Suffering whether You Tell or Don't Tell: Perceived Re-Victimization as a Barrier to Disclosing Child Sexual Abuse in Zimbabwe

Exploring children's formal help-seeking behaviour for violence in Zimbabwe: analysis of national survey and routine service provider data

OBJECTIVES

To explore knowledge of formal services and help-seeking behaviour for violence among Zimbabwean children aged 18 years and under.

DESIGN

We use cross-sectional data from the 2017 Zimbabwe Violence Against Children Survey (VACS), which is nationally representative and had a 72% response rate for female participants and 66% for males; and anonymised routine data from one of the largest child protection service providers' (Childline Zimbabwe) call database.

SETTING

Zimbabwe.

PARTICIPANTS

We analysed data from 13 to 18 year old participants in the 2017 VACS and pertaining to respondents aged 18 years and under from Childline Zimbabwe's call database.

MEASURES/ANALYSIS

We describe characteristics of children, and fit unadjusted and logistic regression models to estimate associations between selected characteristics and help-seeking knowledge and behaviours.

RESULTS

1339 of 4622 children aged 13-18 years surveyed for the 2017 VACS in Zimbabwe (29.8%) reported experience of lifetime physical and/or sexual violence. Of these, 829 (57.3%) children did not know where to seek formal help, 364 (33.1%) children knew where to seek help but did not, and 139 (9.6%) children knew where to seek help and did seek help. Boys were more likely to know where to seek help, but girls were more likely to actually seek help. During the 6-month period when VACS survey data were being collected, Childline received 2177 calls where the main reason for the call was recorded as violence against someone aged 18 years or under. These 2177 calls contained more reports from girls and children in school, versus the national profile of children who had experienced violence. Few children who did not seek help reported not wanting services. Most children who did not seek help reported that they felt at fault or that their safety would be put at risk by disclosure.

CONCLUSION

Both awareness of services and help-seeking are gendered, suggesting that different strategies may be needed to support boys and girls to access the help they want. Childline in particular may be well placed to expand its outreach to boys and to receive more reports of school-related violence, and should consider efforts to reach out-of-school children.

'I went there in an effort to help the child, but you can see there is corruption in the world': Adults' conceptualisations and enactments of child protection in schools in a challenging context

Schools have the potential to be sites of support for vulnerable children, but can also be sites of violence perpetration. In this qualitative study we explore how adult school stakeholders in and around two public Catholic primary schools in Zimbabwe conceptualise and enact child protection. We analysed our findings in light of the protracted economic crisis in Zimbabwe; the current policy context for child protection; and the Covid-19 pandemic. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 adult education stakeholders in and around one rural and one urban school in the Harare Archdiocese, from October 2020 to January 2021. This comprised 12 school-level stakeholders, including teachers (N = 4), parents (N = 4), school priests (N = 2), and headteachers (N = 2), who were the main focus of this study, and a further 6 high-level education actors. We employed thematic analysis. Adults in this study placed considerable responsibility on children to protect themselves, with often unreasonably high expectations of children's capacity to prevent abuse. At times they also blamed and stigmatised children, which was gendered, and particularly emerged around adolescent sexuality. Our findings suggest that this was linked to social norms around discipline, protection and gender, but in particular, the way these emerged in relation to the challenges of the context. Policy and interventions to promote child protection in schools in Zimbabwe should incorporate both an attention to the challenges teachers face in contexts of adversity, as well as address a tendency for adult school stakeholders to hold children responsible for their own protection.