Incest, abuse happens when parents treat children as property, says expert

Some parents think since the child is their ‘property’ they can do what they like with it.

KUALA LUMPUR: When parents treat their children as property, it can potentially lead to child abuse, a senior paediatrician said.

Dr Irene Cheah Guat Sim, who heads the Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) team in Kuala Lumpur Hospital (HKL) said this was more often than not the case.

“So why does child abuse happen? A lot of times it is because children are property of the parents. So they think, ‘alright, it is my right to do as I will’. Parents with this kind of mindset will end up abusing their children.

“I am not saying all parents are bad. Of course we all love our children and we try our best, but we still expect our children to listen to us,” she said at a forum on child abuse cases earlier this week.

Children, Cheah said, were young and dependent on their carers, and if their carers were not loving, and were abusive, the children would still love them, but the love would be out of fear.

Aside from physical abuse, Cheah noted the occurrence of sexual abuse by carers. She pointed out that when children had less rights and were seen as property, there was the possibility of incest.

“Many times people ask, how can a father molest or rape his own child? This is because sometimes, the mentality is that his child is his property.

“You must also remember that sexual abuse to a young child is a power thing. It is not all sexual. Why do they molest toddlers who are 1, 2 or 3 years old? It is because he feels he has the power, because the child cannot say no.

Dr Irene Cheah Guat Sim.

“In a way, they get a high from that sort of power,” she said.

Child abuse, Cheah said, also stemmed from a lack of parenting skills.

“Our society defines physical discipline as okay. It is okay to beat children in school if they are naughty. It is okay to beat children at home if they are naughty.

“Now the problem is, what is ‘naughty’? The definition of naughty? And then the parents become stressed, and they beat their children for no other reason. That is when physical discipline becomes physical abuse,” she said.

Parental rights versus children’s rights

Cheah stressed the need for police, welfare workers and doctors to talk to child victims to get their evidence for court.

“We cannot just rely on the parents’ story. A lot of times when they visit the homes, they just talk to the parents and not to the child. As to how things are, the parents usually say everything is okay, and so the abuse still goes on if we only talk to the parents,” she said.

Cheah said often parental rights overtook children’s rights because the workers in the field were parents.

“We are adults. Therefore, we may have value judgments as to whether the child is appropriately disciplined or not. Therefore, our intervention with the child can be disrupted if we are not aware of our value judgments as a parent,” she said.

Cheah cited research she had carried out on child abuse which found that while the laws were satisfactory, improvement was needed in linking all the resources together and getting all stakeholders to work together to tackle child abuse.

She said there was also a shortage of trained people to handle child abuse.

“That is one of our major problems. All in all, we lack capacity to handle this problem. We need everyone to be united to beat this. We cannot just rely on law, police doctors and the welfare department.

“Working together is very viable. We need to work together. - FMT