Women and Men Against Child Abuse slams rising numbers of missing children

Rights group, Women and Men Against Child Abuse, says the country’s high number of missing children demonstrates a disregard for human life and should be addressed immediately.

It was reacting to the South African Police Service (SAPS) statistics, which revealed that 2 928 children under the age of 18 were rescued after they had gone missing over the past five years. One thousand 919 of them were girl children, while 967 of them being boy children.

The organisation’s Luke Lambercht adds that additional disturbing statistics involve children abandoned by their parents shortly after birth.

According to the anti-abuse activist, his organisation discovers at least 20 infants every month at the Johannesburg Central Mortuary.

“There is a set of statistics that is not being reported and that is the children who are being discarded by parents. For instance, in Johannesburg, we would get up to 20 children on a monthly basis who are the product of illegal abortions and are just loosely discarded in the streets of Johannesburg. The statistics of those children aren’t represented in the ones that are missing because those parents do not report their children, because they just don’t want to,” says Lambrecht.

The recent disappearance of six-year-old Joshlin Smith in Saldanha Bay has also raised concerns over the increasing prevalence of kidnapping and human trafficking in the country.

Lambercht advises people to be sure they want to have children before conception, claiming that this could help eradicate the scourge of missing and abandoned children.

He urges parents to build a relationship with their children, which could protect them from falling prey to predators both in real life and online.

“You need to realise that the greatest protective feature for your children against any danger they face is their relationship you both in the real world and currently online as well,” remarks Lambercht.

He says online dangers are being severely under-reported due to fear of repercussion once parents learn that they had been engaging with others online.

Lambercht emphasises the importance of parents being hands-on in supervising their children as statistics of kidnapping, abduction, extortion, and child pornography online have reached epidemic proportions in the country.

“It’s not a trafficking of people across a physical border, but rather it is trafficking across the very porous borders of the internet where very little is being done to protect children,” says Lambercht.

He also encourages parents and guardians to have a strong conversational relationship with their children to make them aware that there are spaces available for them to open up when they believe their lives and safety are in danger from predators.

“They need to be able to come to us to seek assistance because we as the adults in their lives are the greatest protective feature for them against any type of impending danger on them,” says Lambercht.

According to Dr Shaheda Omar of the Teddy Bear Foundation, schools must implement structured programmes to protect children from online and offline risks.

Dr Omar says society must try to safeguard children from violations by identifying warning signals and knowing where to report concerns.

She also believes that having robust dialogues with children is also vital.

“These are the kinds of conversation that must be discussed and engaged in with children. Robust dialogues with children where they become aware that the internet is a useful platform for increasing and enhancing knowledge but could also be a very dangerous platform where abduction, kidnapping, child trafficking occurs,” says Omar.

The veteran counsellor advises that keeping children aware of the reality around them and how it may affect their well-being should be a constant effort.

“There also needs to be consistency. It’s not a once off thing.  We need to raise awareness and support children and also ensure that they understand how to put themselves in a position to realise that help is call away and that they are protected wherever they are in society,” adds Dr Omar. Written by Odirile Rabolao