Education of children: Punishment is not torture

Among families, many parents and educators continue to use violence in the educating their offspring.

The stories of children who are victims of abuse by their parents are alarming. "I will never forget the beating and punishment imposed by my aunt for losing money," says Beatrice Anaëlle.

It is difficult to understand that Nadège K., in her thirties and mother of four has cut the sex organ of her last son, little Alexander E. aged four at Manengole in Moungo. So is the story of a wife who discovers that her boyfriend abused her daughter on several occassions?

"It's a difficult situation to manage because it traumatizes the child for life," says one mother. Today Pierrette M., a victim of sexual abuse has difficulties having a normal married life. She is afraid and suspicious of everyone. "She feels ashamed to talk about it and to avoid stigmatizing child victims, mothers often prefer to remain silent," said our interlocutor.

The most recurrent cases are all forms of violence and abuses i.e. injury or physical and mental abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse. This is because very often, the abuses are perpetrated under the supervision of a person of trust, like a parent, brother or an older sister, another member of the family, a nanny, a babysitter, or by a person with authority over a child (teacher, educator, nursing staff, priest, etc.) and sometimes by people working in a social structure meant to protect children in such danger (institution, foster care, etc.).

These severely abused children constantly live in fear, afraid to cause anger or go home after school. These consequences make them develop strategies to survive outside their homes by involving their own mechanisms to cope.

While some agree to submit to all the dictates of the perpetrators by dissociating to support all forms of abuse, others rebel and express their trauma differently.

"That is why some children become violent or are quite scary once they reach adulthood. In the abuse of the little girl for example, she can never become a woman with a normal sex life. The acts remain repressed or buried in the subconscious," says a psychologist.