Child Protection Week

This week is National Child Protection Week, with the theme this year being 'Caring communities protect children'. Therefore, today is specifically dedicated to the missing children of South Africa.

Many of you are probably aware of Madeleine McCann, the little British girl who went missing on 3 May 2007 in Portugal, while her parents had dinner about 50m away. She's still missing. What continues to astound me is the amount of publicity this little girl & her disappearance get. There are between 1500-1700 children who go missing every year in SA, whom we seldom hear about, and who certainly never get the same amount of publicity. Something doesn't sit right with me about that picture.

While I don't wish to detract from the publicity Madeleine gets, why is it that she gets it? Why is it that I don't know about the missing children from Cape Town? Why is Madeleine news, but not the children in my own city? Is she somehow more important than them? Is it because her parents are probably more wealthy than the average parents in Cape Town? Is it because life in SA is held in such low regard?

I have to say that I get this gut reaction every time I see something referring to Madeleine, something ugly that rises up inside me. The fact that Madeleine continues to get publicity and these children don't feels like something from the Apartheid era, where one group of people benefited at the expense of others. I wonder how many other missing children have had resources diverted from their search in order to focus on Madeleine's? I'm not saying it has been, just that I wonder whether it has. There is no doubt that high publicity cases get more resources than low publicity ones. Of course, everyone agrees that's wrong.

Every case should receive the same amount of resourcing, but we can all see how a foreigner's missing child would attract unwelcome publicity; thus, we can all see how such a case would receive more funding, more staffing, more resourcing in every respect. I just find it disgusting that it happens. If Janel were to go missing, I wouldn't have the money to publicise her disappearance the way that Maddy's parents have. I wish I could. I don't fault them for doing so - if I had the money I would also try to raise awareness in every country I could around the world. I just think it's disgusting that the 1500 missing kids in SA don't get the same level of publicity. Aren't they just as important to their parents as Maddy is to hers?

On a tangent, I read a news story over the weekend about a woman in East London (a small city in SA) who murdered her 8 & 10 year old daughters last week. She strangled them with rope. Some time before she did though, she rang a friend to tell her what she was going to do. The friend alerted the police, but they were unable to find her. What I found horrifying though was that, as the mother strangled the younger one, the older one phoned her mother's best friend to tell her what was going on, and to ask for help. Neither the friend nor the police were able to get to them in time. Can you imagine that? You get a phone call from your best friend's kid screaming that her mother is trying to kill her, and although you do everything in your power, that child still dies. Can you imagine that child's terror? I felt physically ill after reading that story. The mother tried to commit suicide after killing her kids, but the police got to her in time. She's in hospital now. No-one knows why she did it.

There's another high profile case in the news at the moment about an SA cop who shot both his kids and is now pleading temporary insanity as a result from work-related stress.

To kill your own kids.... I don't know. Something has to be seriously wrong (with you as a person and as a parent) for you to do that.

I guess the good thing about having a Child Protection Week is that it raises awareness about the issue. For example, I learnt today that, in SA, if your child is missing, the police would rather you report it to them immediately, before you conduct your own investigation. There is no 24hr waiting period here as there is in other countries. Police are aware that if the average parental search for a missing child takes 4-6 hrs, the child may already have been taken out of the country by the time they are alerted. They would rather launch an immediate investigation and have the benefit of those 4 hours than risk losing the child forever. I don't often say this of government organisations, but how eminently sensible!

The other thing I heard on the radio today is the plea for South Africans to take much more of an ubuntu approach to children. If you see children wandering around (especially during school hours), whether they are your child's friends or not, whether you know them or not, take an interest. Treat every child as if it was your own. Stick your nose in. Get involved. It may just save a life.