In a first for South Africa, a Durban based specialist child abuse investigation business headed by a former Child Protection Unit Police Officer is using technology to combat child abuse and to bring the perpetrators of such crimes to book. Former Child Protection Unit Officer and director of The Guardian Group child abuse investigation company, Marc Hardwick (44), this week launched the groundbreaking application (app) to fight child abuse.
The app, called The Guardian Schools, which is a world first, is specifically designed for use in schools and will give children a safe, instant and anonymous tool to report bullying, sexual assault, physical abuse or any of the many challenges facing children today.
Schools who sign up for the app will pay a monthly fee of approximately R500, and all learners at that school who have downloaded the free app from either the Play Store or Apple App Store can report on issues they or their friends may be experiencing. The system is setup to ensure that only predefined staff at the school can access these reports and the investigation is managed by a senior staff member using the reporting system technology.
“Member schools appoint a staff ‘ambassador’ for the app. A team of staff members called investigators then supports the ambassador. When a report is submitted, it will arrive as an email to the predefined staff members informing them to login into the system to access the details of the report and take the necessary action to safeguard the child. The staff member has the ability to request further information from the reporter but will never know their identity. This is extremely important to us, as the power of this app is ensuring the anonymity of the reporter.” Hardwick said.
If the investigation done by the school dictates that an internal investigation is insufficient and forensic investigation is needed, like in a rape or sexual assault case, then the school can choose to either use investigators from The Guardian or the police to investigate further.
Hardwick said, an additional feature built into the app, is the ability for the school to use the app to send push notifications to learners, in other words a blanket message about a sports fixture or an event at the school. “We encourage schools to send out messages on the app at least every two weeks, as this then means that learners will have to have the app on their phone. This is important because in a case of bullying for example, if the bully checked the reporters phone and found that the anonymous reporting app was on the phone, the bully would know who had made the report, however if every learner has the app to receive the push notifications this further protects the anonymity of the reporter.”
With the help of locally and internationally based developers, a very basic version of the app was ready for testing in September last year. “I sent emails about the app to 33 000 schools and after I was interviewed on television my phone never stopped ringing. We had hundreds of schools interested in implementing it into their school, and even interest from role players in schools overseas. That’s when I realised there was a real demand and that it was going to grow faster than I thought. I then engaged with some successful businessmen and got the necessary financial backing needed to create and develop structures that would allow the development to be sustainable for the high local demand.
“We believe that this application will not only help children to report abuse and get the help and support they need timeously, but will make sure the perpetrators are brought to book. We see it as a proactive tool in the fight against these kinds of crimes which often go unreported as children are too afraid to speak up.” said one of the businessmen who have assisted Hardwick in achieving this goal.
In 2016, The University of Cape Town conducted a study on child sexual abuse which revealed that in excess of ¾ of a million children will have been abused by the age of 17.
The study went onto find that this equates to about 1 in every 3 children would be sexually abused. This statistic is way below the conviction rate and therefore some serious questions must be asked of the system we are currently using. Childline SA estimates that only 1 in 10 cases are reported and internationally only 1 in 7 cases are successfully prosecuted. The app goes directly to addressing that by placing in the hands of the investigator information that they potentially would never know and secondly potentially assist in reducing the time it will take to receive that information.
The Guardian Schools app:
