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SHOCKING/ How the institutions failed to prevent the sexual abuse of the minor "Emma": Don't be afraid, there's nothing...

2024-01-24 12:12:51Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
SHOCKING/ How the institutions failed to prevent the sexual abuse of the minor
mother

The promenade was emptier than usual. Vacationers in the Volga area were hiding from the midday sun, huddling in the cafe with beach umbrellas.

In the background, from the toy area, came a mix of screams. It was the kids on the swings and slides who didn't ask at all about the summer heat.

Among them was Ema, a 6-year-old girl. Golden haired, slightly chubby, she waited in line to ride the toys.

While at the top of the slide, Emma kept glancing towards the tables of the bar, albeit at a considerable distance.

She sought her mother's approving look before she let herself down on the squiggly sheet metal bed.

This ritual was repeated, without stopping!

As it began to get dark, the mother's roommate got up from the table. He was walking towards his black Golf car.

After a while, Ema got into the car with her mother. Unlike usual, the car was not heading home. They would stay in a hotel in Durrës, a few kilometers from the toys.

Occupy only one room. Exhausted from the game, as she was, in shorts and boaters Emma lies in the middle of the bed.

A few minutes later, her mother lies on one side, and her stepfather on the other.

A hand starts to caress the body of the 6-year-old. It wasn't her mother. Frightened, Emma seeks her mother's gaze. She smiles at him, caresses him lightly on the cheek and says: Don't be afraid! Nothing…

This is the starting point of one of the most shocking stories of sexual abuse of minors in Albania, which has continued intensively for several years.

From the data we have, this is the second case of a woman convicted of a sexual crime by the Albanian courts, but the first case of a mother, as a co-author of a continuous abuse of her minor child.

For the police and justice bodies, this case is a successfully solved story. Her stepfather and mother were given a maximum sentence of 23 and 18 years in prison, respectively.

Currently, only the mother is serving the sentence, as her roommate died while in prison "of natural causes", two years after the court handed down the sentence, at the end of 2017.

In fact, Emma's fate could have been completely different! The dark nights of minors would be a "bad dream" if law enforcement institutions or social care centers could react from the beginning, when this story began.

The "Ema" file is one of 580 stories of sexual abuse of minors in Albania, from 2010 onwards. As is the case with serious crimes of sexual abuse, especially within the family, the beginnings are early, continuous and denounced and detected by justice too late. But this was not the case for Emma. Although the girl did not live with her father, due to her parents' divorce, in the few meetings she had with him, she overcame the shyness of her age and told him that her stepfather sexually harassed her. "A few years ago, I filed a complaint with the police, after my daughter told me that her mother's roommate was rubbing her private parts", - Emma's father testified six years later to police officers, while the issue of abuse was discovered by authority. Following his testimony, he says that "I don't know the fate of this denunciation", while adding that "I remember that for this reason both parties called us to the police".

We have officially addressed the Police Station in Fier regarding the procedure followed in the case of this denunciation, making available detailed data related to the file in question, but we have not received a response. And yet, current employees of this directorate claim "off record" that "seeing the practice followed according to the evidence, the police officers tried to resolve the case with understanding", a well-known method for such crimes within the family, especially in the years when the denunciation was carried out, also because of the mentality in rural areas.

The lack of immediate action by the state police structures, as soon as they received the denunciation, proved fatal for the launch of a long ordeal of nights full of abuse and nightmare of the minor.

"For any event, professional intervention and approach from the beginning does half the work to solve a case successfully.", - says Altin Hazizaj, head of the Center for Children's Rights in Albania. 

"In Albania for several years we will continue to deal with the consequences of the creation, until we see such a profound change and restructuring of the law-enforcement institutions that they turn into crime-preventing institutions", - says the head of the CRCA , Altin Hazizaj, who adds that "today, in the state of both law-enforcement and justice bodies, prevention is really impossible".

But the report made to the police is only the first moment when the law enforcement authorities could have intervened to stop the sexual abuse. From the detailed analysis of about 200 material pages of the "Ema" file, we have also identified a second circumstance, when the minor could have been saved from this abuse in the first place, but, again, the institutions did not function.

A year after the start of the sexual harassment, due to disagreements, Emma's uncle, after being informed, denounced his sister's roommate for exploitation of prostitution. After the investigation and conviction of the stepfather, Ema, together with her mother, was sent to the National Reception Center for Traffic Victims in Linza.

In this center, they have been treated for at least a year and a half, while we have learned from the People's Advocate office that "during this period the number of registered persons was limited", which made it easier for the staff to treat this case.

Referring to a report of the Commissioner for Protection from Discrimination, which belongs to the same period as the treatment of Emma and her mother, it results that the basic service offered at the Reception Center for Victims of Trafficking according to the regulation of their operation "is assistance specialized psychological, legal assistance as well as a high level of security for the very dangerousness that the status of traffic victims presents.

Based on this function, we have addressed a request for information to this Center and the State Social Service as the responsible institution.

MediaLook has provided detailed data on the period and identity of the patients to facilitate the return of an answer regarding the "specialized rehabilitation program and psychological assistance provided by the center".

In response to our interest, the Social Service has confirmed the fact that Ema and her mother have undergone the rehabilitation program, but adds that "I cannot provide information regarding the services received and the fulfillment of this program as the Center is confidential, while the requested data are private".

A negative response has also come from the leaders of the Center. We contacted the police of Tirana and Durrës, if there was any denunciation for the discovery of sexual abuse against minors by the staff of the National Center for Traffic Victims, and it was confirmed to us that "no denunciation has resulted in the case in question".

For developmental psychologist Sibora Kalluçi, a sexually abused child "has an extreme change in life processes: such as fluctuating insomnia or excessive sleep, shows symptoms of anorexia or bulimia nervosa, may close in on himself, express a desire not to live more or to express self-blaming feelings, with hateful notes towards himself".

Kalluçi argues that for the detection of cases of sexual abuse "there are therapeutic forms that can be understood by a professional, such as a clinical psychologist or infant psychiatrist, and one of them is art and play therapy".

This is the second case, when another specialized institution has failed to put an end to Emma's dark nights, who after leaving this center was again continuously abused by her parents.

She was again a minor herself, since at the age of 12, she found the strength to affirm that for several years she was sexually abused by her stepfather in the presence of her mother.

The investigations revealed that the girl had been molested and then sexually abused for nearly six years, while the institutions failed to prevent or curb the abuse, although the information was not missing.

In Albania, 277 sexual predators were convicted during the period January 2020-March 2023, 32 of them for having sexual relations with minors under 14 years old, while another 21 with children from the age of 14 to under 18 years old.

MediaLook has processed data obtained through 18 requests for information from judicial districts at the national level.

In addition to the statistics, a significant number of anonymized decisions have been made for sexual crimes against minors.

Although the Court of Tirana results in the largest number of decisions on pedophilia cases with 61 such cases, the capital calculates a crime coefficient of 0.66 cases per 10 thousand inhabitants. From the analyzed data, it appears that the District of Shkodra is the territorial space where the most sexual crimes against minors have occurred, with 2.64 cases per 10,000 inhabitants, by court decision.

Six of the most serious cases have been recorded in this district, which ended with sexual relations with minors under 14 years old. The other two problematic counties with crimes of sexual predators in relation to the number of the population are Gjirokastra and Lezha.

Meanwhile, what is evidenced by the data is the very low number of decisions given regarding online pedophilia, although the issue of sexual harassment on the Internet is constantly denounced as problematic in the conditions of a large number of minor users on the social networks TikTok, SnapChat of Instagram.

"Regarding the typology of online sexual violence against children, this year for the first time we were faced with sexual images of children generated by artificial intelligence, which has never been reported to us before", says Altin Hazizaj, head of CRCA- of.

According to him, "this means that pedophiles and sexual predators to escape the criminal responsibility they bear when these images are of real children, have begun to use advanced technologies."

We've reached out to the Attorney General's Office to find out what's wrong with tracking and catching pedophiles online.

From the data made available, we note that during the five years 2018-2022, a total of 138 criminal lawsuits were filed for sexual harassment by online predators.

Of these, only 10 cases or 7% of them were brought to trial by the Prosecutor's Office, and only three of them ended with a conviction.

Sources from the prosecution body indicate that this low number of cases that are sent to court is related to the missing infrastructure in the collection and documentation of evidence from the initial stage of sexual harassment.

"In the case of cybercrimes against individuals, most of them can be prevented, can be investigated and the people who have done harm brought to justice. But the lack of digital skills, together with the lack of technology, makes institutions unable to track crime, let alone prevent it," Hazizaj analyzes.

In 2020, the MediaLook Center published the database for Sexual Crimes against Minors in Albania over a decade, for the period 2010-2019, in which 303 cases of sexual abuse, examined by a court of first instance, were identified and analyzed.

Currently, what is established is that in the last three years the ratio of sexual crimes against minors is 2.8 times higher compared to the same typology of abuses that occurred during the previous ten-year period.

We contacted the State Agency for Child Protection, who confirmed that "according to the law, there should be one child protection worker for every three thousand children. In the country's municipalities, the majority have fulfilled this criterion, while in Tirana there are 24 employees of the Child Protection Unit". But despite the personnel, the trend of sexual violence even in the reports of this agency is six times higher in 2022 compared to 5 years ago.

The growing trends of sexual crimes with minors show that the preventive chain starting from the police, child protection units, teachers, school psychologists, etc. I'm having trouble keeping the situation under control. As long as the situation will remain like this, the victims of sexual abuse from an early age will experience more dark nights.

Note: Emma is the pseudonym chosen by the author  in order to preserve the identity of the abused girl . / Retrieved from Medialook


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