Around 47,000 minors experience child abuse every year in Flanders and Brussels. To encourage young victims to seek help, the Child Abuse Trust Centres have launched a new awareness campaign featuring students from a secondary school in Schoten, Antwerp province.
The campaign, launched this week by Nupraatikerover.be, an anonymous chat service operated by the Child Abuse Trust Centres (Vertrouwenscentra Kindermishandeling), aims to remind children and teenagers that they do not need to be certain they are experiencing abuse before reaching out for help.
According to figures reported by Gazet van Antwerpen, the centres received 7,642 reports involving 11,367 children in 2025. Emotional abuse and neglect remained the most frequently reported forms of mistreatment, while reports of physical abuse increased by 10%.
However, the actual number of children affected is believed to be considerably higher. "The figures only show the tip of the iceberg. Most children who are not safe at home never tell anyone. Not because nothing is happening, but because they think what they are experiencing doesn't count," Karolien François, coordinator of Nupraatikerover.be, told Gazet van Antwerpen.
Encouraging children to break the silence
The campaign's central message is: children do not need to have a clear understanding of their situation or a fully formed account of their experiences before asking for help. "Young people don't need to come to us with a fully formed story. One sentence is enough. 'I don't know if this is serious enough' can be that first sentence," François explained.
The awareness video, produced by Antwerp-based communications agency Spindokter, features testimonies from Carolien Vekemans, 33, and Adjua, 26, who share their childhood experiences and explain what kind of support they needed at the time. The campaign also involves final-year students from Sint-Michielscollege in Schoten, who volunteered to appear in the video and act as ambassadors for the initiative.
A free educational package has been developed for schools, allowing teachers to use the two women's testimonies to initiate conversations about abuse in a safe environment and inform kids about available support services.
The campaign encourages young people who are experiencing abuse, or who are uncertain about their situation, to seek confidential support through Nupraatikerover.be, where they can discuss their concerns anonymously.
