Nowadays, most people are victims of sexual abuse in our country. The numbers are so high one would swear that there’s a sexual abuse demon doing rounds. What I have also realized is that most of the victims are minors.

In the latter instance, minors are not in a position to lay criminal charges or alternatively report such incidents to their parents and/or guardians as a result of their age and lack of legal capacity. This is where parents and/or guardians get involved in that they need to be very careful on how they treat  these kinds of observations from minors or reports of such incidents from the latter.

The parents in this regard would actually be deemed as the main complainant should such a conduct be reported at the police station, or the adult to whom the minor reported such an incident. Most parents are very hesitant in reporting such as they do not want to take the child through that ‘court’ process, as it not a pleasant experience at all for adults, now imagine for minors. The latter mentioned is understandable to writer hereof, speaking from a parental view as no parent would want to see their child go through intense cross-examination and so forth.

However, now it comes down to the trauma which you would rather choose for your child. It is either that of letting the child live with his/her sexual abuser for the rest of their lives without reporting the incident, which most likely will keep on occurring as a result of your failure to report such as the parent and/or guardian. On the other hand, you would rather have to let your child go through the process of court proceedings and see justice prevail. I personally would choose the latter route regardless of how difficult it is.

One of the reasons for the latter mentioned is that court proceedings are not conducted in the same manner as those of adults. If it is found that the minor is of such an age that she totally cannot testify independently in a court of law, an intermediary shall be appointed by the court in order to assist the child to testify ‘in camera’.  ‘In camera’ means that the child will not be exposed to the abuser, the presiding officer, the attorneys and all other relevant witnesses. The child will be confined within a child-friendly area to put him/her at ease.

Therefore, the child will be able to testify while sitting next to a qualified social worker (intermediary) who shall put the child at ease and convey whatever is said in court to the child and vice-versa. Our justice system has made provision for the latter mentioned in order to make the experience of the child less traumatic and subsequently enabling parents and/or guardians to report such incidents to the South African Police Services (SAPS) for such matters to be adjudicated upon by our courts.

In light of the above mentioned, parents should not hesitate to report sexual abuse towards children, regardless of who the perpetrator is.