4.1.1. RECOMMENDATIONS Service providers should strengthen community awareness initiatives, in particular emphasizing the need for timely reporting in order to ensure that medical care to prevent HIV transmission and pregnancy is given. This would help in dealing with the issues of pregnancies as well as HIV transmission that sometimes result from delays in reporting by victims and their families. There is need for State support for children conceived as a result of rape as this would help mitigate the burden on child victims of sexual abuse and their families. At present this burden disproportionately and unjustly falls on the victim. Key stakeholders need to be targeted with appropriate information to ensure that there is uniform understanding of how rape impacts on different victims differently. Myths and stereotypes need to be addressed in these awareness raising initiatives to ensure that victims are not blamed either for the rape or for reporting late. There is urgent need to ensure that key stakeholders as identified in the Protocol, are made aware of their responsibilities under the Protocol in order to ensure that its provisions become a reality for children. From the case studies above, it is clear that this is not yet the case. Service providers including government departments such as social services and non-governmental organisations need to ensure that support is provided to the child victim and her family post trial to facilitate reintegration into family and community and to empower the child to deal with any possible negative fall out from the case, such as stigma and ridicule.      4.2. SOME ISSUES FOR NGOS TARGETING THE FAMILY AND COMMUNITY  In all the cases profiled in this booklet, the family unit was the first port of call for the victim. In some cases such as Patricia’s, there was no effective support as the family sought to use customary dispute resolution mechanisms that were not successful, resulting in the child failing to access timely support and assistance  It is also apparent that the family can be the site of sexual violence against children, as emerged in the case of Patricia-raped by her great uncle, Chipo-raped by her uncle; Diana-raped by the man she regarded as her father and Tinashe- sent into a forced marriage by her father. The cases further demonstrate the fact that most families will consider impact of reporting on family relations and this becomes a consideration when a decision whether or not to report rape and other sexual violence is made. The reality is that families can and do break up when a child is raped or some other sexual violence occurs and this is apparent from the cases profiled. Late reporting of cases compromises the quality of prosecution of the case as most evidence would have been lost when the matter is finally tried. An issue of concern is the stigma suffered by the victim and her family when sexual violence occurs, and especially where prosecution is for any reason, unsuccessful. This has a negative knock on effect in the community as it discourages reporting of sexual violence. Mistrust of the justice delivery system is exacerbated by the lack of understanding of legal processes including lack of knowledge of bail procedures and differentiation between the accused being acquitted and being released on bail. The interviewees who had gone through the system and who were unhappy with their interaction with the system all spoke to the fact that they did not feel that they had been given adequate information to enable them to understand what was going on and this left them feeling unhappy with the legal process.     27 31