A Rescued Child Needs Social Therapy
- Category: Articles
- Date 29-04-2007
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The nation has been gripped with relief and joy following for reappearance of Ahmed Imram Junior after a month-long captivity. The boy was recovered when his former captors returned him to the gate of his family home in the night of April 26.
It must have been one of the most joyous moments for the parents and family, who previously considered their beloved child lost forever or murdered. While we are excited about the child’s reappearance, we should not assume that the only thing he needed was to return home. Rehabilitative measures must be sought to re-establish the victim’s childhood normalcy on which his future adulthood depends.
Scholars suggest that an abducted child suffers emotionally and physically, upon enduring strange personalities and circumstances who press him to adhere to their conditions. Sometimes abductors might use the child as a bargaining chip to extort money. Media reports pointed to the possibility of ransom having been paid for the child’s return. The helpless victim experiences psychological brutalisation, which in turn destroys his sense of trust in the world around him; even as he is rescued, would have suffered significant harm, and thus deserves some form therapy.
While under the abductors confinement, the child’s sense of attachment with his family is ruined. Yet it is this sense of attachment that influences a child’s physical, cognitive and emotional solidity, which would in turn dictate how the child would relate to the world, learn, and form relationships in life.
Being taken hostage automatically stresses a child and might create feelings of displacement whereby impulses of betrayal and anger are redirected from the offender to an innocent person because the threat is too dangerous for the child to confront. For instance, he may direct his resentment against his parents for not protecting him from a dangerous situation and may remain mutely unforgiving even after the rescue.
According to Junior Imram’s recollections, he was not mistreated while in captivity. Such treatment may bind a child to them. Some abducted children in the end develop warm feelings towards their captors and might identify strongly, even intimately with them. Such victims might grow to become abusers.
The writer is a Programme Officer at the African Network for Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN) Uganda Chapter
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: New Vision