Sexual violence against Egypt's children on the rise

[DJKeefy]

Sexual violence against Egypt's children on the rise: Council

Reports of sexual assault against children in Egypt have been on the rise since the 2011 uprising due to the country's security situation, officials said Thursday.

The National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) has documented 206 cases of “sexual harassment and rape" on children between 2011 and 2014, the council's secretary-general Azza El-Ashmawy said.

According to Al-Ashmawy's quotes carried on state news agency MENA, 138 of the incidents were carried out against girls, with the rest suffered by boys.

She said 370 children were subject to the assaults, as some incidents included more than one child. The reported figures do not include assaults inside juvenile care homes, whose statistics are difficult to obtain.

Children in the four to six age bracket were reported to suffer the most attacks.

In the largely conservative country, many victims of sexual violence – whether adults or parents of victims – are reluctant to come forward and report assault incidents.

The announced numbers come amid an uproar concerning reports that an eight-year child, Rahma, was allegedly raped while walking home in the northern Delta city of Kafr El-Sheikh.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/112240.aspx

[LovelyLadyLux]

The National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) has documented 206 cases of “sexual harassment and rape" on children between 2011 and 2014, the council's secretary-general Azza El-Ashmawy said.

IMO - These numbers are pathetically small and I can't for a second believe them to be remotely accurate. I highly doubt there is a 360 reporting system in place whereby a call with allegations comes in, is tracked through a formal process, investigated with the results being reported back, linked and attached to a name and case file number that is then further counted as a statistic.

[Dusak]

I would think that the true number per year runs into the many hundreds, as I also think that the physical assaults against children must run into the many thousands per year. Still, it must be comforting to be able to play the good old revolution card to explain the lack of evolution towards these matters.