A study to determine the knowledge and attitude of school going children on child sexual abuse in Lusaka Urban.

Abstract

The nature of the problem of sexual abuse of children is intertwined with the issue of victim's secrecy and brings forth feelings of revulsion or disbelief. These have caused professionals to shy away from the problem of sexual abuse and underestimate its severity and extent. To make matters worse cultural beliefs perpetuate the vice as most parents and guardians fail to expose cases of child sexual abuse occurring within their families. The purpose of this study was to determining the knowledge and attitude of school going children on child sexual abuse, find out the occurrence of child sexual abuse in Lusaka in the last five years, to examine school going children's attitude towards reporting cases of child sexual abuse in Lusaka urban to relevant authorities, to verify the influence of socio-cultural factors on knowledge and attitude on child sexual abuse, assess the effects on victims, examine the nature of support systems for victims of child sexual abuse, stimulate interest for further research and come up with recommendations for organizations involved in child welfare. The Zambian children face a silent crisis that the majority of adults are aware of but have been slow or unwilling to respond to with the urgency it deserves. The reported number of sexual abuse cases among children of school going age group is increasing at an alarming rate. In the past three years 2003 to 2005 a total of 4119 children reported to be sexually abused in Zambia, 1,890 (46%) cases involved children aged between 5 to 16 years in Lusaka. The school going children spend more than 4 hours at school without the supervision of parents or guardians. Literature review shows that the problem of child sexual abuse is global and most studies done do not involve children. This study used a descriptive cross-section, non-experimental, explorative design. It involved collection of data at one particular point in time. The study was carried out in Lusaka urban district. Lusaka is the capital city of Zambia situated in Lusaka province. It has the projected 2006 population of 1,676,321. This study was carried out at Kabwata Basic School because it is centrally located and is near the University Teaching Hospital, town center and many key government institutions like the Ministry of Education and Police Headquarters. The school has pupils from a number of townships near Kabwata making it convenient for the study since the problem is widespread in Lusaka urban.