November 10, 2017
The majority of Iranian children are abused at home by an immediate family member, according to a recent report by the Iranian Ministry of Cooperative, Labor and Social Welfare.
Dr. Roozbeh Kordoni, a senior administrator at the ministry, said: “We have witnessed an alarming increase in the number of children being emotionally, physically and sexuality abused at home.”
He added: “The city of Qazvin has one of the highest rates of child abuse in the country. There have been 16 child abuse cases for every 100,000 people in the Province of Qazvin last year. ” Dr. Kordoni noted that the provinces of Bushehr, Khorasan, Sistan and Baluchestan had “reported the lowest cases of child abuse in the country.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Ladan Mohammadzadeh, a psychology professor at Qazvin University, warned: “Child abuse is unfortunately prevalent in the country.” She added: “We’ve witnessed a record number of cases of neglect and emotional abuse of children in recent years.”
Dr. Mohammadzadeh argued: “Poverty, lack of education and unemployment are some of the contributing factors to rampant child abuse.” She added that disabled children were “more prone to abuse.”
A study by Dr. Mohammadzadeh involving 50 families showed that 56 percent of children have witnessed fights between their parents. She noted that 48 percent of parents she spoke to “said that they physically punished their children. They also said that their children would eat, dress and take their medicine only after being threatened with physical punishment.”
