consent to 16 years; it has legislated a much wider range of sexual offences against children such as sexual penetration of a child, sexual touching of a child, sexual activity in child’s presence, causing a child to watch sexual activity, offences relating to producing, distributing, processing, accessing and using child pornography etc. The Act further does away with previously spurious defences allowed by the old colonial laws and substantially increases the penalties and sanctions in the case of successful prosecutions. The act responds to particular risks faced by girls in Sierra Leone and expressly outlaws abuse of girls by teachers and as well as traditional and religious leaders. The Act, in a similar vein to the Child Rights Act, further prohibits the referral of cases of sexual abuse of children to traditional dispute resolution fora such as traditional leaders where, in terms of customary laws, allegations of child abuse could be resolved through the payment of a fine to the victim’s family by the accused. 215. Commentators have observed that the Sexual Offences Act, 2012, which currently also criminalizes consensual sex between adolescents under 16, ought to be amended as it is resulting in the arrest of children engaging in normal consensual sexual activity with each other. 216. The MSWGCAs bears the lead responsibility for child protection, together with the support of a host of other ministries (including Health and Sanitation and the Sierra Leone police), traditional and religious leaders and structures, NGOs, CBOs and other members of civil society and informal community structures. The Ministry was restructured to better develop and implement the child protection system legislated in terms of the Child Rights Act. It is made up of five principle directorates – Policy Development and Strategic Planning; Human Resource / Administration of Finance; Social Welfare; Gender; and Children’s Affairs. Within each directorate there are a number of specialised divisions for specific tasks or vulnerable groups. The Children’s Affairs Directorate comprises the Child Protection, Child Justice and Alternative Care Divisions; whilst the Social Welfare Directorate comprises the Trafficking in Persons, Disability/Elderly Persons and Disaster Relief Divisions. Each of these Divisions are manned or to be manned by a Principal Social Services Officers (PSSO) with years of experience in the Line Ministry or related fields of child protection and welfare. The PSSOs supervise and direct the affairs of both Senior Social Services Officers (SSSOs) and ordinary Social Services Officers (SSOs) who are employed as field officials at a local level within the Line Ministry. 217. Whilst the Ministry is responsible for policy development, oversight, monitoring, setting of minimum standards and development of a human resource strategy for child protection, including training, responsibility for implementation is devolved down to local governments. Each Local Council is responsible for protecting the welfare and promoting the rights of children in their areas and has a small team of Social Development Workers led by a Social Development Officer. They are in turn supported by a number of traditional / community structures recognized and afforded set child protection roles by the Child Rights Act. These include village and chiefdom level Child Welfare Committees (CWCs) as well as Child Panels which are made up of social development workers, traditional leaders and community members and children. There are approximately 260 functioning CWCs across the country (Child Frontiers Limited, 2010). 6. Family Environment and Alternative Care  59