The following is from the article written by Dalia Acosta featured by the Inter Press Service News Agency:
The young boy speaks in barely audible tones and hardly looks up from the stuffed animal that he turns over and over in his hands. The counsellor helps him, repeating his words, prompting him to continue, but without ever asking “what happened?” or “how did you feel?” Despite the boy’s visible anxiety, the story slowly emerges.
The sessions are taped on two DVDs, one of which will be used in the trial while the other will immediately be sealed and archived against any possible allegation of attempted manipulation of the evidence.
It is the recording itself that will be presented in court. The boy himself will never be called on to testify, and will not have to face the perpetrator of the abuse to which he was subjected.
“The main objective is to obtain tape recorded proof that meets the requisites for being presented as evidence in court,” said Niurka Ronda, director of the governmental Centre for the Protection of Children and Adolescents, which opened in February 2005 in Havana and is the only one of its kind in Cuba.
The Centre dealt with just over 100 cases in 2007, most of which were referred to it by the police, who received the complaints, although some victims came directly to the Centre itself. “We help anyone who comes to us looking for help,” Ronda told IPS.
In its first comprehensive study of violence against children, presented in 2006, the World Health Organisation estimated that 150 million girls and 73 million boys under 18 experienced forced sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual violence in 2002.
According to research, an estimated 20 percent of girls and up to 10 percent of boys have been sexually abused at some point in their lives.
In Cuba, as in the rest of the world, a large proportion of cases are never reported. In addition, not only are reliable figures hard to come by, but the government is still “fearful” of releasing whatever statistics are available, said sexologist Mariela Castro, the director of the Cuban National Centre for Sex Education.
A study by the Cuban Institute of Legal Medicine, based on 246 cases opened in 2001 involving complaints of sexual abuse of children and teenagers under the age of 16, found that over half of the victims were between the ages of 11 and 15 and that 75 percent were girls.
The head of the Interior Ministry’s office on minors, Colonel Enrique Pérez, told the press in late January that these cases represent less than five percent of all reported crimes.
“There is fear of alarming the public,” Castro, the daughter of acting President Raúl Castro, told IPS.
“Sensationalism causes harm in any area. There is a belief that by talking about these problems, they are blown out of proportion, but there is a need to deal with them in an adequate manner,” she said.
Castro and Ronda concur that in comparison with other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, children and adolescents in Cuba are at an advantage, given the protections put in place and the overall educational level of the population.
“These incidents are reported more frequently now than they used to be. I think that’s because there is a greater openness to information about and understanding of these issues. There are cases that reach us immediately, through teachers. Children talk a lot to their teachers, especially if the teachers are young and feel close to their students,” said Ronda.
Nevertheless, she said, few people know about the Centre for the Protection of Children and Adolescents or are aware of where to turn in such cases or of how to detect incidents of child abuse. One of the proposed solutions to these problems is the creation of a hot-line, she added.
Ronda said most of the cases involve molestation without rape, and that very few cases of severe abuse like rape are reported.
The information was presented at a Jan. 28-Feb. 1 regional conference on protection of children, held in Havana.
Read the entire story here.
