Children in danger: Battered and bruised

One young apprentice was burnt with a blowtorch for sleeping on the job, another boy was beaten by a teacher in class until he fainted, and a teenage girl in a Togo shelter for battered children was convalescing after her father smashed her knee until it broke. “Children are being battered in schools and on the job,” said Cleophas Mally, the head of the organisation that runs the shelter, WAO-Afrique, or World Association of Orphans. “We need to think about how to wield authority and discipline without using violence against children,” he said. But long-held beliefs in the merits of corporal punishment run strong in Togo. In a recent television talk show master craftsmen argued that to remove the threat of using the stick would undermine their authority over their apprentices. “My boss used to say that insults and beatings were part of my apprenticeship,” said Kouma Teko, a 16-year-old who ran away from the carpentry workshop where his uncle signed him over as an apprentice. He still carries the scars from the beatings. Teko now sells pens and paper handkerchiefs by the roadside in this country of over five million people, of whom 42 percent are under 15. At the WAO-Afrique shelter, a quiet one-storey building manned by a dozen staff, the director said apprentices often received 30 or 40 blows for simply mislaying a screw. “I used to sleep in the garage at my boss’s, who was always saying I was useless,” said a 17-year-old called Folly, one of about 20 youngsters currently living at the shelter. “One day I was dozing while he worked and suddenly I woke up because my arm was hot and I saw he’d burnt me with a blowtorch.”

Togo

Schools should be safe Children were also battered at school, Mally said. “Some ill-intentioned teachers go beyond the pale,” he said. “Some beat the children so badly their bottoms are torn. It’s intolerable and it’s not just happening in Togo.” In an interview with IRIN this month, UNICEF’s West Africa advisor on child protection, Jean-Claude Legrand, said corporal punishment was widespread in schools across the region. “There is the problem of abuse of authority by headmasters and teachers - few countries in the region have developed monitoring mechanisms so parents and children have no way to complain and get redress,” he said. At Lome’s main market, tradeswomen Madame Dede recounted how she had forced her son into school only to find he was missing class in fear of being beaten by the teachers. “Two months after enrolling him it turned out he had stopped going to school because his friends had told him how fond the teachers were of the stick,” she said. Another young boy told IRIN that in primary school a boy was so badly beaten by the teacher that he passed out. “He had sleeping sickness and wasn’t answering her questions so she slapped him so much he fainted,” the boy, Ghislain, said. Togo has a law banning corporal punishment at school, but UNICEF’s Legrand said that across the region governments were not doing enough to address problems of violence at school. “Often teachers are just moved on if there is a complaint, just transferring the problem somewhere else, not solving it. We need to make sure that schools are a safe place for children, not a place of abuse,” he said. But government health, welfare and police officials are also referring children to the WAO-Afrique shelter who have been subjected to horrific violence at home. "You're going to die" Thirteen-year-old Eleanore, who is in primary school, said ever since she was born her father had hated her. “I can be just studying and he will come and beat me for no reason at all,” she said. But this time she was brought to the shelter after he almost killed her. “He put a rag in my mouth and started beating me up. Then he went to look for a knife but when he couldn’t find one he picked up a pestle instead and said ‘You’re going to die and nobody will say anything’.” She said her father broke her knee with the instrument but it was only four days later when a neighbour intervened that she was able to go to hospital for treatment. The father was arrested and placed behind bars. Punishment for mistreating children is rare in Togo, Mally said. People do not often file formal complaints and there is a culture of silence due to traditional respect for members of the family or for local dignitaries. “If a teacher hits you or your father rapes you, custom will prevent you denouncing them,” Mally said. “If a relative is jailed because a child has denounced him the community will not be too pleased.” And impunity encouraged violence, he said. There is growing public concern about battered children in Togo, however. A draft law to protect children’s rights is to be considered by parliament and some of the country’s top musicians have come together to raise awareness among families, teachers and craftsmen. Said award-winning Togolese singer King Mensah, who has recorded several numbers against violence in workshops: “When I was small I was beaten up so often that if I hit back it would go on for ever. So violence must stop,” he said. jg/ccr/cs