MP: Child sexual abuse has increased significantly in Iran

A member of the Islamic Consultative Assembly announced that due to the "significant increase" in the number of child sexual abuse cases in Iran, parents who fail to care for their children will face penalties such as fines and suspended sentences.

Mohammad Kazemi expressed this issue in an interview with ILNA news agency on Monday, December 26, and announced the final stages of approving the bill to protect the rights of children and adolescents in this commission.

The deputy chairman of the parliament's judicial and legal commission has criticized the increase in what he calls "social unrest" in recent years, criticizing numerous cases of "child abuse, the crisis of child labor and child begging in cities, as well as the significant growth in sexual abuse and rape against children."

According to the representative, the "significant" increase in the number of these crimes in recent years "requires greater attention to protecting children's rights," and the bill to protect the rights of children and adolescents was prepared with this same motivation.

Kazemi added that the bill includes punishment for parents who fail to fulfill their "religious and legal duties in raising, educating, and caring for children, in order to prevent such problems from occurring."

This member of the Omid parliamentary faction described the punishments intended for these parents as "fines, suspended sentences, and similar cases" so that they would "realize their responsibility" towards their children.

According to him, the bill also provides social and welfare workers and law enforcement officials with powers to separate children from abusive parents and deliver them to legal centers.

Serious attention to the sexual abuse of children, as well as in the workplace, is also mentioned in this bill. According to Kazemi, "The penalties we have considered for the sexual abuse of children are more severe than similar cases involving adults."

This bill is being finalized in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, while Reza Ghadimi, CEO of the Tehran Municipality Social Services Organization, recently presented shocking statistics stating that "90 percent of child laborers [in Iran] are raped."

Mr. Gadimi said in an interview with ISNA on November 4 of this year that "unfortunately, out of the 400 [child laborers] that welfare workers spoke to, about 90 percent of them have been assaulted."

He added that at welfare centers, "we noticed that the uncles of these children gather the children of the family, make them beg from morning to noon, and then assault them in the afternoon. This is documented."

After the remarks of this official in the Tehran municipality caused controversy, he himself denied his statements and said that he meant child labor abuse and that "abuse means keeping children on the street in the cold, refusing to feed them, blackening the children's faces to attract pity, and not giving them clothes, none of which are examples of sexual assault."

While the newspaper Shahrvand announced that it had a file of old statements in which he spoke about the sexual abuse of 90 percent of child laborers in Iran, the deputy head of social affairs and welfare for Tehran province announced that "we do not approve of the sexual abuse of 90 percent of child laborers."

Ahmad Khaki added in an interview with the Shahrvand newspaper, "We have no information about the rape of child laborers. No research has been done on this. We have no right to get involved in this issue at all, unless a child's life is in danger."

From time to time, numerous reports are published in the media about various types of abuse, as well as mental and physical harassment of children in all corners of Iran.

As the head of the country's Social Emergency Service announced, based on reports submitted to this organization last year, 60 percent of child abuse was committed by fathers and a total of 86 percent by parents.

On Sunday, October 21, in an interview with ILNA News Agency, Hossein Asadbeigi announced that 1,642 cases, or 60 percent of child abuse reported to "crisis intervention centers," were committed by fathers.

According to Mr. Asadbeigi, among other reported cases, 739 cases, or 26 percent, were committed by the mother, 20 cases by the brother, and eight cases by the sister.

He added that only one and a half percent of reported child abuse was committed by strangers.

Asadbeigi also said that some families hide the issue of sexual abuse of their children and do not report it to the country's social emergency service.

Source: Radio Farda