A mental health expert and facilitator at the USAID-SCALE’s inaugural training, Dr Maji Peterx has harped on the need for parents to create a platform for conversation and fruitful communication with their children as part of the ways to reduce rape cases in the society.
Dr Peterx during an interview explained that there are children who are being molested, who have been intimidated, who have been abused, and the first window of conversation is with their parents.
He noted this during the just concluded USAID-SCALE’s inaugural training for Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), Business Member Organisations (BMOs), and Media stakeholders on the sensitive reporting of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) and Child Early and Forced Marriage (CEFM) in Abuja.
He further explained that like in school, ” a child comes home and says I am not going back to the school. The parents are now asking why don’t you want to go back? What’s happening to you? A child comes back from school and is isolating himself.
“Nobody is asking what happened? Is there anything you want to talk about? We’re just saying that see, you shouldn’t be lazy, your mates are in that school go back. We’re exposing the child and he realised that he can’t speak to us with his or her personal issues.
“And there are times when a child is being victimised or raped, or a child is being abused or molested and the questions we asked and we are trying to point fingers at the child to have caused it and what took the child to that person’s house.
” Most of these are shutting down the victims and shutting them off from making conversations about what is affecting them, so parents can do more.
“We should build our children’s self esteem. We should win the confidence of our chidlren. We should create a platform for sincere communication with our children, so that they can tell us what their problems are.
“We should stop judging them and we should not create our own standard for our children to live up to. We live in different worlds. And most importantly, we should be able to teach our children street sense, life skills and survival skills,” he said.
Other ways to reduce rape, according to Dr Maji is shaming the culprit adding that when we make people do the walk of shame around their communities and people could point at them, when we know that stigmatizes not just the person but his entire family.
Also, the Social Protection adviser of SCALE project Palladium being sponsored by USAID, Eric Umoru explained that the training held was very relevant because of the spate of Sexual and Gender Base Violence (SGBV) , Child Early and Forced Marriage, Trafficking in persons and so many other forms of violence in our society.
He said the training seeks to strengthen the capacity of the CSOs, BMOs, and media personnel on strategies for reporting on SGBV and CEFM cases and for amplifying these issues in a gender-sensitive manner.
He further said the training also serves as an opportunity for those who work on the SCALE project to discuss strategies for a more coordinated response to SGBV/CEFM in Nigeria.
He said there are alot of policies around SGBV and CEFM that have not been implemented adequately.
“So,there is need to be able to call out stakeholders to push for reforms and implementation as the case may be,” he said.
