"Witnesses Must not Remain Silent"

According to a research carried out by the "Purple Roof" ('Mor Çatı') Women's Shelter Foundation, one out of four children is exposed to sexual abuse, and most of those sexual assaults happen at home.

"Sexual abuse and assault of children is a very widespread form of crime and the offenders are usually men known and trusted by the children. Seeing these crimes as committed by 'perverts and monsters' means to shirk responsibility", Purple Roof said in an announcement. The organization pointed out that crimes of child abuse and sexual assault of children are on the rise on a global scale:

"This is also confirmed by releases of the Psychiatry Association of Turkey and the Forensic Medicine Expert Association. A study conducted with a total of 16,000 children in Turkey revealed that 33 percent of them have been exposed to violence, neglect, sexual assault and other kinds of abuse".

The Purple Roof organization once more reminded the responsibility rendered by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Turkey is a part of:

"States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child".

"There are always witnesses of the crime"

Further points of the announcement of the Purple Roof Women's Shelter Organization can be summarized as follows:

- Attempts to hide this sort of incidents impede the society from coming up against the crime of sexual abuse of children.

- Unfortunately, in a society where men have to prove their sexuality, where they love 'violently' and want to establish physical control over women and children, violence against children is often deemed natural. It is often condoned that they use them as pornographic material, if they are matched up for marriage underage it is not even newsworthy.

- There are always witnesses of this kind of crime. Those witnesses must not remain silent, it is very important to talk about these things in order to make them emerge to the surface. We place great importance on monitoring trials related to child rape in order to draw attention to the widespread sexual abuse and to mobilize silent witnesses.

- The responsibility lies with the people who are part of decision mechanisms, with the state, the ministries and legal implementations. We will monitor this process like other women's organizations do as well. (BB/VK)