In previous blogs, we have looked at children being pulled out of their families to fill ‘orphanages’ to cater to the voluntourism industry and the orphanage industry (HERE and HERE). We have looked at ways children are exploited both knowingly and unknowingly in institutions (HERE). And we have looked at how their growth, health and brain development, as well as their chances of successful independent adult lives is put on the line by not having their essential basic needs met for many years (HERE). That seems like too much to handle already, and it really is.
Unfortunately, there is more. When children live in institutions, they are much, much more vulnerable to abuse than children are in general.
Instances of physical abuse and sexual abuse are much higher for institutionalised children than for those living in families. I am leaving out emotional and psychological abuse here, because considering essential basic needs are never met in institutions, that can simply be said to be inherent in the system.
I have read various reports claiming that as much as 40% of children in institutions have experienced physical abuse. When I compare that with what I have come across myself over the past 12 years, that seems like a laughingly low percentage. Personally, I have not encountered an institution caring for children over 3 years old where beatings were not the predominant form of disciplining. Quite frankly, I would be surprised if as many as 10-15% of children over 3 years old in institutions had NOT experienced physical abuse. This is not just based on what I have seen happen myself, the marks (and permanent disabilities as a result) that I have seen on the children and the behaviour from children that clearly points to experience of physical abuse. I also gather it from the reactions I get from pretty much all adults involved in the institutions when I start training sessions on non-violent discipline methods.
On almost all occasions am I told outright – and if no one says anything, I can still see it on their faces – that I don’t understand, that it is part of the culture here, that these children are different and that nothing else works here. I have gotten all but laughed out of the room on various occasions for thinking that my ‘weak’ disciplining techniques of natural consequences and ‘time-out’, combined with fairness, consistency and following through would actually be effective. The astonishment when I would model the techniques with the children and very quickly have more authority over them than those using threats and beatings was very real. In one case, while they had to admit that I did have a lot more ‘control’ over the large group of teenagers, they still did not believe that it was down to the things I had mentioned in the training, they felt there had to be some other secret ingredient I had not told them about.
It is this disbelief in the possibility of anything other than beatings being effective as a method of disciplining, more than anything else, that has me convinced that far, far more than 40% of children in institutions are subjected to physical punishment. And usually physical punishment takes far more serious forms than just a slap with a hand or a slipper.
Apart from physical abuse, sexual abuse is a very serious risk for institutionalised children. And the risk comes at them from very many sides. Children may be sexually abused by their caregivers or other staff in the institutions, they may be abused by other children, and in places where there is no child safeguarding in place to speak of and children are allowed to leave with volunteers or other visitors unsupervised, they may be abused by those visitors too.
Because children are afraid to or unable to speak out about what is happening, they make easy victims. And children with disabilities are even more at risk than other children. There seems to be a myth going around that children with disabilities are less likely to be sexually abused, because they are ‘less attractive’. But sexual abuse of children has nothing to do with attraction and everything with power. Because children with disabilities are even less able to stand up for themselves or to communicate what has happened to them, the perpetrators feel safe abusing them.
Children are put at extra risk of sexual abuse by other beneficiaries of the institutions when small children are placed together with teenagers or even adults. Something that is particularly common for children with disabilities.
Children with intellectual disabilities in particular are set up to be abused in many situations. One thing that plays into this is that either caregivers do not realise that while a teenager with an intellectual disability to a certain extend will always have the mind of a child, this does not mean that his body will not develop into that of a man, with all the urges brought on by the hormones raging through his body. And whether or not they do realise, caregivers do not usually want to acknowledge topics like sex, so they prefer to ignore the situation, instead of teaching the teenager about acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in a developmentally appropriate way. This leads to situations where a group of teenage boys with intellectual disabilities get locked in a dorm for the night, with no supervision. And during the daytime the results of the previous night’s rapes become apparent in the weaker, less capable boys. Or situations where teenage boys and girls are not separated, and the rapes result in pregnancies.
One more risk to be mentioned here, is that of child trafficking. Children who live in institutions are much more at risk of being targeted by traffickers than children in families. In some countries it is generally known that dozens, and in some cases even hundreds, of children disappear from childcare institutions every year, never to be heard from again.
So, if for no other reason – and we have already seen that there are many other reasons – children should not be put in institutions to protect them from the serious risks of physical and sexual abuse, and of trafficking.
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