Page 14 - NAMAH-Apr-2019

Namah Vol. 27, Issue 1, 24th April 2019

Child sexual abuse It is heartening to see how organisations
and individuals are responding. More than
This article is not about the earliest devel- ten lakh children are reported to be sexually
opmental stage, but the next. Here children abused in India every year. Note the word
are conscious, and have a sense of self. reported. When asked, 53% of children said
When they are abused they understand they faced some form of sexual abuse. Three
it. Child sexual abuse (CSA) is the worst important discoveries were made as part of
kind of abuse. It leaves permanent scars in the Satyameva Jayate research.
the victim’s psyche. Most of the abusers are
known to the children, which is how they are 1. Young boys are as vulnerable as young
enticed in the first place. Sometimes these are girls.
the very people who are supposed to be their 2. All the abusers are men.
protectors. Children who have been abused 3. These men are from all backgrounds —
grow up to have difficulties in relationships rich, poor, educated, illiterate, urban, rural,
— with partners and parents. They find it from any religion, any caste. And this is true
hard to love their own bodies. They have all over the world, developing country or
uncontrolled outbursts of rage, which is the First World. Why men alone? The answer
past wound erupting like a volcano. Our is testosterone, the male sex hormone,
society does not have a safe place for them a natural steroid, the muscle-building
to address their issues. Because sex is taboo. agent. Psychologically, it is responsible for
Visiting a psychotherapist is taboo. Pointing aggression, ego issues, sexual craving. The
a finger at a family elder is taboo. It is easy to male body starts producing it earlier than
beguile a child, because they trust an uncle, the female body, and keeps on producing
or cousin, or teacher, or guardian. When it till the end of life. The female hormones
they complain, after the damage is done, the are the very opposite; they increase love
family hushes them up. It is social stigma and empathy. After the child-bearing
to be branded a pervert, and everybody in years, they are produced less and less.
the family will suffer the branding. Even the Both men and women produce male
women in the family hush it up, because the and female hormones, but only in very
perpetrator is the bread-earner. What if they different quantities.
abandon them? As a result, the child represses
the suffering and lives warped all her life. Now that we know the gravity of the situation,
This means a wicked man is saved and an what are we doing about it? After horrific cases
innocent child is imprisoned for life. surfaced among the public in India, activists
and their supporters marched and clamoured
Aamir Khan ran an episode on child sexual for months. The public outcry was answered in
abuse in his TV programme, Satyameva Jayate, in 2012 with a new law — POCSO, Protection of
May 2012, which is available online for everyone Children from Sexual Offences. It was revised
to watch. Interesting discussions followed in 2018 to be a little more stringent, because
and are still going on in their web page . it did not bring down the crime rate as much
1
1 See http://www.satyamevjayate.in/child-sexual-abuse/csa-articles.aspx

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