PETALING JAYA: Family disputes are one of the main reasons behind child abuse cases in the country, says Deputy Women, Family and Community Development Minister Hannah Yeoh.
She said 4,583 of the 26,314 child abuse cases recorded from 2013 to November last year were due to family disputes.
“I believe that if you ask the NGOs, the number could be higher than that,” she said at the launch of the Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) Child Care Centre at Wisma Rehda, here.
“Child abuse happens because of aggression from domestic violence at home. The child ends up as the victim,” she said.
During the event, Yeoh also launched a WAO report titled “Where’s the Child?: The Rights of Child Domestic Violence Survivors”.
Yeoh said a study by Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Centre for Research on Women and Gender had revealed that nine per cent of Malaysian women who had had partners in the past had experienced domestic violence.
“About 73 per cent of these women reported that their children had seen or heard acts of violence in the household. “This is equivalent to the children of 584,000 women having witnessed domestic violence.”
Yeoh said, in Malaysia, people didn’t often talk about children’s rights.
“This is because we think children don’t know anything,” she said, adding that children deserved better protection from the government.
“This new government needs to take on this role and start looking at things not just from the political standpoint. It is not about the votes,” Yeoh said.
Meanwhile, Real Estate and Housing Development Association Youth Malaysia (Rehda Youth) adviser Teo Chui Ping said the child care centre was the first green child centre in Malaysia.
“Our goal is to design a loving and nurturing home for children, one that wouldn’t feel like a shelter or crisis centre.”
She said the rebuilding of WAO’s child care centre, which was destroyed in a fire in 2016, was a corporate social responsibility project by Rehda Youth, in collaboration with its partners.
The centre is expected to completed in a year and will be home to more than 20 children, many of whom have witnessed or experienced domestic violence.