To start with, hear the ordeal of an eight-year-old girl from Chandigarh. Meenu (name changed), constantly nagged her grandparents about the visit of her uncle to their residence. Failing to respond to her constant pestering, the grandparents only reacted, last year in November when the minor was rushed to a private hospital profusely bleeding after being raped by her uncle.
Meenu is the only child of her working Non-Resident Indian parents. They left her in India, with her grandparents, for her education and wanted her to inculcate good moral values and etiquettes that are associated with Indian culture and education, a decision that will be regretted for lifetime.
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is underreported in the region says Dr Preeti Arun, Psychiatrist at the Government Medical College and Hospital, Chandigarh. “Most of the cases that I receive are referral cases from the department of gynaecology or paediatrics, as parents want to hush up the matter and never address the problem faced by the abused child,” she added.
Only serious cases of abuse are reported and by that time either the child has been raped or is scared forever with the trauma attached to the incident of sexual abuse. A simple comparison puts things in place. According to experts of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh around three to four patients seek medical help every week who have faced sexual abuse of one sort or the other.
However, according to the data available with the city police, only 113 cases have been registered under the protection of children from sexual offence act in the region, since its enforcement in the year 2102, till date. Out of these 113 cases, 48 were registered by the UT police. If simple calculations are made, it becomes clear that most of the cases of child sexual abuse are not reported.
In Meenu’s case too, the grandparents failed to understand the situation. For three months, her uncle took advantage of her situation and molested her. The little girl was confused and was unable to understand the nature of the affection. She hated it, when he made her touch his private parts and stripped her naked on the pretext of bathing her.
The child didn’t like the behavior of her uncle and sulked at the idea of him, paying her a visit. Many a times she complained to her grandmother about the incidents, only to fall on deaf ears. It was only when she was brutally raped one night that the incident came to light. “Most of the children suffer in silence. It is not a new phenomenon but as a society we have failed to address the issue. Most victims of CSA get confused and fail to analyse the situation. Worst happens when an individual, holds self responsible for the incident and suffers in silence,” said Dr Preeti.
The Ministry of Women and Child Development, PRAYAS and UNICEF carried out an extensive survey in 2007, spanning 13 States to report child sexual abuse. However, both Punjab and Haryana were not included in the survey, keeping these States in shadow area. Meanwhile, few surveys carried out at the local level indicate that cases of CSA are rampant in the region. In a survey that took place with the help of the Education Department and the Haryana Women Commission, in November 2013, it was revealed that 1000 females, in the age group of 5-12 years, had faced sexual abuse of one sort or the other in Rewari District of Haryana alone out of those who were surveyed.
A group comprising 60 teachers was assigned to conduct the survey. These teachers interviewed student from 443 primary schools and 90 middle schools in the district to establish cases of CSA. During the survey it was found that children as young as five years old are subjected to sexual abuse by family members, school seniors, neighbours and teachers. Types of abuse ranged from kissing, fondling, stripping and touching sexual organs on the pretext of examining. It must be kept in mind that the survey was carried out only when one or two, school going girls were allegedly raped, until then everything was veiled. One of the members who was part of the survey, on condition of anonymity said, “When abuse was explained to the children, many girls complained that it was a regular phenomenon with them.”
The most shocking revelation that came to light during this survey was that males in the age group of 60 to 70 were the most active predators. The Haryana Women Commission, after getting such startling fact from the survey, decided to carry out similar surveys in other district but this reporter failed to get hold of any such data, when the concerned department was contacted.
“We know it is there, we even know that it is bad but no one wants to acknowledge it,” said Dr BS Chavan, Head of Department of Psychiatry of GMCH-32. “Without a proper datapool it is very hard to say if the trend is increasing or decreasing and as experts, it becomes very hard on our behalf to analyse the current scenario.”
One might associate sexual abuse with a girl child in this region, because of the dominant patriarchal set up here. But a deeper look into the problem proves that even the boys in the age group of 5 to 12 are not safe.
Ankur, (name changed) was taken to a city-based psychiatrist when his parents found some anomalies in his normal behaviour. Suddenly his grades in school started dwindling and most of the time, this 14-year-old was engrossed in the virtual world of multiplayer online role-playing games on the Internet. In his words, “killing monsters and bad people,” was what he enjoyed most. A thorough counselling revealed that when this teenager was eight years old, his cousin came to Chandigarh to study in Punjab Engineering College. The 19-year-old cousin used to share the room with Ankur.
At first, the cousin showed Ankur some obscene videos on the laptop. Once they were partners in crime, things started changing. Every night for two years, before the cousin moved out to stay in a hostel, was nightmare for the eight-year-old. He can still recall the excruciating pain, which has left him with a chronic back pain. He could never reveal his traumatic experience to his mother as he thought she could not understand it. During the course of his plight, everyday Ankur waited anxiously for his father to return from office; so that he could confess about the guilt he was carrying around.
“Papa never listened and my cousin used to monitor me all the time. Everyday I thought of complaining, the nights were more violent and finally I decided to stay silent,” said the victim. “Good parenting is one aspect that Indian parents will have to learn. Parents should be more patient, especially in a nuclear family setup and listen more to their children and treat them as friends. They should teach their children between good touch and bad touch, something a child is able to perceive by the age of 3-4 years,” said Dr Priti Arun. Trauma attached to sexual abuse leaves a child scarred for life. To grow as a healthy society, it is necessary for us to understand the problems faced by children, especially related to sexual abuse as it can have adverse effect on the psyche of an individual.
Dr Adarsh Kohli of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research said, “CSA is a common phenomenon but in most cases it could be prevented if parents get more involved with their wards. The trauma attached to sexual abuse haunts the child long after the incident. In most of the cases that I have handled, the victim wanted to forget the incident. There are times when we fail to provide psychological respite to a victim, after putting in all our efforts and trying various therapies, but the victim demands a medicine which could probably erase that memory from their mind. Sadly, reversal is not an option and hence, as responsible adults one should try and prevent incidents of CSA.”
It is a common observation that a person who indulges in the dastardly act of abusing a child targets someone who can be easily silenced or intimidated, says Dr BS Chavan. “During the course of my practice, few years back I came across 5-6 disabled children being subjected to sexual abuse,” said Dr Chavan, adding, “It took us quite sometime to establish the cases, as they were never reported to us, but we had to diagnose and bring it out. Silence is the biggest evil, which helps abusers. Most of the time people refrain from reporting a matter because the abuser is someone from within the family.”
A recent study, done by the UT police, shows that in most of the reported cases of rapes, especially in the cases of minors, the accused is a person from within the family or someone who lives in close vicinity and is known to the victim. It is here where the danger lies and the abused kids become prisoners of silence.