More boys than girls face various forms of sexual abuse - ranging from inappropriate touch, exposure to pornography or violent sexual assault. 

       
"Sexual abuse has immediate as well as long-term effects on the child, from emotional and behavioral problems to abnormal sexual behavior and psychiatric disorders. Suicidal tendencies and drug abuse are common long-term effects." 

 

The 'Study on Child abuse India 2007' conducted by the Ministry of Women and Child Development acknowledges that child sex abuse takes place in schools - and how.  One out of two children in schools have faced sexual abuse.  And overall , more boys than girls face various forms of sexual abuse - ranging from inappropriate touch, exposure to pornography or violent sexual assault.  "The  abuser could be from the peer group or an older student," says Dr Loveleen Kacker, Joint secretary (Child Welfare) in the Women and Child Development Ministry, who prepared the government report.  "Senior students often bring pornographic material to school and may force a younger boy to look at it to titillate themselves.    During a study on child abuse in Kolkata, Elaan, an NGO, found that four out of 10 boys faced sexual harassment in school. Generally the age of maximum abuse is between 9 to 12 years.  The national study found that the abuse gained momentum at the age of 10 and peaked between 12 to 15.   Child abuse is the physical or psychological maltreatment of a child by an adult often synonymous with the term child maltreatment or the term child abuse and neglect. There are many forms of abuse and neglect and many governments have developed their own legal definition of what constitutes child maltreatment for the purposes of removing a child and/or prosecuting a criminal charge. The report by the Department of Women and Child Development on the implementation of the Convention of Child Rights in India, prepared for the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, has identified child sexual abuse as a priority issue for immediate action.

Sexual abuse of children is a very real problem in India, and the situation is aided by the absence of effective legislation and the silence that surrounds the offence. The definition of child abuse varies from country to country. Acts that result in physical, sexual or emotional abuse, or neglect of  children fall under the purview of law in almost all developed nations. In India, child abuse exists in many forms, but the laws are still ambiguous and most children suffer in silence. In India, which places a high premium on chastity of women and yet has the largest number of child sex workers in the world, there is no single, specific definition of child abuse. "Disbelief, denial and cover-up to preserve family reputation has made child sexual abuse an invisible crime in India. It seems there is an official denial of the existence of the problem. In fact, child abuse in India is as old as the joint family system and patriarchy. Though the problem is highly pervasive, there is pretence that it only inflicts the West. This also explains why there is no legislative framework in India to prevent such abuse and there has not been much data collection and research, says Dr Kaur.

"Disbelief, denial and cover-up to preserve family reputation has made child sexual abuse an invisible crime in India.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), one in every four girls and one in every seven boys in the world are sexually abused. But Lois J. Engelbrecht, a researcher working on the problems of child sexual abuse, quotes studies showing that over 50 per cent of children in India are sexually abused, a rate that is higher than in any other country. Mumbai-based journalist-writer Pinki Virani, for the first time openly came out with facts and figures on sexual child abuse in the year 2000 in her book Bitter Chocolate and broke silence to narrate her own experience of abuse by an extended family member. Her work has also been staged as plays by theatre personality Lushin Dubey. "Two institutions play a very important role in a Childs life when it comes to sexual abuse: there is protection and there is prosecution. Protection is the job of the parent. Prosecution is the job of the state," Virani said in her book.   A girl abused in her childhood by her own family member  kept the secret to herself out of fear and shame and it was much later that she recalled the frightful incidents to her boarding school friends. But she was in for a greater surprise: Most of her friends had been victims of some form of sexual abuse during their childhood and had kept it under the wraps, confiding only to their mothers during times of crisis. Sadly, the mothers did all they could to avert the danger but precious little to bring the incidents out in the open. Child, Sex, Tourism   India has become one of the hottest child sex tourism destination . A report, Trafficking in Women and Children in India, sponsored by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), highlights this, mentioning not just Goa, which since the 1990s has uncovered rackets by Freddy Peats and Helmut Brinkmann, but also Alleppy and Ernakulam districts of Kerala, where houseboat tourism has lately seen a boom. But the reports finding tell only part of story. " The attention paedophiles are paying to India is preposterous," says Rakesh Gupta, a child rights activists. "They are mentioning the Golden Triangle- Delhi, Agra aand Jaipur - in their anonymous blog posts."      In Kerala, "sex on the water" is the latest rage for paedophiles. Most paedophiles heading for Kerala start in Delhi, where police estimates the existence of 10 cartels specialising in child sex tourism. "With nearly a lakh homeless children in Capital, it's easy for paedophiles to come and expolit them" says Dr Rajat Mitra, who heads Swanchetan, an NGO specialising rape trauma.  In Mumbai, nearly 70,000 minors are abused yearly, estimates Kusumbar Choudhury of Save the Children India.  Child Abuse  Statistics There are 5,00,000 children in prostitution, in India. More than 3 children die a day in the USA. Of the total number of children who were killed in the USA, from 1976-1997, 54 percent were killed by a parent, 15 percent were killed by strangers or unknown persons. There are over 15 million children in bonded labour, in India today. Twice as many girls than boys engaged in child labour. 63% of girls in Delhi, have experienced child sexual abuse at the hands of a family member (Sakshi, 1997). In a study of a 1000 girls from 5 different states in India, (Rahi, 1997), 50% of the girls said that they had been abused when under 12 years of age, 35% had been abused between the ages of 12- 16 years of age. The average sex offender has 76 victims. (American data.) There are at least 18 million children living on the streets in India. In a number of joint studies conducted by UNICEF and the Ministry of Labour, 75% of the children reported treatment by staff as bad and 91.7% reported provisions of necessities as bad, Bangalore. In Mumbai 75.4 % reported bad treatment by staff and 53.2 reported that provisions were poor. One million children are trafficked into prostitution, in Asia every year.  Dr. Preethi Menon says: "Sexual abuse has immediate as well as long-term effects on the child, from emotional and behavioral problems to abnormal sexual behavior and psychiatric disorders. Suicidal tendencies and drug abuse are common long-term effects."   Hazy Laws   In India, there are no laws that cover child abuse in all its dimensions. Lawyer IB Singh, however, feels the problem is not with the laws but with the law enforcing agencies. "The process is long drawn and conviction rate negligible." he says. While law takes its course, the child suffers four times over - when the act is committed, while narrating the incident, during medical examination and then, in court.    With boys, only proven sodomy is punishable offence- but other than that, there is no clear definition of sexual abuse. The picture gets hazier when the act is committed by a child against a child. In that case, the Juvenile Justice Act comes into force, and law is not clear to whom the victim reports. Prevention:   Prevention can be focused  at three levels. At the primary level, the focus can be on removing the causes, strengthening the child's competence to recognize and react, increasing parental awareness, strengthening social vigilance, and bringing in effective and punitive penal policy. At the secondary level, the emphasis should be on early detection, quick intervention and provision of a supportive environment in schools and families. Tertiary intervention should involve coordination among the police, courts, counselors, doctors and social workers.    A national level study on child abuse is being conducted to assess the extent and magnitude of the problem in India. The study will gauge the different forms of abuse and examine the profile of the abused and exploited children and their relationship with the perpetrator, according to official sources here. The issue of child abuse, which has remained neglected so far, has been entrusted by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to Prayas, a non- government organisation (NGO) working on children's issues. Prayas, which is conducting the year-long study starting September 2005, will recommend measures and strategies for policy, legislations and programme development in this regard, the sources said. Based on the findings, the government will draw up interventions to address the problem. In view of the expertise and experience of Prayas in the field, the NGO, on behalf of the ministry, had organised on October 28-29 a workshop to train trainers or field officers who will undertake the nationwide study. The effort is being funded by Save the Children and UNICEF.

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