JOHANNESBURG - The criminal justice system is not designed to accommodate children according to Luke Lamprecht, head of advocacy at Women & Men against Child Abuse.
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He says children are unable to get help from police or courts without the assistance of an adult.
Lamprecht said, "the first thing to understand is about the criminal justice system, is that it is a system not designed for children at all."
"It is a system designed by adults, for adults, run by adults and if you, as a child ,want to access that system, you simply cannot access it without the assistance of an adult agent."
"So for example, if you are abused by the person who is meant to care or protect you, your parent and you go to a police station and you want to make a statement and open a case: they are not even going to listen to you."
"You [will] need to find another agent to assist you. An agent like a teacher or a coach or a priest, someone who has a relationship with you will then help you access that system."
"Those people are very resistant to get involved in the system because they fear coming to testifying and they fear the adversarial nature of the system."
"The fact that if you go to that system; people are innocent until proven guilty, you as the person, making the claim are assumed to be lying until it can be proven otherwise."
"As a result, you get cross- examined and that examination tends to be quite brutal because all the defense has to be prove is doubt and the state has to be prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt so it's an incredibly onerous system and not designed for children," he said.