THE WORLD is changing, and changing fast. Our children are growing up in a world unlike anything we adults have experienced. This is because of the fast development of digital communications and the internet in at least the last 20 years.
Many parents have lost personal contact with their children, who have increasingly become estranged from them and drawn into a digital world of their own. Parents and children seldom embrace, and children rarely have a friend-like bond with their parents. Many of these kids live in a cold, emotionless and virtual fantasy world where many abusers and predators — sexual, mental, emotional — lurk.
The worst experience a child can suffer is to be sexually assaulted or abused, even raped, by a parent, a family member or relative — his or her biological father, stepfather, grandfather or any other blood relation.
However traumatic that is for the child, what makes it even more so is that the mother often allows the crime to happen. Some parents, relatives, and the authorities ignore the cries of these young abuse victims. They are letting the abuse happen because of money received or the inability to talk about it out of fear and shame, and so they bury the truth.
For enabling, they are also guilty by association. Such people are rarely accused of a crime. There seems to be a criminal conspiracy in societies that allows communities to “consent” to such wrongdoing through silence. This not speaking up allows children to be raped and gives rapists impunity to commit their crimes.
Research shows that most nations had almost no child protection laws until the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was passed on Nov. 20, 1989. It later entered into force and became legally binding on Sept. 2, 1990.
In the Philippines, Republic Act 7610, or the Special Protection of Children Against Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination Act, was signed on June 17, 1992. While that protected many children from sexual abuse, the age of sexual consent remained at 12 for many years.
How far could societies and their leaders stray from the command of Jesus of Nazareth to protect children, as they are the most important in the Kingdom of God, and have their abusers drown in the sea with a millstone around their necks?
Thankfully, the United States colonial-era legislation that had pegged the age of sexual consent at 12 since 1935 was abolished in March 2022. Until that change, moral outrage did not erupt in the Philippines throughout that time. Not even by the institutional church, of all denominations. That law had legitimized child sexual abuse.
It was only after 1989, when the UN declared that every child has inviolable rights and dignity, that child abuse was finally declared for what it really is: a heinous crime. That came about mostly by the nonstop campaigning of dedicated child rights groups and good politicians. (To be continued)/PN
