and SMSes, seeking assistance in the best interest of the child.
“But through section 7 of the children’s act, explaining what the best interest of the child should be, a lack of education under parents, teachers, police officers and even some statutory social workers, means that in this area this is seldom the case,” he said.
“We have countless parents in the area not interested in the children’s rights or their responsibilities.
“We find a high percentage of grandmothers trying to raise grandchildren while parents go on drug-related binges and once they sober up, they want their children back to extort more money from the grandparents,” he said.
“We had a call at 02:00, with a mother allegedly climbing over the wall, kicking doors and threatening to burn down the grandmother’s house if she does not return her son.”
According to Van Loggerenberg, the mother woke up from an alleged 10-day drug binge, wasting all her money and now flat broke, “wanting her son back to take him from a warm bed and make him sleep with her in the car, the last of her earthly possessions”.
He added that ‘entitlement’ is the word that comes to mind.
“Other cases range from children being locked up in rooms for days on end and once they ‘escape’ they run amok in the streets, begging and stealing to survive.
“We hear of women that have been in abusive relationships for years and once they feel empowered, take the first steps to report their husbands, to only withdraw their cases at the last minute.
“Children tend to do the same and the schools complain they run into walls at the various departments. Once they give up on reporting child abuse, they are contravening the act, which makes it law for schools to report child abuse,” he added.
In Pretoria West, the child protection hotline is in partnership with Eleos community care centre.
Eleos helps underprivileged children and families in the Pretoria West region through various programmes by empowering the community to be in a position to support themselves.
“Mediators Inc helps to navigate through some of those difficult discussions between parties to enable parents to keep decisions about their children between them during divorce.
“We cannot try and assist the community on our own and by taking hands with other role players, we are able to reach more people and assist more children,” Van Loggerenberg said.
“As a community, the children in Pretoria West are failed more often than not, and our goal will be to change that. But for that to happen we need all the role players to join and assist us.
“From the first report, we need all the help available. That includes statutory social workers being available over weekends when most child abuse takes place.
“Police officers educated on the children’s act and it’s provisions, but most importantly, the community must not turn a blind eye or deaf ear to the visible cries of the children,” Van Loggerenberg concluded.
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