Improper shelters cause problems for kids

JAKARTA (JP): An activist has called on the management of halfway houses which shelter street children to separate boys and girls to protect them from sexual abuse.

"With shared housing like the way it is now, street girls are vulnerable to sexual abuse from the opposite sex and it will encourage prostitution at an early age," Abdillah of the Gema Mandiri Bangsa Foundation (YGMB) told the daily newspaper Suara Karya.

Jakarta has hundreds of halfway houses managed either by the government or nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to help overcome the city's problem of street children.

Experts estimated there were about 40,000 street children in Jakarta. They are classified as either "children of the street," as children who have no parental relations and make a living by selling newspapers, sweets, polishing shoes or begging, or "children on the street," as those who still went to school but had to work to help their parents.

Abdillah said street girls left halfway houses to avoid the boys and often slept on side streets in front of shops and office buildings, which subjected them to physical assault.

He said street boys under 15 years old tended to experiment with new activities, including sex. He said he made an appeal following reports from several NGOs on their finding that there were indeed cases of sexual abuse in halfway houses.

Social researcher Nancy Sumarno told The Jakarta Post on Saturday that there was no accurate data on sexual abuse cases among street children.

She said the risk of abuse was high among street children since most were at the age of puberty, which is when they become sexually active.

"These children need proper sex education, especially about HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases," she said.

She said ideally halfway houses were also equipped with books to encourage street children to learn how to read and write, and receive a visit from mobile clinics for free medical treatment.

Some NGOs have embarked on a program to educate the children and equip them with vocational skills, but little has been done to improve their health and nutritional intake due to a lack of funding.

For street children, Nancy said, there was little justice for violence committed against them as some law officers were among those who abuse them. (06)