Child Abuse in India
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Little Twinkle Schools | Child Abuse in India
Michael | Sony | Story From a Survivor
Prema’s mother died when she was three. Prema’s father remarried when she was four. Prema had stepsiblings, a brother and sister; by the time she was six. Prema had no problems with her stepmother and vice versa and even missed her when she went to the village with her children.
Prema is seven. Her stepmother has just left for the village with her children. Prema’s father, an inspector of police, and Prema, are expected to join her for the summer holidays a few days later.
‘Here’, says Prema’s father,’ let me give you a bath today.’
Prema protests, no, no, she can bathe herself; she has been bathing herself all along, as also bathing her stepbrother and sister.
‘I know, I know, but today I feel like giving you a bath. Cannot a father do this?’
Prema’s father makes her undress, he spends a lot of time soaping her beginning-to-bud breast area. He parts her legs and spends time soaping her behind, parting her constantly.
Prema’s father bathes her every single day for those five days, sometimes thrice a day. He keeps her locked in the house as he goes out to work and returns to bathe her again. By the third time he has soaped his erect penis and inserted it into Prema’s anus. By the sixth time he has vaginally penetrated her with it, bathing her again to wash off all the blood. Immediately after, he is sexually abusing her through every possible orifice, devouring her, muttering all the while ’ First you are mine, my oota, my food to eat, before any other man sinks his teeth into you.
A grandfather never shows his penis to his granddaughter or touches her vagina. He makes her sit on his lap and strokes her thigh. Sometimes the granddaughter feels something hard as she sits on his lap day after day and he strokes her. But because they love each other so much, she lets him or is it because she told her mother of the discomfort and her mother said,’ Hush! Good children shouldn’t speak like that.’
An eleven-year-old boy from Hyderabad, India has played ‘doctor doctor’ so savagely with his 9 year-old sister that she bled till late evening. Their father is a child specialist.
His father’s brother is regularly sodomizing Arun. One day he whips out the knife and silently brandishes it when his uncle touches him. The sexual abuse stops. Five years later.
Arun is fifteen, and asleep, He wakes with a start, has heard muffled laughter, he feels body heat near him. His eyes adjust to the lack of light; his uncle is standing over him, exposing himself. The boy’s fingers go to his chest; he feels something sticky on it, and then more of it. His uncle muffles his laughter. The boy gets up and goes to the bathroom. He scrubs himself with soap. He goes back to bed. The next morning he starts washing his hands. Ten times a day. Fifty times a day. Seventy times a day. Furtively.
He washes his hand 90 times a day when he thinks nobody is looking. His fingers are red and his skin is peeling. His parents take him to a well-known psychiatrist. The psychiatrist prescribes ‘downers’ so that he does not wash his hands that often. Arun tells him his uncle sexually abuses him. The psychiatrist prescribes a new set of pills. The boy is now very drowsy. His parents will not believe him, his psychiatrist will not believe him, and his uncle maintains his innocence.
Here are the stats in India.
* 3393 children raped in 1993,
* 3986 children raped in 1994
* 4083 children raped in 1996,
* 4414 children raped in 1997
Going with 1997’s stats, 12 children are raped in India every day.
Then there are children that are raped but their cases are not reported in police stations and of course there are those being raped within their own homes!!!!
Numbers? World Health Organization says one in every 10 children is abused at any given time in India. Tata Institute of Social Science study conducted showed 1 out of 3 girls had been sexually abused in childhood and 1 out of every 10 boys.
A study done with 600 women from upper class, showed
* 76% of the 600 women had been sexually abused in childhood
* Out of these 457, 71% has been abused by a family member or a family friend
* 2% out of the 457 had been abused before the age of 2
* 17% between the age of 4 and 8
* 28% between the age of 9 and 12
* 35% between the age of 13 and 16
Studies done with lower class women, middle class or upper class highlight the same alarming statistics. In most cases, the predator was part of the victim’s everyday life, a person within the four walls.
Mumbaii, Delhi, Kolkatta, Chennai, Patna, Nagpur, Bangalore, Srinagar, Pune, Goa, Allahabad, Jamshedpur – cities with the highest occurrence of child sexual abuse in India.
I spent a year and half studying this topic - Cases in India, cases in the US, the cultural and economic differences that attribute to child sexual abuse in both countries, sections of the society that is affected more than the other. I don’t know about you, but I just cannot go on with my life knowing that children are being brought in, torn stem-to-stem, with a ruptured anus, and a tiny vagina in shred and then stitched up and sent home while the perpetrator mocks from the sidelines.
My study has made me conclude one thing. Right, wrong or different, we Indians carry this huge baggage of sex being a taboo subject in families. We have trained ourselves, generation after generation, to sweep this topic under the carpet. How will a child know how to differentiate a ‘good touch’ from a ‘bad touch’ if we don’t teach her the difference? How will a child know that it is not okay for his grandfather to touch him in places that feels uncomfortable even if the grandfather is revered by every one in the family? Where will these kids go if we as adults are not willing to accept reality? Penile penetration is the only kind being considered by the Indian Legal System as child rape currently, objects like candles, bottles and bananas are not; additionally, forcing the penis into a child’s mouth slips through the legal cracks and sodomy gets tagged under ‘unnatural offences’ Are we that hypocritical that we are willing to sacrifice our children’s innocence in the name of respect and cultural values?
I am not sure I will even try to fight the legal system in India having grown up in Bihar, India, where the law is a suggestion, not a rule to be followed necessarily. Little Twinkle is engaging in an effort in India to introduce educational programs in schools such that children are informed about sexual abuse. Ignorance is reduced to ashes in the incandescent blaze of knowledge says the Bhagwad Gita. This effort is a baby step taken to save a child’s innocence. It shouldn’t hurt to be child!!
I sincerely thank Pinki Virani for inspiring me to work in the field related to Child Sexual Abuse in India. It was emotionally challenging even doing my research on this topic. There used to be times when I would stay awake all night long after reading through a case – almost shaken up in my soul; trying to comprehend why a person would hurt a child. I often wondered if it was worth putting myself through the pain and turmoil. Every case I studied, left a scar in my heart. Now, almost a year and a half later, although it did take a toll, I am glad I did not give up.
Requesting all of you, to sacrifice a little bit of your security to help a child from dying a death before the natural one.
