Offender or Parents Who Care about Future?

Violence and violence on children is the problem that might cause serious complications for the country in future. People, who became victims of violence in their childhood, are grown up into offenders or have inferiority complex. Readers might get surprised and blame me for exaggeration of the problem, but very often parents turn out to be violators of these children.

Ketevan Tavartkiladze, a psychologist for the “Children’s Aid Center”, which is the only organization to work on children’s violence in Georgia, answered the questions of Human Rights Center.

Journalist: Ms. Ketevan, in comparison to the past, how often do victims apply to you for help?

Ketevan Tavartkiladze: In comparison to past years, victims apply to us more and more often. However I cannot claim that the number of violence facts increased. I think the public awareness in the field has increased. People got know that similar facts should not be kept in secret, but they should find the ways of resolution and eradication of the problem with the help of other people who are specialists of the field. Besides that, in the past, there was an opinion in the society that a parent could beat, hurt his/her child, and never considered it was violence against a child. One more fact that was very characteristic in the past. Very often when teachers beat pupils, parents did not worry about that and considered that it was good for their children. In fact, it was ordinary violence. Consequently, a number of complexes were bred in a child.

-What do you think is the reason that causes children violence?

K.T: Unfortunately, there are a lot of factors that might cause violence in Georgia. These are economical problems, political instability, unemployment, law culture, aggression…

-I wonder how victims apply to you. As they are young children, they might be accompanied by adults.

K.T: Parents bring their children not because of violence, but for other problems. For example children have nervous breakdown, bad habits, etc. Survey showed that very often similar bad habits are caused by parents. These parents consciously or unconsciously harass their children’s rights.

Our organization carried out a survey in several schools and it showed that 61% of the children endure emotional violence in their families; 27% of them endure minor violence, 14%-average degree of violence, and 13% of them are seriously harassed.

-Have children applied to you when they complain about sexual violence?

K.T: Children rarely apply to us directly regarding the problem. Once there was an occasion that mother doubted her child was sexually harassed. Having questioned the child we supposed that the child might have really been sexually harassed. We offered them our involvement in order to resolve the problem but the parent took her child and left us. She did not want her husband to learn about the problem. This topic is tabooed in Georgia. 

-How well is the society informed about such organizations which will support victims of violence?

K.T: We carried out polls that showed that a very small part of society knows what is violence and that there are organizations which can assist them.

-What are the results of your work?

K.T: Children as a rule are very obedient. If you show them that you can help them, they trust you. Child’s psychic has one very important feature: it can very easily be collapsed and it is very bad. But it is easy to rebuild it too. We really have some results. Somehow, we very often encounter problems when a parent, whom you explain that s/he should not beat a child, should not use foul language in child’s presence, will take his/her child and leave us. If we visit them at home, parents have right not to let us in. Governmental bodies are freer in this situation. Under the law they can demand the parents to explain the situation. However, there are some occasions, when we visit homes and explore the situation there. Very often it has good results. Once a child called us on the phone and said that facts of physical violence occurred in their family. The child was afraid that parents would learn about the call and we met him at school. Through some efforts we met mother and finally we had good results.

-Are Children’s Houses controlled? 
K.T: Initially we worked in that direction. If we hear that a child from children’s house needs our assistance, we take a child to us and work with him/her in private.

 -In the case of family violence, I think it will not be enough to assist a child to resolve the problem…

K.T: Generally, we work with parents and children together because you cannot improve a child’s psychological conditions if parent goes on with harassment on the child. During our work with a patient, we are carrying out monitoring. We observe the further relationship between parent and a child. You might have heard any parent say “I cannot make the child obey me if I do not beat him/her.” Such people cannot realize the output of similar behavior. If you make the child obey you after having beaten him, if you hurt him and thus won the struggle, it does not mean that you have improved the future development of your child. Just the opposite, at that time, the rate of child’s brain development gets more restricted.

-What kind of people will be children who have endured violence?

K.T: There are direct and mixed results of the violence. Direct results have symptomatic character but as for the mixed results, it takes active part in establishment of a person. At this time physical and psychic defects emerge as well as various complexes. There are occasions when a person who was harassed in his childhood, have become criminals. World survey showed that 70% of criminals had been victims of violence in their early years. Such children, as a rule, have serious physical and psychological disabilities. They have inferiority complex, which later results into a desire to harass somebody. Thus, I consider that a victim of violence, particularly a child, should be psychologically assisted in order to assist them to integrate into society properly.  The main thing I want to point out is that every person-parent, teacher or a journalist-should aim at improving the life-conditions for a child. It is our responsibility to reduce the number of children’s violence to the minimum to have a generation with healthy psychic.

Nino Tarkhnishvili