Sexual Abu e of Male Children in Addis Ababa
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Date
2007-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Child sexual abuse is a complex social problem that threatened the well being of
children in our communities. It is the sale responsibilities of no one of the agencies or
government rather every member of our society has to be concerned about it in view of safe
guarding the future of growing children. The problem seems to persist in the society despite
the lack of attention due to cultural, traditional and religious factors that considers it a taboo
and restrains people from openly addressing the issue. Recent studies have showed that boy
children sexual abuse is among the social problems in Addis Ababa and other major towns of
the country. Reports of the studies uncovered the causes of male children sexual abuse, the
impacts on the well being of abused children and interventions to address the problem.
This research, besides extending the findings of previous studies, will investigate how
social systems and institutions and the change in the social structure either contributed for the
prevalence of or failed to address the needs and rights of abused children. It will look into the
major causes, consequences of the problem, how existingfacilities responded and its
implication for social work practice as a growing discipline in Ethiopia. The study has
described the problem based on the information generated from reported data to the police,
administration of questionnaire to 21 abused children, and by complementing the information
with an in-depth interview held with four victim children and young persons.
Hence, it isfound out that the family which is responsible for character formation and
soc1alization is challenged with problems of adjustment with changing environment. It
couldn 't properly control and guide growing children who become either abusers or victims of
sexual abuse. Other institutions like the legal system as part of the larger social system are not
found to be functioning properly to protect children from abuses. On the other hand, abused
children have encountered serious psychosocial, physical and emotional problems and in
some cases the abuse has influenced their sexual behaviour.
Interventions pertaining to the empowerment offamilies, and strengtheningfacilities
available,for children would help to prevent the problem from further expansion and to
establish effective responses to abused children. Social work interventions should focus on
mezzo and macro level interventions whose effects will likely trickle down to support services
to individuals
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Keywords
Social Work