By Tarangee Mutucumarana,

LL.B (Hons) (Lon), LL.M (Lon), Attorney-at-Law, Barrister-at-Law

Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) 

An underreported offence, child sexual abuse (CSA) is a heinous crime that can occur to any child irrespective of age, sex, race, religion, culture and socio economic background, although children with disabilities and from low socio-economic status are more susceptible[1]. It may occur once or continuously and can be caused by any adult or even a child with more power to gain sexual gratification. Abusers are often those trusted by children as they are family members, religious leaders, caretakers or teachers. While strangers abuse children through tricks and force, trusted persons may spend time grooming the child before beginning the abuse through threats, bribes, manipulation and shame.

CSA can occur with contact through touching, fondling, or performing sexual acts or with no contact such as exposing sexual parts, speaking or writing to children about sexual acts or forcing children to pose in a sexual manner or watch sexual acts[2].

Due to fear, shame, and self-blame, pretending it did not happen or basic lack of knowledge and awareness as to what constitutes sexual abuse, children in Sri Lanka may not speak of the abuse they suffer.

Hence, it is vital to look out for physical signs such as complaints of pain, cuts and bruises near intimate areas/sexual and reproductive organs; verbal signs of using sexualized language and words, or speaking of sex or intimate acts a child should not know about; and emotional signs, including not wanting to be around a specific person, mood swings, crying, having nightmares, wetting the bed, not sleeping, and not eating.

In Sri Lanka

Despite many cases being underreported due to stigma, family reputation, lack of education and awareness of parents and lack of infrastructure, according to the NCPA in 2023, there are 273 cases of grave sexual abuse, 6 cases of sexual exploitation and 309 cases of sexual harassment[3].

Therefore, it is clear that CSA remains rampant, and is a public health issue with serious physical, mental, social and economic impacts for the child.

The recent media reports on 168 statutory rapes in September 2023 further underpins the urgent need to provide children and young people with the means to protect themselves. Given the way our education system is set up, and the fact that our children spend much of their time in school, the education and learning opportunities in schools is key to preventing abuse and sexual exploitation[4]. We know this. It is why we pilot programmes on child protection in schools. It is an eco-system that includes all key stakeholders; children, their parents/guadians and teachers.

The BE SAFE! Success 

‘Be Safe!’ was one such personal safety programme which involved the Ministry of Education, National Child Protection Authority [NCPA] and Sarvodaya, with a resource package for children aged 5-9, teachers and parents, that integrated child protection content into schools. This package contains multiple sources that address physical and sexual abuse and family violence[5]. It introduces young children to the concept of their rights, body ownership, healthy and unhealthy relationships, adults’ responsibility to protect them from harm, concepts of privacy, unsafe touching[6], and the simple and effective Personal Safety Rules: Say “NO!” Go! Get away. TELL! Tell someone you trust. Through this learning children were able to identify situations that may lead to sexual abuse, understand the difference between safe and unsafe secrets, and knew who can help[7].

‘Be safe’ was implemented through master trainers training teachers on how to teach the children through the use of novel methods. The content covered various types of violence against children, protection laws in Sri Lanka, prevention strategies that adults can implement, and where and how to access support for children affected by violence[8]. These master trainers visited the trainees and monitored the programme, and the teachers submitted monitoring reports that were consolidated to submit quarterly reports to the Canadian Red Cross, the donor agency that supported this government initiative.

Upon successful training, the teachers were equipped to integrate Be Safe elements into their classrooms and to deliver the Be Safe messages to their students. However, teachers were instructed not to start training children until their parents were educated about the program. Awareness building sessions for parents were conducted by teachers during or after school hours with a master trainer almost always present, and introduced parents to diverse types of violence against children and provided an overview of the Be Safe program[9].

Through this training parents were taught that they must speak to their children and ask if something was wrong or if they could help. The conversation should not be an interview but must be purely to confirm that the child might have been harmed and needs help. Parents are told to be willing to listen to the child and help, and are informed of the places where they can seek support from and the protective legislation.

Parents were taught to believe the child and tell them so, and to state that the abuse is not their fault. Parents should not promise to be a part of the child’s secret, but praise the child for their courage in speaking up, and let them know that that was the right thing to do.

Parents were asked to tell the child that together they will seek help and to explain that they need to get additional support and report the abuse to the police or NCPA, as a parent’s job is only to report and not to gather proof or investigate the abuse.

Having conducted the above awareness session for the parents, the teachers then delivered the program to children through the use of the Be Safe child protection resource. The highlight of this protection resource was ‘Asha’ the puppet elephant used by the teachers to deliver protection messages in a child friendly manner creating a safe medium for children to interact[10].

The twelve ‘Be Safe’ lesson cards involved story-telling, interactive games, and role-playing to teach children about how everyone has a different and a unique body, which deserves to be safe and treated with respect. These lesson cards also helped to familiarize the children with concepts of body ownership, determining unsafe environments, avoiding unsafe situations, and seeking help, and were taught over a 12 week period, by teachers who adapted the sessions as appropriate to consider the needs of different ages and cultural backgrounds of children[11].

Other material such as a CD that plays a song about safety rules, posters with the key safety rules to paste in classrooms, a children’s book for further reading on the lesson cards were included in the resource kit. Bookmarks with key message on safety were given to each child at the completion of the of the 12 lessons and a leaflet was handed to the parents at the orientation event for the parents which was held before lessons are delivered to the children.

Through positive, non-threatening, simple key messages and easy to use, effective and child-friendly learning resources, ‘Be Safe’ was well designed to be delivered in schools and other learning environments. In these classes children who were experiencing violence were able to speak up and teachers were able to respond[12]. ‘Be safe’ was later integrated into clubs and societies too to develop communication, leadership, and life-skills, and protection tactics.

Consequent to ‘Be Safe’ being implemented, teachers states that they had changed their own attitudes about violence in general and corporal punishment in particular[14].

A student stated that they practice learning about safety with the support of teachers and a culture of maintaining safety has been established[15]. Higher exposure to the project led to greater effectiveness around children’s sense of safety at school, knowledge on who to go to regarding concerns about violence and awareness of school safety rules.

“An eight-year girl, who had just completed the ‘Be Safe’ lessons walked up to the teacher and said that the school security guard had tried touching her in unsafe and sexual way as she waited by herself for the school bus. The teacher was able to take prompt action, get help, and to report the problem to local authorities”[16].

“A nine-year old boy turned up at his father’s work place, all by himself. When the father asked why he had taken such risks to see him, the son disclosed that his grandfather was trying to touch him in a bad way and Asha had taught children in school that if anyone tried to touch a child in an unsafe way they could get away and tell someone they trust.” The very next school day, the father met the teacher and profusely thanked her for educating his son about safe and unsafe touches and how to get help”[17].

Parents have stated that although before the programme children did not know how to protect themselves from violence, now they do[18]. A master trainer stated that parents are now taking a greater interest in the education of their children and children also are more interested in going to school[19]. Changes in behaviour among parents were also present as they had adopted safety mechanisms to increase their child’s safety. Parents perception on child safety in the school, school policies surrounding violence prevention, and child safety in the community improved[20]. There was an overall satisfaction and parents believed that the project is beneficial for all age groups.

Some schools had codes of conduct for students and have even developed criteria to assess how child friendly their schools are. Through school child protection committees that were developed as part of the project, children and adults worked together to raise awareness through street dramas and art competitions, and helping each other find solutions to violence in their schools and communities. Therefore it is clear that there were many positive consequences through ‘Be Safe’ being implemented in schools.

The BE SAFE Failure 

As with any endeavour, ‘Be Safe’ was not without its challenges.

1. ‘Be Safe’ did not achieve the anticipated results on change of perceptions on corporal punishment and a majority of the parents still believe that such punishment is acceptable.
2. Changes of attitudes cannot be done overnight and dialogues have to continue, however, the risk of the project continuing was at risk.
3. ‘Be Safe’ was taught as an extra-curricular activity as opposed to during class times, and required more resource support, support from superiors and better coordination with agencies.
4. ‘Be Safe’ required local solutions to help parents and children access support services when children experience violence.

‘Be safe’ was implemented from 2008 – 2014 in all 25 districts. 2,211 schools were reached, wherein 223 schools introduced child protection committees. These endeavours reached 127,444 children and 221,792 adults, and 5715 teachers were trained by 234 master trainers, reaching a total of 355,767 persons[21].

Despite the many positive impacts, both these programmes unfortunately officially ended in 2014, due to lack of funding and since then there seems to be no plan to reimplement the same in Sri Lanka, raising the question why the Ministry of Education or the National Child Protection Authority do not have the ability to integrate this education in the national curricula developed by the National Insitute of Education (NIE).

What is this apparent disconnect between educational bodies that ultimately continue to put our children at risk because they fail to work together?

The BE SAFE Lesson 

The failure of the Be Safe programme, despite the evidence of its successes in Sri Lanka is a reflection of our government’s priorities. With the furore over the extra-curricular Hathe Ape Potha is indicative of the peacemeal efforts by successive governments to put in place elements of relationship education that can prevent the widespread sexual violence our children experience in Sri Lanka. The Be Safe initiative, implemented over a ten-year period proved that we know what it takes, but don’t value the approach because it needs a commitment of resources – at the very least – and a commitment to evolving ideas around education with social emotional learning being as important as the learning of, for example, historical, mathematical and scientific principles [which arguably this rote learning system only helps you memorize, never really understand].

Studies show that knowledge on CSA of many parents are inadequate and many believe that CSA is committed by strangers[23]. Therefore, including parents in a collective response like Be Safe did is the gold standard to child protection education. What Be Safe did works. We just choose to not do it anymore, and instead read out numbers of rapes and incidents of child sexual abuse in parliament in order to stir the media into frantic coverage that lasts as long as it provides the clickbait needed to sell their product.

The Be Safe lesson is that our government generally doesn’t really care about our children.

The Be Safe lesson is that we need to vote people into government who do.