Looking at the recent media reports on defilement, one can rightly deduce that the battle against this social upheaval is not about to be won.

In just seven months, a total of 621 children have been defiled in Teso region alone! Additionally, 88 other girls were reportedly defiled in Gulu District between June and July, 2008.

Some parents, guardians and caretakers have reportedly defiled their children, without taking into consideration the harm that their actions have on these vulnerable members of society. In some instances, some societal members have known of these injustices but have turned a deaf ear, classifying them as family matters.

Children who are defiled by their parents, guardians or other caretakers undergo severe social, emotional and physical difficulties more than those who are defiled by someone outside their families.

Such children experience strong feelings of betrayal, violation and shame. This results into disruption of their normal behaviour and they experience confusion in thought, potentially leading to attention difficulties.

Attention difficulties have long-term negative outcomes on children such as failure to make good reproductive health decisions, failure to become good parents, an acceptance of gender-based violence and its consequences as being normal, adult substance abuse, among others.

Post-traumatic problems and stress reactions are also associated with children who are defiled by parents, guardians and caretakers.

Post-traumatic problems produce changes in children's brains leading to executive functioning problems, again leading to attention and concentration difficulties.

Stress reactions are subserved by several inter-related biological systems including the sympathetic nervous system which mediates the fight-flight response and the parasympathetic nervous system which mediates the freeze or surrender response potentially leading to subjective complaints of poor concentration and measurable impairment of the memory.

Sometimes during the freeze/defeat period, such a child's vagus nerve-the parasympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system, becomes activated leading to a slowing down of the heart, a drop in the blood pressure and an increase in the potential for fainting.

Dissociation is also associated with such children hence affecting their conscious, memory, identity and perception of the environment.

Dissociation further leads to less connectivity in the corpus collosum, leading to problems in attention and information processing. The corpus collosum is a major interconnection between the two hemispheres of the brain which serves to facilitate cortical communication and integration of input.

These children also have a greater difficulty sustaining attention because they are often flooded with incompatible and disruptive information, (e.g. my father sexually abuses me, the person who sexually abuses me is my caretaker) which are likely to play a role in executive functioning deficits, including attention problems.

That is why, these children need rehabilitation as soon as abuse is identified. They should be helped to acknowledge and process traumatic aspects of the abuse in an effort to reduce the cyclic nature of traumatic reminders leading to unmanageable stress and dissociation. This should be timely.

They should also be given skills such as relaxation and breathing techniques as a means of coping with stress.

Those in more vulnerable situations should have their needs met until this disaster is completely mitigated.

These would in the long run help them return to complete normalcy.

Anselm Wandega, The writer is a Development Worker