Children Need Periodic Intervention To Overcome The Trauma Of Sexual Violence

Illustration of children and adults (Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Clinical psychologist Feka Angge Pramita said that children who are victims of sexual violence need regular intervention so that the trauma from their negative experiences can be overcome.

"For victims, what they feel is the long-term psychological impact, so they need regular intervention until the negative experiences are resolved," she said via electronic message to ANTARA in Jakarta, Sunday.

Feka, who graduated from the University of Indonesia and is a member of the Indonesian Association of Clinical Psychologists in the DKI Jakarta area, said that experience is memory and so is trauma, which is a combination of memory and emotion.

Therefore, she continued, the intervention should help the child recover emotionally from the memory of the incident.

According to her, recovery from incidents of sexual violence should be carried out by clinical psychologists who can also be assisted by trained counselors. This recovery may not be for the victim, but also for the family.

Therefore, parents should play a role in good communication and time with children. While in children, it is very necessary to have openness and communication with parents.

Efforts to build this communication include playing with children, spending routine morning time together and chatting together, and playing in games that children play.

In adolescents, parents should know their child's preferences and follow their stories or developments.

"Children need not only quality but also quantity. Spend as much time as possible with children," said Feka.

On the other hand, perpetrators also really need to get intervention including counseling including education that violence in any form is a bad deed.

She reminded that the perpetrators of sexual violence were not only people they did not know, often even figures the children already knew. She suggested that parents need to teach children to analyze unusual situations, one of which is when an adult asks a child not to report an unusual situation.

According to her, when an adult who is near a child asks them not to tell or report it to their parents, that is an example of an unusual situation.

Meanwhile, the Federation of Indonesian Teachers' Union (FSGI) recorded as many as 10 cases of sexual violence against children that occurred in educational units, whether in dormitories or not, from January to 18 February 2023.

A total of nine cases have been reported to the police, while one case in Gunung Kidul was resolved by moving teaching classes and reducing the teaching hours of the perpetrator teacher.

The Chairperson of the PSGI Expert Council, Retno Listyarti, is of the opinion that such punishment does not take into account the psychological condition of the victim who is still attending the school and most likely meets the perpetrator teacher every day in the school environment.

"Meanwhile, the perpetrator teacher still has the potential to do the same thing but to other children. Such punishment decision will not have a deterrent effect on the perpetrator and will not be effective in protecting children in the school environment," she said as published in his written statement.​

FSGI also provides a number of recommendations to prevent sexual violence from occurring in the school environment, one of which is encouraging the Central and regional governments to ensure that educators who commit sexual violence against their students are punished in order to encourage a deterrent effect and at the same time no children become victims again.

Criminal penalties for perpetrators of sexual violence against children are in accordance with the mandate of RI Law No. 12 of 2022 concerning crimes of sexual violence which states that cases of criminal acts of sexual violence cannot be resolved outside the judicial process.

FSGI also encourages the Ministry of Education and Culture to carry out massive socialization and implementation of policies from Permendikbud No. 82 of 2015 concerning the Prevention and Management of acts of violence in educational units.

FSGI also encourages the Ministry of Religion to socialize and implement FDI policy no. 73 of 2022 concerning the Prevention and Overcoming of Sexual Violence in Madrasas and Islamic Boarding Schools or educational units under the authority of the Ministry of Religion. This is because cases of sexual violence in madrasas and Islamic boarding schools are higher when compared to education units under the authority of the Ministry of Education and Culture.

FSGI data noted that as many as 50 percent of cases of sexual violence occurred at the SD/MI level, 10 percent at the SMP level, and 40 percent at Islamic boarding schools. Of the 10 cases of sexual violence, 60 percent of education units were under the authority of the Ministry of Religion and 40 percent under the authority of the Ministry of Education and Culture.