Psychologist: Comprehensive Education Can Protect Children From Sexual Violence

JAKARTA - Child and adolescent psychologist Gisella Tani Pratiwi said that comprehensive sexual education can protect children from acts or sexual violence.

"Comparhesive sexuality education is needed to help children protect themselves from sexual violence," Gisella said, quoted from Antara, Sunday, December 15.

Gisella said comprehensive sexual education can cover several topics. For example, the introduction of self-development according to child age, which can contain physical and psychological changes in adolescence.

Then related to the introduction of the anatomy of the body, education can start from recognizing private parts of the body and how to protect it, how to care for the body and the right to protect oneself from the treatment of others who touch, hurt and show private body parts, including gender equality.

However, Gisella stressed that comprehensive sexual education cannot guarantee that children are safe from sexual acts or violence if the surrounding environment does not provide support and protection for children.

"The presentation of sexuality from an early age or youth to children will certainly affect the growth and development, if it does not immediately receive the necessary guidance so that children and adolescents understand better about healthy sexual behavior," said Gisella, who works at RSIA Aliyah Depok.

Therefore, he advised the government to start integrating comprehensive sexual education in children's education, according to their age rate by collaborating with gender equality experts or psychologists.

The same education also needs to be distributed to parents and the general public so that each party understands that protective behavior from adults is very important to prevent sexual violence against children.

Another suggestion is to ensure that all access to security is easy for children, parents, and the general public to experience this.

On that occasion, he also explained that sexual violence is one of the gender-based violence that can be committed by anyone and can be experienced by anyone.

Usually, the perpetrators have a power relationship with the victim in terms of gender, socio-economic status to physical strength.

The perpetrators used manipulation and targeted the victim's weak point to get what he wanted. So that sexual violence with manipulation in general will have a complex impact on the victim's psychological condition.