Gaza, exclusive to Donia Al-Watan, Osama Al-Kahlout<\/p>\n
\"My grandfather touches me when I take food to him every day on his land near our house. I am forced to keep quiet because he is my grandfather and I am afraid to speak to anyone about it, and I can no longer bear the harassment because my health has become poor.\"<\/p>\n
This was a complaint by a girl of twelve against her grandfather, who is in his seventies, after she developed many psychological symptoms as a result of the harassment, along with bed-wetting and fear. She brought her complaint to the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution in Gaza without anyone's help, in order to be rid of the problem and put a stop to her grandfather.<\/p>\n
Asmaa Saoud, the specialist working in the programme for protecting children from sexual exploitation at the organisation, said that during 2014 she recorded close to 205 cases of harassment that occurred in the Gaza Strip, among them around 65 girls who were subjected to sexual exploitation and assault, as well as cases of rape and of early sexual awakening, aged between 8 and 12, and that 92 of these cases were rehabilitated.<\/p>\n
The project targets children by providing them with awareness and including them in its work. Cases have reached the Centre involving girls as young as 5, as well as a young woman of 19, and most of those accused of harassment come from the circle close to and around the children.<\/p>\n
On harassment, the specialist Saoud told Donia Al-Watan: \"Harassment is the gratification of the desires of an adolescent, a young man or a man by means of a child, in several forms, such as showing pornographic pictures and films on a mobile phone or in magazines, or touching the child by removing their clothes or touching their private parts, or watching children engage in immoral acts. This is considered sexual assault.\"<\/p>\n
After any sexual assault a child shows a number of symptoms: psychological symptoms such as fear, distraction and lack of concentration; physical symptoms such as an inability to walk because of abrasions on the body and visible marks confirming that the child has been sexually assaulted; and behavioural symptoms such as bed-wetting, disturbing dreams, screaming, disturbed sleep and eating, loss of appetite and falling school attainment, which may go as far as the child refusing to go to school and hating the person who harassed them.<\/p>\n
Saoud said: \"Parents may recognise an assault on their child through the child's behaviour and movement inside the home: a child who is active by nature turns withdrawn. These cases and assaults have been concentrated in rural, densely populated and marginalised areas as well as in the cities, though in differing proportions.\"<\/p>\n
The specialist sits with the cases to understand what happened to them and the nature of the assault, and where the assault is ongoing she forms a team of the Centre's members and specialists, working in complete confidence, to resolve the problem, particularly where every element of the case lies within a single household.<\/p>\n
She went on to tell our correspondent in Gaza: \"We try to reach one of the family's relatives to stop the assault, and if the family does not respond to attempts to resolve the problem we work with the police to resolve it under prior understandings with them. An example is an adolescent harassing the daughters of his father's wife who live with him in the house, where the mother refused to let the story develop for fear of being divorced by her husband if he learned of the incident, while the one harassing them knows that his father's wife is aware of it.\"<\/p>\n
The specialist said she worked to resolve the problem of the girl being harassed by her grandfather by reaching her paternal aunt, the person the girl trusted most after being asked. The aunt was called in and the details of her father's assault on his granddaughter were explained to her. She was not surprised, given that her father had been caught several times on such charges, which were closed at once. The aunt promised the organisation that she would put a stop to her father, since she lives close to his house, and would prevent the girl and the rest of the family's children from going to the grandfather to bring him food.<\/p>\n
The specialist Saoud pointed out that 92 of the complaints that reached the Centre have been treated and that work is continuing on the remaining problems, while some families refused to work with the organisation to resolve the problem, and the complaint was referred to the police.<\/p>\n
For his part, Mr. Iyad Abu Hjair, director of the Gaza branch of the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution, said that sexual harassment of children cannot be regarded as a widespread phenomenon in the Gaza Strip, bearing in mind that ours is a conservative society, but this does not deny the existence of some deviant individuals who harass children, as in every other society, while the organisation works preventively and through awareness-raising for children and families.<\/p>\n
He also called on parents to pay attention to their children's movements, to watch and follow them, particularly those at primary school age, since that is the age at which children are most likely to be harassed; to open lines of trust between parents and their children and encourage them to be open about anything that happens to the child within the family circle; to watch for any changes in their behaviour; and to make them aware not to engage with any stranger, such as a man asking them to get into a car on the pretext that he knows their father, or to help someone carry things into a flat, or to go with a grocer into back rooms in shops.<\/p>\n
He told Donia Al-Watan: \"We must teach our children to shout the word 'no' in the face of any assailant or harasser, because a harasser is by nature a coward and is afraid of the word 'no'. Punishing the harasser is a positive psychological factor for the child, and in seven of the cases recorded at the Centre we were allowed to take the case to the courts.\"<\/p>\n
The penalty for a harasser can reach three years in prison. He called for children to be watched in the evening, particularly those who leave the house, since freedom of movement is then available to them, and said that according to the cases reaching us at the Centre, 70% of those who harass a child come from the circle close to them.<\/p>\n
These violations against children are few in Palestinian society and cannot be regarded as a widespread phenomenon; they represent a silent explosion that is covered up for fear of scandal, while the organisation tries to resolve every difficulty away from the police at the victim's request.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u063a\u0632\u0629 – \u062e\u0627\u0635 \u062f\u0646\u064a\u0627 \u0627\u0644\u0648\u0637\u0646-\u0627\u0633\u0627\u0645\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0643\u062d\u0644\u0648\u062a ” \u062c\u062f\u0649 \u064a\u062a\u062d\u0631\u0634 \u0628\u0649 \u062c\u0633\u062f\u064a\u0627 \u0639\u0646\u062f\u0645\u0627 \u0627\u0642\u0648\u0645 \u0628\u0627\u064a\u0635\u0627\u0644 \u0627\u0644\u0637\u0639\u0627\u0645 \u0644\u0647 \u0641\u0649 \u0627\u0631\u0636\u0647 \u0627\u0644\u0642\u0631\u064a\u0628\u0629 \u0645\u0646 \u0645\u0646\u0632\u0644\u0646\u0627 \u064a\u0648\u0645\u064a\u0627 \u060c \u0648\u0627\u0636\u0637\u0631 \u0639\u0644\u0649 \u0627\u0644\u0633\u0643\u0648\u062a \u0644\u0627\u0646\u0647 \u062c\u062f\u0649 \u0648\u0627\u062e\u0634\u0649 \u0627\u0644\u062d\u062f\u064a\u062b \u0644\u0627\u0649 \u0627\u062d\u062f \u0639\u0646 \u0627\u0644\u0627\u0645\u0631 \u060c \u0648\u0644\u0645 \u0627\u0639\u062f \u0627\u062a\u062d\u0645\u0644 \u0627\u0644\u062a\u062d\u0631\u0634 \u0644\u0627\u0646 \u0638\u0631\u0648\u0641\u0649 \u0627\u0644\u0635\u062d\u064a\u0629 \u0627\u0635\u0628\u062d\u062a \u0633\u064a\u0626\u0629 ” . \u0643\u0627\u0646\u062a \u0647\u0630\u0647 \u0634\u0643\u0648\u0649 \u0645\u0646 \u0637\u0641\u0644\u0629 \u0641\u0649 \u0627\u0644 12 \u0645\u0646 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-gaza-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}