NAN- H-33
Suite
Lagos, Aug. 8, 2017 (NAN) A non-profit organisation, Cece Yara Foundation, on Tuesday inaugurated a forensic suite for interviewing children who experience sexual abuse, to aid successful prosecution and conviction of offenders.
The forensic suite, funded by Cece Yara Child Advocacy Centre, is designed to eliminate obstacles during investigation, especially where the perpetrator denies the abuse.
Inaugurating the facility, Mrs Bola Tinubu, Founder, Cece Yara Foundation, said the forensic suite would assist the police in carrying out more thorough investigations and discovering high quality evidence.
“It is a professional discipline that can make a fundamental difference to the way in which we approach the investigation of these crimes against young children.
“Now our children have a child-friendly environment to disclose all the details of their abuse to a professional that understands them.
“A professional who understands the challenges they have in articulating the details of the abuse due to their age, the range of their vocabulary and the effect of trauma,” she said.
According to her, Nigeria has, in recent times, recorded an increasing rate of child sexual abuse with few perpetrators convicted or punished for the crime.
Mrs Tinubu said that underreporting, improper interviewing, inappropriate community and law enforcement responses and limited ways to assess the credibility of testimonies of victims contributed to the number of unprosecuted cases.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the centre also trained 10 skillful child-friendly forensic interviewers drawn from the police and social workers from the Ministry of Youth and Social Development.
The ceremony was attended by law enforcement agents, social workers and civil society groups representing child protection community in Lagos State.
Established in 2016, Cece Yara Foundation is a child-centred non-profit organisation to prevent sexual abuse.
The centre also provides access to care, information, protection and emergency intervention for children who are sexually abused or at risk, and their family. (NAN)
WOJ/SOA
(Edited by Wale Ojetimi/OluwoleSogunle)