Most people turn away from bad news especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is causing greater levels of sexual abuse and violence against women and children as lockdowns continue. So we can know how to act, we must ask: why is there a growing level of violence, physical and sexual, against women and children among males in today’s world?
The horrific number of sexual assaults, homicides, child sexual abuse and human trafficking of female children and intimate partner violence has reached epic proportions in recent years. Society is becoming more brutal, not civilised.
The recent, violent, murder of a 21-year-old woman, Ashling Murphy, in Tullamore, Ireland, has focused attention on these horrific crimes in so-called civilised societies.
What is the cause of Murphy’s murder? It is not just one more, it is one more of hundreds of thousands of femicides. Mexico recorded the murders of 3,723 women in 2020. Amnesty International said that at least 10 women and children are murdered every day in Mexico. Murders of young Muslim women by family members, in so-called “honour killings” around the world is growing. El Salvador has the highest rate of murders of women and children in Latin America.
In the Philippines, huge numbers of children are trafficked and sexually abused online. The rape of children by biological fathers and live-in partners is increasing. One in three girls and one in six boys are victims of rape before the age of 16. This is a possible cause of the predatory behaviour by some males. It is likely that sexual violence begets more sexual violence.
The proliferation of abuse materials and video games showing violence against women and children, made possible by the telecommunications corporations and their Internet Service Providers, could be driving the abuse. This is a devastating, enabling influence. They refuse to obey the law and install blocking software to prevent human trafficking and sexual violence against children and young women. The story of Petra [not her real name] is typical, but only one in thousands are not rescued and saved.
Petra was a lonely, abandoned child with no one to care or love her but a sick aging grandmother. Her difficult childhood left her sad and depressed. Her mother died when Petra was three-years-old and her father married again and had three children. Feeling unwanted and unloved she went to live with her maternal grandmother.
She was encouraged by her grandmother to study and was clever at school, but her emotional deprivation made her lose hope. Then, Petra was devastated when her only loving relative, her grandmother, died. She was feeling hopeless. She lived with an uncle but was not welcome. For him, she was another mouth to feed.
She was now 14-years-old and went to live with her teenage friends who had a negative influence on her. She joined them in indulging in alcohol, smoking and teenage sexual encounters and at around 15-years-old, she lived in with a boyfriend.
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It was a loveless relationship and he was using her for his satisfaction. He controlled her and would not allow her to leave him. She experienced a form of sexual and psychological violence and control in that intimate relationship.
Reporting sexual abuse and saving the victims with protection and therapy, as well as with legal action is essential to fight abuse. They need help to file cases and convict the rapists.
Women and children between the ages of 15- and 49-years-old reported that they have been in a physically violent relationship with an intimate partner. That is 27 per cent of all women worldwide. Intimate partner violence is any kind of abuse that causes psychological harm, sexual aggression, and includes physical force and even sexual coercion. It is all about power, domination by the man to control and dominate the woman or child.
Petra had no way out. She turned to her friends who encouraged her to strike out on her own and meet other men and leave her partner. They introduced her to Francesca [not her real name], a human trafficker and pimp who sold her to men for sexual abuse in cheap hotels.
Then one day, Francesca introduced her to a man, call him Jaybee [not his real name], who opened a bag with a lot of money for a sex party to be held in a hotel. Francesca agreed to get more girls.
Jaybee said he would have sex with Petra, now 16, before the party. She didn’t want that, but was pressured by Francesca and was taken to a hotel and sexually abused by Jaybee.
Two days later, with other children, Petra went to Mary’s hotel and restaurant in Apalit, Pampanga for the sex party. There, she saw Jaybee hand over payment to Francesca, when suddenly, plainclothes police surrounded them and Francesca was arrested.
Jaybee, the organiser of the party had disappeared. He was likely a child abuser pretending to be an undercover agent working for a non-government organisation that planned with police to arrest traffickers and rescue victims. A social worker and a policewoman appeared and took custody of Petra and the other trafficked children.
They were referred to the Preda Foundation’s home for trafficked and abused children. There, Petra felt wanted by a family for the first time in her life. She felt safe, protected and was free to express all her loneliness and frustrations. She came to realise her dignity and rights as a teenager and how she had been rejected and exploited all her life.
She had Emotional Release Therapy and cried and shouted at her cruel relatives that had abandoned her. She cursed at Francesca, who gave her to Jaybee to be raped, and she screamed at Jaybee for sexually abusing her. Her anger and pain poured out and finally left her. She was free.
Petra is now empowered and ready to testify against her abusers.
Reporting sexual abuse and saving the victims with protection and therapy, as well as with legal action is essential to fight abuse. They need help to file cases and convict the rapists.
Preda children win 15 convictions on average every year. One thing that can be done by public protest and action is to demand strict regulation of the telecommunication corporations and the Internet Service Providers to block child abuse images and videos worldwide. That is one way to reduce violence against women and children.
Father Shay Cullen
www.preda.org
