Today more than ever the issue of child abuse is on the agenda: a society bereft of values and prospects for the future brings other orphans into the world, often abandoned at the mercy of a TV or internet without control and without sufficient protection . This is the context that puts more and more minors at risk of suffering violence, and increases the work of all the associations that have always been fighting to avoid child abuse.
Among these, the best known is Telefono Azzurro, engaged for years in monitoring, contrasting and fighting open to all forms of violence against minors.
The numbers are those of a real war: from the research carried out with the help of Doxa Kids, on a sample of 600 children aged 12 to 18 and 600 parents throughout Italy, it emerged that among the fundamental rights, the " The right to protection from violence and abuse" is considered by a third of people to be the second least guaranteed right. The children interviewed feel particularly exposed to the dangers of abuse and mistreatment. Young people feel the full weight of the socio-economic crisis context in which they live, and they risk carrying these signs with them into adulthood, becoming potential risks themselves.
The spread of the Internet has then changed the meaning of child abuse, sometimes worsening the phenomenon: the market for child pornography is growing exponentially both worldwide and in Italy. The Internet amplifies the scope of cyberbullying, promoting coverage and anonymity and making it difficult to identify the first signs of alarm. More than one in 10 children has been bullied by peers or older children.
The Menarini “Pact” – Telefono Azzurro
The need to multiply economic and organizational efforts to combat the phenomenon is evident: last May 11th a pact between 'giants' was born (more info here: https://l12.eu/menarini-704-au/BOVEG0DRIQZLWBM5681T) thanks to the collaboration with Menarini, a pharmaceutical group based in Florence among the top 20 in Europe and 1st Italian in the world. The target? The creation of a network of pediatric "sentinels", capable of detecting every possible signal of child abuse in the area and speeding up intervention and reaction times.
A 'human' network capable of receiving and transmitting information: an 'internet' of doctors which will count more than 15.000 nodes (including paediatricians and general practitioners): the Italian Society of Paediatrics, the Italian Federation of Pediatric Doctors are also involved in the effort and the Italian Pediatric Hospital Association. The creation of this health network against child abuse will take place in successive steps, starting from a gradual process of training and raising awareness of paediatricians, to provide them with all the tools capable of recognizing and intercepting the signs of possible abuse.
The key is knowing how to grasp in time even the unexpressed signs of discomfort and suffering: often a child does not have all the means to understand what is happening to him, and fear leads him to close himself off, not to understand, process, report the context in which is found. For this is so important to implement every little one change.
