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Children as victims of crime
Children are a vulnerable group and the media regularly reports on social contact crimes against children. From the statistics of the last 10 years, the Crime Research and Statistics component of Crime Intelligence has determined that the majority of perpetrators of social contact crimes know their victims and are their family members, friends, acquaintances or colleagues. Social contact crimes are also frequently committed in conjunction with alcohol abuse and to a lesser extent drug abuse. In a recent study by the Medical Research Council (MRC) it was found that girls are more likely to be murdered at home by their mothers, while boys are more often killed in public places by another person known to them. Girls are often strangled and boys are stabbed or shot to death. The number of social contact or violent crimes committed against adult women and children of both sexes under the age of 18 are presented in Table 2.1.
The SAPS annual reports of 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 reported crime statistics for the categories of attempted murder, all sexual offences and murder compared to all crime against children below the age of 18 years. Between 2008 and 2010 42.3% of the crimes were for attempted murder, 36.1% for sexual offences and 14.5% for murder (See Tables 2.1 and 2.2). In 2010/2011 the situation improved as a decrease in all categories was noted, except for sexual offences which increased by 2.5%. The SAPS annual report for 2012/2013 shows a slight decrease of 0.4% since last year.
Crime statistics are often difficult to interpret as the format of the report may change from year to year. For example, the SAPS annual reports of 2011/2012 and 2012/2013 did not include similar detail on crime per age category for children. Furthermore, the recent SAPS report for 2012/2013 states that the numbers for murder and kidnapping of children are classified together with adult numbers. Therefore the current situation regarding children is unknown. Administrative changes within the SAPS also complicate the interpretation of crime statistics. An example of how administrative changes affected the system can be seen since 2009, when an administrative change was implemented in the Crime Administration System (CAS) (December 2007 to April 2009). The SAPS use the CAS as the system to document crime and to generate crime statistics. During this time, sex and age characteristics of the victims of sexual offences were not recorded as it was not required fields within the system. This situation was corrected in April 2009. Since then, a significant increase (36.1%) in crimes of sexual nature between 2008/2009 to 2009/2010 has been recorded. However, an overall reduction of 12.3% in sexual offenses was reported for the last four years (2009/2010 – 2012/2013) in the 2012/2013 SAPS annual report.
The question has arisen as to which age groups were most affected. Figures 2.1 to 2.3 were generated from data in the SAPS annual report of 2008/2009. No similar statistics have been compiled after 2009. Figures 2.1 to 2.3 show that the majority of crimes were committed against children aged 15 to 17 years. An increase in all types of crime against children after the age of 11 preceded this trend (Tables 2.2 and 2.3). In the United States, most child abduction murders take place between the ages of 6 and 15 years (See Table 2.4). The MRC study determined that fatal child abuse, abandonment of babies and violence among teenage boys were the main causes for murder among children between the ages of 0 and 17 years. In terms of age specific murders, the MRC found that in the category of 0 – 4 years, girls were more often murdered than boys. After age 4, the murder rate among boys increased. At age 15, almost double the number of boys is murdered compared to girls of the same age.
Missing children
Although many dated off-hand references are found in the local press, official statistics on missing children in South Africa are difficult to find. The missing persons section of the SAPS was not able to assist with information and referred the researcher to the section of the SAPS annual report entitled “Kidnapping”. Unfortunately no distinction is made in the statistical data between kidnapping or murder of adults and children (SAPS annual reports: 2009/2010; 2010/2011; 2011/2012; 2012/2013).
Numbers of missing children quoted in popular and local press vary between 60 and 70 children per month (Pretoria News, 2006). According to a local newspaper in Northern Gauteng, the Pretoria News (2006), two children per day go missing in the Tshwane Metropole of which Pretoria forms part. This adds up to 60 children per month. The newspaper quoted SAPS statistics, of which the source document could not be found, as more than double this number, or 130 children per month. Reddy (2007) quoted another report from the SAPS Missing Persons Bureau which stated that every 6 hours, a child goes missing in South Africa. The reasons vary from children who run away from home to crime related disappearances such as child sex-trafficking gangs, fathers committing infanticide to avoid paying maintenance and muti murders.
Muti murder or medicine murder refers to murder of someone in order to remove certain body parts to be used as part of medicine. Using body parts of the elderly and especially children is said to be very strong and is rumored to help the user to become rich and powerful. William Mpembe, Deputy Provincial Commissioner of the SAPS, was quoted in the Sowetan Newspaper of 22 February 2010, stating that muti murders, particularly those involving young children, seem to be on the rise in the Tshwane areas including Soshanguve, Garankua and Rietgat.
The Media Club of South Africa (Kearney and Erasmus, 2010) reported that one in 10 children below the age of 18 were victims of assault. Joan van Niekerk, director of Childline, was quoted in the same article saying that 17% of offenders in the Childline offender programme (a rehabilitation project) are paedophiles and that 40% to 50% of rape cases involve children. These numbers may be higher as only one in 10 cases are usually reported to the SAPS.
Social contact crimes such as attempted murder (59%) and assault with grievous bodily harm (GBH) (89%) are high for all age groups (Keraney, 2010). These categories of crime are more likely to occur between people who know one another and are linked to social behaviour patterns, such as alcohol and other substance abuse as well as problems inherent to informal settlements in megatownships where a lack of jobs creates poverty and leads to crime (Kearney and Erasmus, 2010).
Child fatalities are often the tragic consequence of abuse and / or kidnapping. As many as 89% children are killed within 24 hours after abduction (McKenna, 2006). In the US a specific category was created in FBI reports termed as “murder abduction”. Children below 12 years of age are considered to be particularly vulnerable, as they often know the perpetrator as an uncle, cousin of family friend and hesitate to report the crime (McKenna, 2006). However, McKenna (2006) reported that the killers’ reasons for abduction are mostly opportunistic (40%) with only 14% of killers having a prior relationship with the child. He did not specify or provide statistics on how many perpetrators were family members or caregivers.
After the child is killed, the perpetrator often disposes of the body in rural areas (53%) and then conceals the remains in 55.6% – 73% of cases (McKenna, 2006; Häkkänen et al., 2007). When the remains are recovered an investigation is launched in order to determine the identity of the victim. In both child and adult cases, where decomposition and mutilation resulted in unidentifiable remains without other evidence, craniofacial approximation/reconstruction may be used in the initial process to achieve identification of skeletal remains.
In Pretoria, the Medico-Legal Laboratory processes almost 3000 unnatural deaths per year of which 10% of the individuals are unidentified. This amounts to 300 bodies which is a serious problem for the legal system (Evert, 2012).
1. Introduction
1.1. Background
1.2. Aims
2. Literature review
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Human diversity and variation
2.3. The diversity of South Africans
2.4. Crime in South Africa
2.5. Facial approximation/reconstruction
2.6. Tissue thickness
2.7. Cephalometric facial standards and facial growth
2.8. Geometric morphometrics
2.9. South African studies on growth and BMI
3. Materials and Methods
3.1. Materials
3.2. Methodology
3.3. Statistical analysis
4. Results of tissue thickness
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Tissue thickness sample composition
4.3. Intra- and inter-observer repeatability
4.4. Approach to tissue thickness data
5. Results of craniofacial growth and shape
5.1. Introduction
5.2. Sample composition
5.3. Intra- and inter-observer repeatability
5.4. Craniofacial indices
5.5. Summary of results from craniofacial indices
5.6. BMI & SES
5.7. Geometric morphometrics
5.8. Summary of results from geometric morphometrics
6. Discussion
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Tissue thickness standards for South African children
6.3. Facial growth
6.4. BMI of South African children
6.5. Limitations of the study
6.6. Future research
7. Conclusions
References
