Every week, 5 women & kids are victims of crimes in Goa

PANAJI: Over the past nine years, an average of five women and children become victims of crimes every week, according to a report by the state government’s victim assistance unit (VAU).

The VAU has handled 2,724 cases since 2014, and 70% of these pertain to women.
The data also reveals that almost 50% of children who are victims of crime are in the age group 0-15 years.
The report, which was submitted to CM Pramod Sawant early this week, stated that the victims are abused sexually, physically, and verbally. The report records that of the 2,724 cases, 1,931 were women/girls while 793 were boys.
Most cases were from the police stations in Mapusa (22.4%), Panaji (11.5%), Old Goa (7.3%), women police station (7.1%) and Porvorim (6.5%).
The VAU also dealt with cases of sexual abuse, assistance, trauma counselling, admission, socio-legal support, domestic violence and counselling. These constituted 71.4% of the total cases handled.
“We feel there is an urgent need to conduct awareness sessions for boys on sexuality, human development, and law. It is observed that most sessions are conducted only for the girl child, and boys are excluded. There is also an urgent need to train all teachers as first responders to deal with children having grief and behavioural issues,” said VAU in-charge Emidio Pinho in the report.
Goa police had issued orders to depute a lady PSI (LPSI) at the unit. “But this order has not been implemented. There is a need for police personnel to be deputed at the unit so that police facilitation and collection of evidence after medical examination can be done without delay,” Pinho said.
“There is a need to register non-governmental and voluntary organisations working for women and child rights. This would bring in answerability from social workers, and would deter one working for both, the accused and the victim,” Pinho said.
The VAU report stated that there should be mandatory police verification of all persons working with children in homes and other services. “This would help in keeping a check on those who work with children. It would help keep perpetrators away from such institutions. The government should also conduct surveys of staff from other states employed in children’s homes and seek police verification from the state concerned,” it said.