By This post is also available in: ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ (GREEK) TÜRKÇE (TURKISH)
Every 20 hours. Just let your brain process that for a moment. Every 20 hours, a child in Cyprus falls victim to sexual abuse. The figures are gut-wrenching. In 2024 alone, 438 cases of child abuse were recorded—2,217 since 2017. And these are only the ones that get reported. Think about how many remain buried beneath the shame, the guilt, and the victims’ terror that speaking up will only make things worse.
And what do we do about it? Press releases, platitudes, hand-wringing, alarm bells, horror statistics, and an awareness campaign from the Commissioner for Children’s Rights on European Day for the Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (last Tuesday) complete with social media posts and hashtags! Don’t get me wrong—the Commissioner’s intentions are good and sincere when it comes to raising awareness (what else can she do with the pitiful resources at her disposal and her essentially decorative role?), but the problem lies precisely in the fact that we still need to raise awareness in the first place! That here we are in 2025, with a child being abused every 20 hours, and we’re being asked to push (!) for five basic demands concerning the protection of children from sexual abuse. Which are:
- Genuine and effective support for children who have experienced any form of sexual abuse, with specialist psychological and social help. Amendment of the legal framework so that a child victim can access mental health services without parental consent—especially in cases where the parent is the abuser.
- Strengthening children’s education through Life Skills lessons, and beyond, so they can recognise dangers and protect themselves in both physical and digital environments.
- Placement of a psychologist in every school for consistent support to children and early identification of risk (currently, one psychologist covers roughly 1,000-1,200 pupils and simply visits schools).
- Early recognition and management of incidents of inappropriate sexual behaviour towards children, as well as every form of verbal or emotional violation, through comprehensive prevention and protection policies in schools and services.
- Adoption of more effective mechanisms for detecting and immediately removing from the internet all material related to child abuse and ensuring systematic and close cooperation between the Police, Digital Platforms, and the Relevant Child Protection Services.
So we’re being asked to push for the obvious. To push for specialist psychological support for victims. To push so that a child being abused by their own parent can get help without the… consent of their abuser. To push for a psychologist in every school. To push for proper education so children can recognise danger. To push for immediate removal of material depicting child rape (not “child pornography” as if it were a film genre) from the internet. Is it really possible that we’re still asking for these things as if they were… revolutionary, groundbreaking ideas? Shouldn’t these issues have been sorted out decades ago?
But what do you expect from a society where the sexual abuse of children is considered taboo? Where many cases aren’t even reported out of fear or shame about what people will say? Where they sweep victims under the rug to avoid stigma, meanwhile leaving perpetrators to run rampant and the number of abused children to multiply? Where entire villages know but stay silent, and when some do speak up, the baton is passed to the notoriously callous Social Welfare Services?
And yet we’re still begging. This is how far we’ve fallen as a society. Sex education was supposedly introduced in schools through Life Skills. Supposedly. Because in practice, it’s not compulsory, not standardised, not monitored. Everyone teaches what they want, if they want it, according to their own beliefs. And right alongside, the familiar far-right cesspit and the conspiracy nutters are screaming that it’s “sexual corruption of children”, that “they’re teaching little ones to become homosexuals”, and other such bollocks. And sadly, plenty of parents believe them. The result? Children are left unprotected, don’t know what’s a “good touch” and what’s a “bad touch,” they don’t know they have the right to say no—even if the abuser is an uncle, father, teacher, or coach.
And whilst our society continues to bury its head in the sand, some MPs are proposing chemical castration (which hasn’t been proven effective) and life sentences for repeat rapists. Fine with the sentences, but when 90% of abusers are within the family or friendship circle, when most victims never speak out, what exactly are we achieving with life sentences? The illusion that we’re doing something? Because prevention, education, psychological support, and early intervention—they cost money, political capital, and above all, the bitter admission that our society is sick.
It’s shameful and pathetic that we need campaigns (!) to shout that children aren’t anyone’s property. And instead of having built a protective wall around them decades ago, we’re still asking citizens to… push.
If this isn’t state and societal failure, then what is?
This article was first published on 21.11.2025
Source: OUR GREATEST FAILURE
