Fear fades and confidence grows

A story that began on a street corner, while Mohammed was walking to school trying to enjoy the moments of childhood left to him, given the difficult circumstances his family lives in, with no suitable income and a large number of children.

On the street corner Mohammed met a dark-skinned man, who held out his hand to give Mohammed money and then touched his hair with his rough fingers and drew a smile on his face.

What happened was repeated several times until Mohammed, in his innocence, felt at ease with this man, particularly as he was giving him the school pocket money he had been deprived of because of the family's poor economic situation.

One day the man asked Mohammed to go with him to a field full of olive trees, and he did indeed go with him. And here was the golden opportunity for this man to throw off the cover he wore and reveal the beast hidden behind it, and he assaulted Mohammed.

Mohammed's psychological state changed, so that he became extremely fearful and hesitant, preferring to sit alone and not liking to join his classmates in play.

Here came the Centre's role, through the service the project "Protecting children from sexual exploitation" provides, where counselling sessions were held and appropriate treatment and behavioural and cognitive counselling were given, in addition to counselling the family and providing the instructions needed to care for Mohammed and how to help him rid himself of the problems he had faced.
After a short period the family noticed positive signs in Mohammed, where his ability to express his opinion before others increased, along with his sense of ease, his self-confidence and his ability to defend himself.