A 23-year-old man convicted of sexually abusing his 8-year-old sister during the Wuhan virus lockdown claims the charges were brought due to the colour of his skin.
The Liège Correctional Court sentenced the man to just six years in prison after finding him guilty of sexually abusing his younger sister from the period between April and May of last year during Belgium’s lockdown.
The 23-year-old had returned to live with his mother during the lockdown and at the same time the 8-year-old victim developed symptoms of a sexually transmitted disease, Sudinfo reports.
A doctor reported the incident to the police after discovering that the young girl had also suffered injuries of a sexual nature and tests were initiated on all of the family members to determine who else had the sexually transmitted disease.
The 23-year-old was found to have the disease and was taken into custody. He claimed he felt no symptoms but a second test produced the same result.
In several countries, reports of child abuse have surged during lockdowns. In the United Kingdom, the Internet Watch Foundation reported a nearly 50 per cent rise in reports of child abuse images in just eleven weeks in 2020.
The National Sexual Assault Hotline in the United States also reported a 22 per cent increase in calls from minors reporting abuse, with 67 per cent stating that the abuse came from a family member in March of 2020.
Camille Cooper, vice president of public policy for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), told broadcaster NPR: “So a lot of the kids that were coming to the hotline were feeling pretty vulnerable and traumatized. And it was a direct result of COVID-19 because they were quarantined with their abuser. The abuser was now abusing them on a daily basis.”
Sweden, despite having much more lax coronavirus restrictions than many other countries, also saw a surge of child rapes in 2020, with rape of underage victims driving the overall increase in rapes last year.