Thousands of convicted child murderers and rapists not recorded on Child Protection Register

Issued by Mike Waters MP – DA Member of Parliament
05 Jun 2020 in News

A written reply to a Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary question revealed that since the establishment of the Child Protection Register (CPR) in 2010 only 1 660 names appear on Part B of the CPR, used to record people who are unsuitable to work with children to protect them from abuse.

The DA will write to the Minster of Social Development, Lindiwe Zulu, and the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Ronald Lamola, to ascertain why a mere 1 660 names appear on the CPR and what steps their Departments have taken with regards to the 2013 South African Human Rights Commissions (SAHRC) report that found massive failures in this regard.

We will also write to the SAHRC to request a follow up investigation into the matter to determine what steps each Department took to improve the capturing of names onto the CPR.

Organisations that work with children are supposed to vet each employee against the CPR to ensure that they are not a danger to children. Having so few names on the Register, means that thousands of child abusers and murderers are slipping through the cracks and are allowed to continue their campaigns of terror.

A previous parliamentary reply revealed a total of 50 980 child rapes reported between 2014 and 2017. 20.9 % of these cases ended in successful conviction. Why were these 10 653 names not added to the Register?

During the same period, 2 600 children were murdered of which 948 (36.46%) ended in a successful conviction. Again, these names are not reflected on the CPR.

That is 11 601 criminals given another opportunity to reoffend, not even counting scores of perpetrators of other crimes against children, such as child abuse, neglect, kidnappings, whose names also do not appear on the Register.

Section 120 (4) of the Children’s Act sates, “in criminal proceedings, subject to the provisions of subsection (4A) a person must be deemed unsuitable to work with children; (a) on conviction of murder, attempted murder, rape, indecent assault or any other sexual offence contemplated in the Criminal Law Amendment Act.

The SAHRC report, compiled after the DA requested an investigation, revealed that untrained Judges, Magistrates and court staff resulted in names not being sent to the Department of Social Development for capturing. The situation was aggravated by chronic staff shortages at the Department.

It seems very little has changed in 7 years.

If the Register is not meticulously updated one must question its effectiveness and reason for existence.

Children are the most vulnerable sector of our society. They depend on us to protect them. There is no point in passing laws to protect children if the entities entrusted with this essential task are derelict in their duty.

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