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Child Rape on the Rise in Sri Lanka
- A spate of child rape cases in Sri Lanka has angered child rights activists and moved the government to consider tightening the relevant laws and making the offence punishable with the death sentence.
A government statement released in parliament in May said that of the 1,450 female rape cases reported in 2011, child rape accounted for 1,169, alerting authorities and activists to a rising trend.
Earlier this month, police said in a statement that over 700 complaints of rape or abuse of children were filed in the first half of the year, and that, on average, at least four cases were being reported daily.
But, according to the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), the situation is far worse than what is being reported to the police and the authority estimates that over 20,000 cases of child abuse may occurred in the first half of this year.
Among the reasons for such abuse, as reported in the NCPA statement, are insecurity of children, popularity of mobile phones with internet facilities among the youth, access to pornography, increasing substance abuse and lack of sex education.
An October 2011 study of child abuse in Sri Lanka’s north-central region – where unsettled conditions prevail following the end of three decades of armed separatist militancy in 2009 – showed that 30 percent of the cases were of female minors (below 15 years) having consensual sex with a male partner.
The balance 70 percent of cases were attributed to the “strength, power and dominance of perpetrators who could be relatives, teachers or religious dignitaries,” a senior prosecutor at the attorney general’s office told IPS asking not to be named. “While we do our part, society also needs to take a serious look at this issue,” he said.
The trend of powerful people preying on minor girls is not confined to the north and east of the island country. Recently, a 13-year-old girl identified four men, including a local politician belonging to the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), of gang raping her.
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