“It is only when the media reports them that we come to know about them,” he said. “It is a bigger problem than we think, with many cases going unreported.”

A news report recently quoted a consulting doctor at the Obstetrics & Gynaecology Department as saying that at least three children were treated for sexual abuse every week at the Malacca General Hospital alone.

Nayagam said such cases rarely went to court due to the limitations faced by investigators.

“Investigations are limited by questions about the identity of the perpetrator in a typical case and the time when it was reported and also by the difficulty of proving that it had taken place,” he said. “This also goes for all other forms of abuse.

“Even when it does go to court, and even when penetration is involved, the perpetrator is still bailed out sometimes.”

Nayagam related his experience of helping a child who was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. He said the man was released on bail, but it was eventually proven that he was guilty and had practically raped the girl every day.

“The case took nine years to settle. The girl was nine years old when the rapes occurred and was 18 when the case was over.”

He said cases in Malaysia would take an average four years before being reported.

“Sexual abuse is always like that,” he said. “The children don’t know what to do and how to make a report. In most of the cases I’ve come across, it is only revealed when a student tells another student what has happened.

“The only way to deal with this is to immediately take the child to the hospital. Most hospitals and paediatricians will examine and stand by the child. Hospital evidence is about the best that we can rely on.”

He proposed the establishment of standard operating procedures in schools.

“A programme should be set up to let the children know when a crime has been committed. A child may not know this because the perpetrator could be someone close to her.

“We also have to let the children know that they will be protected after they report the incidents.”

He also suggested the setting up of a website through which children could report abuse without fear of being exposed. However, he noted that most of these cases happened in low-income neighbourhoods that would probably have no access to online facilities.

“These places require some sort of childcare centre so that the children can report to a counsellor without fear of being found out.”

Sharmila Sekaran, who chairs the child rights organisation Voice of the Children, said parents must be made more aware of the need to talk about sex abuse involving children.

“Parents and teachers are not talking about it enough,” she said. “Sex is a dirty word here. We tend not to talk about it. But we need to teach and guide children.”

Part of the problem, according to her, is that children were being exposed to social media.

“Parents must be more aware that some of these people that children come into contact with online have sexually predatory instincts,” she said.

Sharmila also advocated the speeding up of sex education programmes to keep up with the deluge of information from the Internet that children were exposed to.

“We are a bit late,” she said. “We need to move fast because children are learning through the Internet and social media. We need to direct children on how to think about sexual relations.

“Girls must learn to say ‘no’ to boyfriends who want sleep with them.”