Nobody would dispute the devastating effects that sexual abuse can have on children, but there is a growing awareness about the toll involved with other forms of child abuse, ranging from physical punishment through to the insidious psychological toll from neglect.
As we reported yesterday, the proportion of neglect and negligence cases being reported to the Child Protection Centre is increasing. While the effects of sexual and physical abuse are obvious, neglect can manifest itself physically in the form of malnutrition but it is the lack of emotional support that can have a less-obvious but even more concerning psychological legacy. In a country where domestic staff sometimes play a disproportionate role in caregiving, this is an underappreciated threat.
The proportion of reports of child sexual abuse, by comparison, has dropped to one in eight cases last year from nearly one in five in 2014. While this apparent trend has to be welcomed, it needs to be interpreted with a degree of caution because nearly every case involved an abuser from outside the family. Overseas experience has shown that interfamilial sexual abuse is the leading source of this kind of crime. There is little reason why this dynamic would not also apply here, although the high cultural value placed on family privacy might explain why few complaints make it to the public realm.
Similarly, nearly half of abuse reports involved Emirati families, even though they comprise a much smaller proportion of the population. While it is an encouraging trend that Emiratis are not willing to remain silent when they see what they suspect might be abuse, there is also little justification to think that this is an issue disproportionately restricted to their sector of society and not present in all families, local and expatriate alike.
This willingness to speak up about abuse is encouraging just weeks after sweeping new child-protection laws took effect. The goal is to ensure every child has a supportive and abuse-free childhood so they can become happy and well-balanced adults.
This remains a work in progress, with evolving issues such as whether physical punishment ought to remain a disciplinary option for parents and caregivers, but the goal remains the same: to give every child the best start in life.