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Police to raise sexual abuse awareness 

16 Jul 2021

 
  • Reporting on the rise, including cases involving children
  • 13-yr-old Nawalapitiya girl exploited by 10
  BY Dinitha Rathnayake The Police is to conduct special awareness programmes across the country concerning the alarming increase in the reporting of sexual abuse cases, particularly those against children. Police Media Spokesman Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police (SDIG) Ajith Rohana said that these programmes would focus on preventing child exploitation and sexual violence against children. This latest move comes in the wake of 41 suspects being arrested in connection with the sexual, including online, exploitation of a 15-year-old girl in Mount Lavinia. Meanwhile, a 13-year-old girl from Nawalapitiya had been allegedly sexually exploited by 10 men, and the Police have since arrested four of them including the girl’s father on Tuesday (13). Another woman was arrested for aiding and abetting in the crime and remanded after being produced before the Nawalapitiya Magistrate’s Court. The Police are conducting further investigations to arrest the six other suspects, SDIG Rohana noted. In this regard, Women and Child Development, Preschools and Primary Education, School Infrastructure, and Education Services State Minister Piyal Nishantha De Silva said that the current legal penalties and technology to crack down on all forms of child abuse are inadequate, and that necessary reforms have to be implemented expeditiously to provide for severe punishments against child abuse and sex trafficking. He further added that the resources at the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) and the legal formalities in the country are insufficient to handle these matters. “The number of persons being arrested over the allegation of abusing a 15-year-old girl via cyberspace is increasing and it is just one reported case. There are many unreported cases and we have to therefore develop a proper legal and technical mechanism to catch those culprits.”   According to the State Minister, there is a lack of expertise on the evolving technology among the grassroots-level police officers and the NCPA officers when it comes to recording such complaints.   “There were several awareness and training programmes conducted before the spread of Covid-19, but those were insufficient to provide the necessary guidance about the evolving technology. We have to develop a proper system.” NCPA Chairman Prof. Muditha Vidanapathirana said that necessary programmes have to be implemented to provide specialised knowledge to the officers who investigate cyber sexual exploitation on cyber tools, platforms, and modern software.  The Stop Child Cruelty Trust informed that over 140 incidents of rape, 42 cases of serious sexual abuse, and 54 cases of child abuse had been reported from various police divisions in the country in the first 15 days of 2020, whereas these numbers have since skyrocketed to date, to 5,242 cases of child abuse and 1,642 cases of sexual abuse of women.


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