A longitudinal perspective on violence in the lives of South African children from the Birth to Twenty Plus cohort study in Johannesburg-Soweto

Abstract

Background.Violence against children is a significant cause of personal suffering and long-term ill health, poor psychological adjustment, and a range of social difficulties, including adverse effects intergenerationally. Objectives. Using a large corpus of longitudinal data collected in the Birth to Twenty Plus cohort, to give an overview of exposure to and experience of violence, as well as perpetration of violence, across childhood, reported contemporaneously by several informants. This overcomes limitations of retrospectively recalled information collected from one person at one point in time. Methods. We identified 280 data points relating to exposure to and perpetration of violence in 14 of the 21 waves of data collection from birth to 22 years of age. Data were classified into four developmental stages (preschool, primary school years, adolescence and young adulthood) and seven categories (exposure to violence in the community, home and school; exposure to peer violence; being a victim of violence, excluding sexual violence; sexual violence; and perpetration of violence). Both descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyse the data. Results. Over the past two decades, only 1% of the sample had not been exposed to or experienced violence in their home, school and/or community. Two-thirds of children of schoolgoing age were reported as having been exposed to community violence, and more than half of all children to violence in their home. Reports of sexual violence increased from 10% among primary school-aged children to ~30% among adolescents and young adults. Over the course of their lives, ~40% of children were reported as having been exposed to or being victims of five or six of the categories of violence coded in this analysis. High levels of violence perpetration were reported across childhood. Age and gender differences in exposure to and experience and perpetration of violence were evident, and all categories of violence were more prevalent among poorer and more disadvantaged groups. Conclusions. Very high levels of violence were reported in all the settings of urban South African children's lives: home, community, school, among peers and in their intimate relationships. Children and youth were also reported to perpetrate high levels of violence. The personal and social costs of violence are very high, resulting in major public health problems due to its avoidable effects on short-and long-term mental and physical health and social adjustment, and intergenerationally.

Empowering parents for human immunodeficiency virus prevention: Health and sex education at home

“… 46 This risk of early sexual abuse amongst boys has also been shown in longitudinal research in South Africa to start early. 47 Thus, intervention such as Amagugu, which encourage communication with boy children about the risk of sexual abuse, has important potential beyond the context of HIV.…”

“They all laughed and asked me if I enjoyed having sex with those guys”: Exploring men’s lived experiences when reporting rape to police in South Africa

“…One participant indicated that the man who raped him was a serial killer who is well known in the community, while another man stated that the young man who raped him had recently returned from jail. South African men, women and children face the dual burden of rape and murder as a crime daily [ 59 – 61 ]. The fear of being killed was also reported as a barrier for not reporting rape to police where participants reported that they feared reporting rape to the police because the rapist had threatened to kill them if they attempt to report the rape to the police.…”

#Stillnotfound: Missing Children in South Africa

“…Similar to the study of other social phenomena, methodological issues also accompany the study of missing children. As with the wider literature on violence against children, there is an apparent lack of 'systematic research into the scale and forms of violence experienced by children' (Richter et al 2018) which extends beyond statistics. Sources of data used in this article include, firstly, interviews from a larger study about human trafficking for sexual exploitation in South Africa (Van der Watt 2018) in which 120 multidisciplinary participants from the criminal justice system, NGOs, the sex trade and victims of human trafficking shared their lived experiences.…”

“…However, the authors were not able to ascertain at the time of the writing the reasons why this may be so in the South African context. The literature on violence against children in South Africa has repeatedly shown that African children bear the brunt of violent acts and abuse committed against them whether by family, community members, strangers or their peers (Hsiao et al 2018;Mathews & Benevuti 2014;Optimus Study 2016;Richter et al 2018). Below is a breakdown of the racial distribution of children reported to Missing Children SA: Surprisingly, 'white' or Caucasian children make up the majority of children reported missing.…”