IN the longest lockdown on the planet, what’s the worst that can happen? As history’s events teach, some of the worst things that can happen happen in the worst of times, such as war, invasion, involuntary migration, and they happen to women and children.
In the time of pandemic 2020 in the Philippines, GMA reports there were 3,700 cases of domestic violence and abuse of women and children from March 15, start of the Enhanced Community Quarantine, to June 4. When evil has found a home, where can a child hide?
Hours before the news aired, Katherine Balin, senior programmer of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Maryland, told
a virtual workshop that domestic violence is one of five unintended consequences of keeping people at home. Like “an outbreak within an outbreak,” other unintended outcomes are an increase in pregnancies, a decrease in family planning, a drop in girls’ education, and avoiding medical services in hospitals.
Eerily enough, seven hours after Atty. Balin shared her knowledge with other public health doctors, legislators, and journalist-members of Samahang Plaridel, those 3,700 cases proved to be the reality behind the theory. As narrated by a GMA reporter, police are investigating the death of a seven-year-old boy. Their suspect is the kid’s aunt, the cause of death asphyxiation by strangulation. The body bore signs of a pattern of injuries due to torture. The aunt claimed the boy hanged himself by the window, an idea the detective wholeheartedly scoffed at. Another minor, a girl, told police she had been raped by her stepfather and another man.
What could be worse than these crimes against innocents is that their number is likely far too low. How many terrified youngsters, minors all, would have the means and guts to seek help from a policewoman or a total stranger? Living in close quarters with a family where the other parent is in denial or in fear of the monster she loves and serves, how many children are similarly trapped in the fiction of home-sweet-home?
Rep. Angelina Tan has a bill proposing “an action plan for health security.” How about amending it to an action plan to keep children healthy and safe from their parents and guardians?
