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The young look up to the elders for protection and guidance. At home, parents are supposed to provide this protection and guidance and at school this responsibility is taken over by teachers who are supposed to be in loco parentis. It is therefore very disturbing when elders who are supposed to provide protection as parents, guardians or teachers turn out to be the monsters threatening the lives of children. The increasing number of children and in some cases infants being raped by elders is really a cause for concern.

What is painful is that infants, some just a few months old, are ravaged by these beasts who do not deserve to be referred to as human beings. Some of the culprits are biological fathers of the victims. The police have over the years conducted campaigns aimed at raising awareness on the dangers of leaving children especially girls under the custody of  male strangers as doing so puts them at risk of being sexually abused.

What has compounded the problem now is that even close relatives including fathers of these children are abusing them. There are increasing cases of fathers who have turned rapists of their own children and in such cases how are mothers supposed to protect their children? There are also cases of domestic workers sexually abusing their employers’ children and this includes female employees thereby making it difficult for parents to put in place measures to protect their children.

What  is clear is that the Zimbabwean society is witnessing a serious moral decay which needs to be  addressed urgently. There is a need for society to do some soul searching to find out what has gone wrong. How does an infant arouse an adult’s sexual desire? What is worrying is  that despite the numerous awareness campaigns by the police, government departments and non- governmental organisations, cases of child molestation are on the increase.

Many school pupils now know what constitutes abuse but the problem is that the abusers are violent and hence pupils continue to fall victim. The campaigns being conducted by the police at schools have resulted in a number of arrests and in some cases culprits have been found to be teachers who, as already stated, are supposed to be in loco parentis.

Some of the rapists, in our view, deserve the death penalty especially those that are HIV positive. There are increasing cases of rapists claiming that they have been advised by traditional healers that having sex with a virgin cures HIV hence many of them resort to raping young girls. The challenge to Zimbabwean society is to find the root cause of this moral decay that is threatening the lives of innocent children.

Educating children on how to identify what constitutes abuse is not enough as long as the children remain vulnerable to their abusers. It was unheard of in the past for an adult to rape an infant and worse still for a father to rape his own daughter. What is it that has made it the norm for infants to be raped and fathers to rape their own daughters? These are the questions that society should find answers to.

The Government, the Church, traditional leaders such as village heads and chiefs, the political leadership and other opinion leaders in our communities should bring heads together in their search for solutions. Society should not allow the lives of children to be ruined by rapists and other sexual abusers.

There have been suggestions in the past that rapists should be castrated but some have dismissed this as too extreme but what has to be appreciated is that raping a child or even an adult is as good as sentencing one to death. It is a fact that rape victims are traumatised for life so it is only fair that those that cause others to be traumatised for life should also be made to suffer for life. We want to once again implore stakeholders to work together in trying to find a solution to this problem of child sexual abuse that is threatening the lives of our future leaders.