Nearly 2,000 underaged mothers have been reported to police stations countrywide during this year (2023). A well- planned program to educate parents and teachers of Government schools on the importance of looking after young female children will be implemented next year at the outset of the school academic year at national level with the participation of resource persons of different ministries.
Nearly 3,000 education programs will be organised at national schools in collaboration with the school heads and School Development Societies for the school community,” Chairman of the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) Senior Lecturer Udayakumara Amarasinghe told the media recently.
“Not only female young girls but male youngsters are also being sexually abused countrywide and many such cases have been reported to the NCPA this year and last year,” he said.
He said it has become a serious social and legal problem to the Government that a considerable number of underaged females in rural and semi-urban areas have become mothers. According to the latest records of the Police Department, nearly 10 mothers of underaged girls have been detected during November alone this year.
The Police Department has facilities of having an international data system to trace errant persons who release sexual and pornographic photos of young girls to social media and Facebook via the internet.
Nearly 98,000 such incidents have been reported this year to police stations countrywide and 146,000 such cases were reported to the Police Department last year, Kurunegala Senior Divisional Secretary R.M.Jayaratne told the Sunday Observer.
He said that 38 senior male students of several leading schools who were drug-addicts have also been arrested by the police acting on tip-offs given by the parents over sexual harassment of female students at Government schools this year.
