DOHA: A vast majority of child abuse cases in Qatar (64 percent) happen because of ignorance of elders in the family, according to an expert.
Physical assault is involved in 16 percent of cases, while about 9 percent of cases involve sexual abuse, says Dr Khalid Al Sadi.
Some seven percent of cases involve emotional blackmail or abuse.
In at least 79 percent of reported cases, parents are to blame, said Al Sadi.
In another 7 percent cases, relatives are responsible, and in 10 percent of them, friends and distant relatives are to blame.
Al Sadi, a consultant at Al Sadd Paediatric Emergency, was speaking at a workshop on Wednesday. It was organised by Qatar Foundation for Social Protection and Rehabilitation, local Arabic dailies reported yesterday.
The workshop was part of a training programme for medical workers on how to identify women and children who are victims of abuse and where to refer them for help and rehabilitation.
Al Sadi said not many cases of child abuse are reported in Qatar. In some reported cases, health sector workers refuse to believe that an abuse of the kind reported can happen in an Arab society. “They can’t believe their ears.”
Some of the challenges in providing protection for abused women and children are that not many cases are reported.
And in even those cases that are reported, full medical checkups of victims are not possible, said the medical consultant.
“The situation being this, it is so challenging to provide protection and rehabilitation for the victim including women and children.”
Another major problem is that organisations working to combat child and women’s abuse and providing the victims help and rehabilitation do not have active interaction with the state agencies concerned.
Al Sadi said there is the need to improve interaction between these organisations on the one hand and state agencies on the other.
Child abuse is a universal phenomenon and knows no boundaries. It is found in every society in the world.
Talking about the US, for example, Al Sadi said the phenomenon was prevalent in their midst as well. Some three children, in most cases under six, die daily in the US due to family violence, he added.
The Peninsula
