Schertsos on the Action Plan against child sexual abuse: We will be merciless to abusers

We have a responsibility as a state and as a society to stand up to a crime so heavy and at the same time so unacknowledged that it manages to nest and reproduce in the basements of the human soul, the Minister of State said on Wednesday Akis Schertsos opening the debate on the National Action Plan against child sexual abuse and exploitation.

“The evidence is relentless. They tell us that 9 out of 10 incidents of sexual abuse of minors, the perpetrators are relatives and friendly persons”, said the Minister of State, and emphasized that the crime, in most cases, remains, for this reason, hermetically locked, behind closed doors and behind closed mouths.

“What to say to a child who received, but never found the courage to report, such an attack in the most tender and vulnerable phase of his life”, said Mr. Skertsos, and underlined that there will be absolute strictness against the abusers and absolute sensitivity towards the victims.

The message, said the minister, is “so far, for the bureaucratic and regulatory obstacles, for the inactions of the administration that prevent the victims, from trusting the state and the institutions, to speak. To know that if they break the thread of silence, if they come out of the circle of concealment and denounce those who abused the sacred bonds of trust and dependence that children inevitably develop towards adults, they will have by their side, a dense net of state protection, sensitivity, empowerment but also reintegration into society. But so far for deeply unconscious and corroded abusers. Let them know that the time when mouths were kept shut and the state treated with criminal indifference, this crime is over. Their persecution is and will be relentless, and the penalties they will face will be the strictest possible. The stigma of their heinous act will accompany them forever,” said the Minister of State who briefed the committee members on the key actions of the national action plan, such as the special criminal register for offenses against minors, the Uniform National Management Protocol Krousmata, the register for abusers.

“Our children must grow up in a better Greece than the one we received. We must immediately intensify our efforts to deal with a major social problem, which for the vast majority of citizens is the most heinous of crimes, the sexual abuse and exploitation of minors,” stressed Mr. Skertsos.

RES-EMP

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