Spotlight: Greece strives to check sexual abuse of minors

by Alexia Vlachou

ATHENS, March 8 (Xinhua) -- Sexual violence against minors in Greece is like an iceberg, as is across the globe, with most cases remaining unknown despite the increasing voices calling for disclosure and justice in recent years, Greek experts said.

Greece has experienced its own shocking stories of child sex crimes. Last week, four men were arrested in Pieria, northern Greece, facing charges of sexual abusing a minor girl. Among those arrested included the father of the girl.

The 16-year-old girl reportedly had repeatedly suffered sexual abuse since she was 6.

"In recent decades there is a more increased tendency of victims to be able to disclose their experiences and claim justice to be made," said George Nikolaidis, psychiatrist and scientific coordinator of the day center "The House of the Child" run by local NGO "The Smile of the Child".

But still there is a long way to go in Greece to prevent such crimes, experts said, noting sexual violence against minors is a widely underreported phenomenon worldwide.

According to the Greek police department in charge of minors protection,major changes in reported crimes have not been observed these years.

"During 2015 there have been 81 cases concerning pedophilia in Greece, while in 2016 there have been 123 cases and for the first eight months of 2017 there have been 77 cases," Greek Police's Press Officer Ioanna Rotziokou told Xinhua.

To handle such cases, the authorities have a good cooperation with foreign experts and local NGOs.

"We try to have a good collaboration with Europol, Interpol, Selec, Eurojust and we get useful information from our police liaisons at the embassies from all over the world," Rotziokou stressed.

In addition, they organized conferences and educational programs to raise awareness to minors and their families in collaboration with NGOs.

The National Helpline for Children received a total of 848 reports for 1,656 children victims of abuse in 2017.

"The majority of the reports were cases of neglect and abuse. Only a small percentage referred to sexual abuse," Sia Kakarouba, chief operator at the Call Centers run by "The Smile of the Child", which have some social workers and psychologists.

Greek authorities told Xinhua that a perpetrator can be any person regardless of age, ethnicity, race, educational background, social status or economic standing.

"We have observed that there are some common characteristics that can be the sign not the evidence that this person has a specific sexual preference to children," Rotzioukou said.

Perpetrators in Greece are usually men aged over 30, who have no or few friends of his age, Usually work or hang out at a place with children, for example, a playground, an internet cafe, an athletic center or a shopping center.

To have access to children and teenagers, they often use social media, and in many cases pretends to be a teenager.

"But the most important is that this man can be a person above all suspicion. He can be the professor, the teacher, the coach, the uncle or anybody from the close family environment," she stressed.

Most of the cases take place in big cities where there is a high population density, she said.

Kakarouba stressed that the lack of a unified authority to register all cases is among the major problems authorities should consider.

"It does not give us the opportunity to see the real dimension of the phenomenon in order to take the appropriate prevention measures," she said.

For Nikolaidis, another major issue is the lack of sexual education in public schools.

"In Greece still, the main source for information for children unfortunately is the internet or the magazines and discussions in the streets or in the yard of the school with peers," said Nikolaidis.

Another feature that discourages children to disclose or make children and parents to suffer a second trauma after the initial one is the severely short of the responsive services to a sexual abuse.

A research has unveiled that children victims of sexual abuse in Greece will be called to repeat their traumatic story in a formal setting on average fourteen times in the pre-jury phase.

"I have seen cases that it took more than ten years to conclude the juridical procedures," Nikolaidis noted.

Greece lacks services of a comprehensive forensic interview like in the Nordic countries, or lacks the Children's Advocacy Center in the United States which minimize the number of times the child is called to testify within a formal setting.

Law enforcement services in many European countries are used to collecting other evidence without calling the child to testify in a police department.

Child sexual abuse can result in both short-term and long-term harm, including psychopathology in later life, said experts.

Sometimes professionals and services tend to view those children as "lost cases". But, Nikolaidis strongly believed that it was "worth every effort" to work with these children. Enditem