What India must do to end abuse of children

When the mother of J* — a 13-year-old girl — died, the girl was left with no parental support. The father, who lived with J’s step-mother, left her and J began to live with her married sister. There, she was raped by her brother-in-law, after which she came to live in the children’s home. B*, a 12-year-old girl only found out she was pregnant when the foetus was around five months old. Her family had taken her to a doctor after her tummy started to show, after which the discovery took place. It turned out that her elder brother, himself 14 years old, had sexual intercourse with her. Both siblings seemed to have little awareness about sex and its implications. These are instances in which child abuse can be clearly connected to a collective failure of society.

In the first instance, patriarchal societal norms allowed the father to abandon his daughter after her mother died, subsequent to which she was raped by her brother-in-law. In the second instance, the dreadful situation may not have taken place if there had been an environment where adolescents were able to get sex education and have conversations with elders about the topic. The societal failure to provide a secure and beneficial environment for children manifests itself in many ways. These include lack of quality education, abuse within the family and neighbourhood, gender and caste-based discrimination, etc. As per 2011 figures, India has a 93 percent school enrollment ratio at primary levels. This is an encouraging statistic, but actual learning levels continue to be poor. The children with whom Prayas JAC Society deal also reflect this, as their learning levels are far below the level at which they are studying. Much of the problem boils down to the willingness of the community to tackle this problem, feels Ravi Deshmukh, a former sarpanch in a village in Beed district, Maharashtra. “In earlier times, the village elders would keep an eye on children and take them to task if they were seen sauntering around during school hours. Now, adults get kids to skip school and help them with their work, just so that they can earn a bit of extra money.”

“These are instances in which child abuse can be clearly connected to a collective failure of society.”

Addressing the needs of historically disadvantaged communities is particularly important. Prakhar Jain, who is pursuing a fellowship on education among tribal communities in Chhattisgarh, points out, “Often, teachers in schools only speak Hindi, while many small children speak tribal languages and are not very conversant with Hindi. This acts as a disincentive for them in terms of going to school.” Another factor that needs to be addressed is the assumption that the family environment, in all cases, is ideal for the development of a child. There is no doubt that ordinarily a family environment helps a child’s welfare at different levels. But there is a need to identify cases wherein a child’s family environment is abusive or neglectful. Intervention at the family-level can help prevent children from entering crime, forced labour or trafficking.

The point about the family environment is also relevant in the context of sexual abuse. In the year 2007, Prayas JAC Society was involved in a nationwide study on child abuse along with the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Unicef and Save the Children. The study threw up findings that were startling at the time. It found, among other things, that 53.22 percent of children had faced some or the other form of sexual abuse. This meant that every second child has been a victim of sexual abuse at some point of time. Further, in as many as 50 percent of these cases, the abusers were known to the child or were in a position of trust and responsibility. More worryingly, under the provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSOA) dealing with penetrative sexual assault, the offenders were known to the victims in a staggering 94 percent of cases. Another major finding of the study was that about two out of three children had faced physical abuse. More than half of these children — 54.68 percent to be precise — were boys. This is particularly important to get rid of patriarchal expectations of gender roles which can prevent boys from reporting abuse to elders or authorities. All of the above broader social factors — including attitudes towards gender, the status of disadvantaged communities, education and economic well-being — contribute to the situation of child rights in the country. Children constitute 41 percent of the country’s population, and their well-being depends to a large extent on how we tackle the challenges mentioned earlier. As yet another Children’s Day has gone by, it is time we make this a priority. *Name has been withheld to protect privacy The author works with Prayas JAC Society, an organisation, headquartered in New Delhi, that works on child rights