World

Report: In South Africa a child is raped every three minutes

by Miriam Mannak | June 4, 2009 at 11:03 am

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According to a new report by South African NGO Solidarity Help Hand, a child is raped in South Africa every three minutes. This comes down to 530 child rapes each day.

To make things worse, only 1.3 percent of child rapes were reported to the police. "This means that for every reported case, an additional eight child rapes actually take place," said Mariana Kriel, Solidarity Help Hand project director, adding that 45 percent of all rapes in the country were child rapes.

The stats also show that 1 410 children were murdered in 2007/08, and the number of attempted murders on children increase of 22 percent compared to the previous year.

The information of the report was gathered through interviews with other organisation working with children, and also revealed that the number of social workers were decreasing. In 2007, South Africa counted 12 500 registered social workers. Difficult working conditions and poor remuneration packages has resulted in people not willing to follow social work as a career.

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B12N

at 12:10 on June 4th, 2009

What a cruel world we are living in.

Amy Judd

at 12:44 on June 4th, 2009

This is disgusting, how sad and tragic.

duo

at 05:51 on June 5th, 2009

Immoral, pedophilic, psychopathic, subhuman beasts.

Babel-Fish

at 19:53 on June 4th, 2009

I can not believe these figures are so high, but even one child rape is a thing of absolute terror and abomination.

But why I question the figures is that such NGO's are struggling for funds and the child social workers have diminish due to the lack of government funding's. Low wages being the most contributing factor. At a guess the real figures are very high but possible 30 - 50% of an over projection by this NGO. However this needs the south African governments attention and that of charities that maybe able to help.

But of course your nearer to the problem Miriam and I maybe wrong to question the statistics

L-S (not verified)

at 20:07 on June 4th, 2009

and what you don't mention, at least in your post part, is that South Africa has one of the highest levels of HIV/AIDS and the male culture don't like using condoms, so these little children are doomed!