Child Victims of Violence Seek Support via Social Media

When a family that is supposed to provide safety and shelter becomes a place of violence, children seek escape by sharing their experiences or injuring themselves.

KOMPAS/AGUS SUSANTO

Children perch in a breach in the Marunda Beach embankment on Tuesday (30/6/2020) in Cilincing, North Jakarta. The local people, who used to make their livelihood as fishers for many generations, are now starting to hang up their nets and retire their boats. Some have become workers at factories near their houses, which are surrounded by warehouses and port facilities

JAKARTA, KOMPAS – Children who are victims of domestic violence find consolation on social media to heal their emotional wounds. Besides their vulnerability to exploitation and being targeted in the crime of child pornography, the trauma they experience from childhood violence has the potential to carry over into adulthood if it is not addressed from the outset. As a result, child abuse becomes a vicious circle.

As children of violence mature and have families of their own, they could potentially perpetuate violence and abuse against their own children. In fact, the domestic abuse and violence children experience at home cause emotional wounds that can give rise to self-harm, from physically injuring themselves to suicidal thoughts.

A number of child victims of violence who Kompas tracked down through Facebook revealed that they were intentionally hurting themselves to divert the emotional pain they felt from the abuse they received from their parents or other family members.

Also read : Protect Our Children

These victims of child abuse have joined a number of Facebook groups under the same name, Broken Home. One of the largest and active Broken Home groups contains a number of personal accounts of child abuse and its fatal result, suicide.

Broken Home is an open membership Facebook group that has a current membership consisting of 342,000 accounts. These accounts generally belong to students from across a number of regions in Indonesia. Each member can share their grief and the ill treatment they have received from their parents. One account under the username Putri posted her message, "I felt fragile when I was asked to tell stories about my family." Her message has garnered 79 comments, 1,700 likes and 151 shares. The posted comments are generally brief, such as "satu server" (one server), meaning “the same”.

Each member of the Facebook group is free to post an invitation to join a certain WhatsApp group. A number of children who freely shared their stories on the Broken Home group have also shared their WhatsApp numbers.

Also read : Comprehensive Prevention Never in Place

Kompas/AGUS SUSANTO

A busker walks home on Sunday (19/1/2020) past the Ciliwung River in Kampung Melayu, Jatinegara, East Jakarta. The Ciliwung River has for thousands of years been a silent witness to human beings who have settled on its banks and relied on it for their livelihoods.

Not infrequently, some members of the group request other members to share their WhatsApp numbers, like the user account Na Na. On further research, it was found that the Na Na account did not have any photos or a clear identity, and the account was devoid of any posts.

Meanwhile, the WhatsApp groups that have been promoted on the Broken Home Facebook group also share similar stories about domestic violence. However, several members of these WhatsApp groups had shared photographs and video clips containing pornographic content. Tracking down several of these WhatsApp group members further led to other WhatsApp groups that were actively posting pornographic photos and videos.

Child victims of domestic violence, members of both Facebook and WhatsApp groups, have discovered that they cannot find a cure on these platforms.

Also read : Protect Children as Early as Possible

"Well, I’ve found no [solution]. But, there are people who have had a fate worse than mine. But, they’ve gone on with their lives," Ail (not her real name), a 16-year-old girl, said on Saturday (4/7/2020).

Ail claimed that since she shared her WhatsApp number on the Broken Home group, strangers had contacted her on at least two separate occasions. One of them immediately asked her to meet. "I was scared. I didn’t respond," she said.

Ail has been abused by her father since her mother died, when she was still in the fourth grade at elementary school. Her father continued to abuse her until Ail enrolled at a vocational high school starting in 10th grade.

Also read : Violence Looms Over Women and Children

KOMPAS/TOTOK WIJAYANTO

A child takes a dip after school on Tuesday (14/7/2020) in the muddy waters off the fishing village of Muara Angke in North Jakarta. The nearby beach and seas, which have become polluted from household waste, is a den of diseases that can endanger the health of the children who play there.

During junior high school, Ail practiced self-harm by injuring her hand to divert her feelings of grief, upset and disappointment at her father\'s behavior. When she was in ninth grade, she tried to commit suicide after a beating by her father.

"I felt so hopeless that I drank insecticide. Then, perhaps father panicked. Suddenly, I realized I was in the hospital. I was thinking, why didn\'t I just die then, so I could be with mother," she said.

Residual trauma

Self-harm is an attempt to escape from the trauma of child abuse. Olin (not her real name), is a 17-year-old girl who still cuts her hand whenever she becomes upset and disappointed with her parents. Most recently, she cut herself a month ago after three months of studying from home during the Covid-19 epidemic. The wound is clearly visible on Olin\'s hand.

Olin acknowledged that the trauma of the abuse she had endured from kindergarten through junior high school reemerged while studying at home, and it prompted her to hurt her hand again. One traumatic incident she cannot forget is when her mother hit the table because she was unable to solve math problems.

"My mother suddenly hit the table. Mother said, \'Why you don\'t understand?\' Then, she threw the table [aside]. That night, [I] cried. Mother just slept," Olin recalled.

Also read : Police to Trace Victims in Frenchman Pedophilia Case

KOMPAS/TOTOK WIJAYANTO

Youths squat atop a pile of garbage on Wednesday (15/7/2020) in a slum settlement on the banks of the Ciliwung River in Bidara Cina, Jatinegara, Jakarta. A recent survey shows that teens are particularly vulnerable to feelings of stress.

Olin said that her mother was also a victim of child abuse from her parents, who abused her whenever she studied. "In the past, grandfather often beat mother, much more frequently than mother beat me. From [her] trauma, [I] learned. My mother was like that in the past, [so] in the future, I should not make the same mistake," she said.

Children who experience domestic violence generally say that they don\'t know where to go so they can heal in safety without becoming victims of another form of abuse. They are unaware that they go see a psychologist or a psychiatrist. They are also reluctant to share their problems with their school counselor.

Serious issue

Psychologist Agustina Untari stressed that children who shared their grief and disappointment over their families on social media were highly vulnerable. "[Child] predators [target] people like this. Children who have experienced abuse need to go to a psychologist or psychiatrist. You can\'t help yourself [just] by reading [posts] on the internet. The issue is extremely serious. There are many kinds of trauma and they cannot be dealt with alone," she said.

Domestic violence against children is a serious issue in Indonesia. Based on data from the Women’s and Children’s Empowerment Ministry, the number of parents and other relatives who perpetrate violence against children is increasing every year. In 2016-2018, the ministry recorded 1,663 to 2,672 abusers. In 2019, the number decreased slightly to 2,314 people. From January to 14 July 2020 during the Covid-19 epidemic, 735 parents and relatives committed violence against children.

The impacts of the trauma from abuse is no trivial matter. According to a survey by YouGov Omnibus, an online research institution, around 36.9 percent of Indonesians had self-harmed in June 2019. The highest prevalence of self-harm was recorded in the 18 to 24 years age group, of which 7 percent regularly practiced self-harm.

KOMPAS/TOTOK WIJAYANTO

Fishers’ children play among disused fishing nets on Thursday (16/7/2020) in Kalibaru, Cilincing, North Jakarta. The children use all manner of materials in the area to create unique forms of play.

Meanwhile, the Health Ministry’s 2015 Global School-Based Student Health Survey found that 4.3 percent of boys and 5.9 percent of girls among 10,837 junior and senior high school students aged 12-18 wanted to commit suicide.

Pulih Foundation psychologist Ika Putri Dewi said that parents often neglected to talk about their children\'s feelings because talking about the children\'s scholastic achievements were more important than their feelings. When children had difficulty expressing their emotions, they tended to vent through aggressive behavior.

Miss, is there a method to die that is easy and not painful?

The same held true for self-harm. Children did it to divert their psychological pain. Children who wanted to kill themselves, said Ika, felt that they had no alternative in diverting their emotional pain.

"A client of mine asked during his [counseling session], \'Miss, is there a method to die that is easy and not painful?\' This person said that the conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic was extremely distressing. This person must stay at home in a toxic family [environment] of violence and cannot go anywhere," she said.