The Enugu State Sexual Assault Referral Center (Tamar SARC) has advised parents to pay adequate attention to their children and wards to avoid being victims of sexual abuse and violence.
The Centre Manager, Tamar Sarc, Evelyn Onah gave the advice on Monday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Enugu.
Onah urged parents to endeavour to know what their children did including the friends they interacted with within schools, at home, and the social media.
She advised parents to make their children their friends so that they could open up to them on any issue bothering them.
Onah also cautioned parents against buying expensive android devices without parental control adding that it exposed them to porn sites that they should not have visited.
“This is the computer age and these children know more than us, they navigate the phones the way they want.
“Parents are supposed to have censor to checkmate them and they should not allow them to be trusting everybody.
“Most times, parents are the ones pushing them outside without monitoring their activities and they get raped,” Onah said.
The manager further advised parents to watch out if their children refused to go on an errand for somebody.
“If you have an older boy in your house and you observe that your child behaves somehow when he asks her to do something, know that something is wrong.
“Be observant and understand the child and do not push the child to do what he or she does not want to do.
“Pay attention to them and have time for them,” she advised.
She urged children to speak out whenever they were assaulted and confide in someone in order to save their lives.
NAN reports that Tamar SARC was set up by the Enugu State Government to support Gender-Based Violence (GBV) survivors with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through Pathfinder International.
The centre offers free medical, counselling, and other support services to the victims and survivors of GBV in the state and beyond. (NAN)
