SARYA DENİZ/MEDİNE MAMEDOĞLU

News Center- “Teach your children how to scream,” former Minister of the Family and Social Policies Ayşenur Islam said in one of her statements in 2014 about child abuse. Her statement has been discussed and talked about many times since then. The slogan saying “Children remain silent, but you shouldn’t” has become the most used slogan about child abuse in Turkey over time. Actually, children never remain silent; they told what they had faced in detail. Some children told what they had faced, some drew pictures and some wrote down what they had faced… Some courts heard their silent scream while some didn’t hear or didn’t want to hear.

While people of Turkey criticized the verdict in the Elmalı child abuse case, Turkish Parliament passed a new law seeking “concrete evidence” for arrest in the child abuse cases.

In Turkey, the statements of sexual abuse victims have been ignored for years. The evidence has been also ignored. Turkey, which ranks third in the global list of child abuse, chooses impunity for perpetrators by passing the new law seeking concrete evidence” to arrest them.

What is concrete evidence?

The Law Proposal on the Amendment of the Military Penal Code and Some Laws, known as the “4th Judicial Package” in Turkey, was passed by the Turkish parliament. According to one of the 14 articles passed by the parliament, “concrete evidence” will be required for the arrest of suspects in “catalog crimes,” including child abuse. But sexual crimes are committed in a secret way, without leaving any evidence behind, and even so that the victims do not complain about what they face. Therefore, the “concrete evidence” requested by the courts may not be found. So what is concrete evidence? Actually, lawyers and experts say the statements of women and children are also considered as concrete evidence, the reports from Forensic Medicine, opinions of psychologists, or pedagogues are also accepted as concrete evidence in sexual crimes. And evidence showing the committed crimes, such as sound records, photographs, and text messages, are also accepted as concrete evidence.

What will happen in the legal process of sexual abuse cases?

Lawyers and experts argue that each sexual abuse case should be evaluated differently. Seeking “concrete evidence” for arrest in sexual abuse cases means no one will be jailed pending sexual abuse trials. With the new law, many people discuss what will happen in the legal process of sexual abuse cases opened over the statements of victims. Lawyers and women’s organizations are concerned about a decision of non-prosecution regarding such cases.

Numbers are much higher than expected

Turkey ranks third in the global list of child abuse. With the new law, it will probably rank first soon. The Turkish Ministry of Justice hasn’t shared any data on child abuse for a long time. According to the recent data compiled from verdicts and the news reported in the local, national, and online press in Turkey reveals the reality in the country. Women’s organizations and NGOs agree that the number of child abuse cases has increased since the AKP came to power. According to research conducted by The Economist in 60 countries last year, Turkey received a score of 56.7. The Covid-19 pandemic makes everything more complicated. The experts agree that children have been left unprotected during the 2-year Covid-19 period and the numbers of child abuses are much higher than expected.

According to the last data released by the Turkish Ministry of Justice, the number of child abuse cases increased by 29 percent between 2012 and 2019. This data only shows the number of lawsuits.  According to the Ministry of Justice, child abuse cases were 17,589 in 2012, the number of child abuse increased to 22,689 in 2019. According to the comprehensive report published by the Association for Prevention Child Abuse and Neglect in 2020, child abuse cases increased by 67.9 percent between 2014 and 2017.

72 children were sexually abused in 2021

According to the data compiled by Bianet from the news reported in the local, national and online press in Turkey, men sexually abused 265 children in 2020, while this number was 72 in the first six months of 2021.

Child marriage

Child marriage is an important part of child abuse. The number of lawsuits opened to change the age for child marriage is quite high in Turkey. According to the official data, a total of 13,651 lawsuits were filed in 2018 to take permission to marry at the age of 16. A total of 482 thousand girls married before 18 between 2010 and 2020. 441,000 children have given birth since 2002 when the AKP came to power. The number of people who stood trial for sexually abusing a child was 159,263 between 2006 and 2017. Turkey ranked 87 out of 202 countries in child marriage.