Without fast-tracking justice delivery systems, no hope for child rape survivors
Amid all the hue and cry about the heinous rapes of minors and the politics around nailing perpetrators, one crucial aspect has gotten completely ignored — the child survivor’s brutalisation of adult life. A survey conducted by Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi has revealed that while the percentage of POCSO cases has gone up (34 per cent), which means more such cases are being reported for legal redress, the pendency is such that it would take each complainant about 13 years to get justice. All because the number of investigative agencies and courts are still the same. The situation is more than alarming considering that every fifth girl child (mostly between the ages of five and nine) has faced some form of sexual assault. The emotional vacuum of injustice and the ever-lengthening trauma of denial of rights will have disastrous effects on personality development. Consigned to being an outlier, the affected either become reclusive or engage in deviant behaviour themselves, extreme and maladjusted responses to equally extreme behaviour against them. With their fightback mechanism and anger repressed, most child survivors of heinous assault, according to the survey, have been seen to develop vices like substance and drug abuse, suicidal tendencies, indiscriminate sexual and sociopath behaviour. Most of them do not have access to counselling services too. In short, the rest of their lives easily hurtles towards self-destruction. Add to this the fact that in 96 per cent of the cases, the accused are known to the family of the survivors who are almost always negotiated and compromised and you know that there is nothing encouraging left for them to go on. The National Crime Record Bureau throws up more alarming data. Of the POCSO cases registered, conviction happens in only four per cent, acquittals are six per cent and pendency is 90 per cent! The situation is so gross in some States that assuming no case of sexual abuse takes place from now onwards, that is, it is completely stopped, it will still take 40 years to dispose of pending cases. The damaged survivors, then in their middling years, could not be expected to testify then or thrown into a situation of recalling something they would like to bury forever. Which is why there needs to be speedy trials through fast track courts, dedicated and exclusive courts or at least dedicated judges in the courts. The same judge cannot be expected to deal with the theft of a telephone and abduction and rape of a child. let’s not forget that with local police — the first point of redress — prone to corruption and coercion, there is no foolproof system for investigation of such crimes.
The most worrisome fact is that we cannot be complacent about this being an epidemic of the underbelly. Child sexual violence is equally rampant in rural and urban India, schools and public places near homes being the most vulnerable. Also, there has to be an awareness of POCSO among children that can be built into the school system. Know this, while the most violent crimes are reported and become headlines, continuing and prolonged abuse in the core circle of the child has a bigger negative impact of decimating the self-worth of our future generation.