Despite its being a gross violation of human and child right in particular causing the victim irreparable mental and physical trauma, the CSA experience may expose the victim to the danger of contracting HIV/AIDS at a young age.
In its many faces, child sexual abuse has been increasing in both rural and urban Tanzania especially where HIV infection is rampant, such as Iringa and Njombe regions whose infection rate of 14 per cent has reportedly tripled the national average.
Children in those regions are likely to suffers the worst when taken victim of child molesting by virtue of their being orphans, apparently helpless.
Given the fact that most CSA incidents involves raping, oftentimes safe sex is ruled out as an option and frictions and even bruises are likely to occur, keeping the victim vulnerable to being infected with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. But worse still is when an unknown perpetrator is an HIV positive.
Even if the perpetrator may not have HIV/AIDS but the effects of being raped could lead to self-denial in most of CSA victims and inability to adopt with the reality.
Moreover, it becomes quite challenging to address the CSA problem given the country’s many hurdles facing the health sector. For instance, counselling has not really developed into treatments and recoveries for most victims.
The police and the hospitals also need more help with technology and manpower to fill in the gaps in investigating rape and other violent sex incidents. But even the gender and children’s desks established toward the end of 2013 are yet to reach vast part of the rural Tanzania.
They are also notoriously short of skilled personnel as they are only manned by mainly police officers who have hardly undergone any special relevant training.
The hospitals are also short of a comprehensive system to administer rape kits to victims of CSA for HIV and other STIs tests to keep record for police investigations.
The problem also arises when the perpetrator is a relative to the victim, turning the vice into a strict family affair with nothing to do with the hospital and legal authorities.
This way of addressing domestic violence and particularly child abuse not only denies the victim the right for protection by the elders, but justifies the vice for the long lasting impact including trauma on the victim.
Amicable solution of the CSA cases boosts confidence in perpetrators in the absence of measure to counter the crime despite prevalence of the 1998 Tanzania’s Sexual Offences Special Provisions Act prescribing a maximum of 30-year imprisonment for sexual offender on minor.
When the perpetrators are punished there still exist no comprehensive set of reparations on the part of the victims of the child abuse; and instead it is the victim who is supposed to run both the financial and moral costs.
He or she will have to bear the burden of earning his or her bread amid the poor health status out of the forced child sex.
State of despair out of the unfortunate sex experience amid the social and state apathy on the fate of the victims, they resort to drugs and prostitution as ways to overcome stresses.
“These distortions, combined with coping mechanisms adopted to offset the trauma of CSA, can lead CSA survivors into high-risk sexual and drug-using behaviors that increase the likelihood of HIV infection,” say researchers Prillo, Freeman and Collier in their seminal publication.
With such observations, it proves necessary to scale-up counselling services to victims of domestic and child sex abuse to fight stigma and help them win over the trauma.
As an example, a mechanism should be drawn to allow minor female victims to return to school regardless of whether the academic system may be opposed to it.
Moreover, the existing governmental and non-governmental efforts at reducing HIV infection rates and helping AIDS patients should focus more on the empowering the victims of CSA economically through social support groups to build their capacity for self-reliance.
*Francis Semwaza is a Dar es Salaam-based Development Communication Specialist. For comments: E-mail: frsemwaza@aol.com; Phone: +255 71 646 6 044.
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