‘Empower mothers to control children’s sexual abuse’

A father rapes his three-year-old daughter. Another man rapes his four-year-old niece. While these cases may shock the general public, not only is the occurrence common, but also most of the time they remain a secret.

Most children do not tell anybody about the abuse. When they do, often parents do not believe them as mostly the abusers are family members or closely associated with the family.

Estimates say that about 20% of child abuse victims are below the age of eight years. Fifty-three per cent of 12,447 children interviewed by the ministry of women and child development across 13 states, in 2007, were sexually abused.

According to Recovering and Healing from Incest (RAHI), 64% of those who are sexually abused are the victim of a family member. Eighty-seven per cent of the children who were sexually abused by a family member were abused repeatedly and 19% of these children were still living with at least one of the abusers. Seventy-two per cent of the victims do not talk about it.

Officials in the child welfare committee believe that one of the biggest stumbling blocks to addressing the issue is the social stigma attached to it. This is also why statistics about the cases are only estimates of the real number, which is likely to be much higher.

“Most of the time, mothers are unwilling to file an FIR because of the stigma. In some cases, the mother separates from the father, but there are a lot of cases where the mother continues to live with the father and we cannot do anything about it as the mother claims that she can look after the child,” said the official.

“When the mother does not give us anything, what can we do?”
One of the reasons for this, according to Ellen Shinde of 1to1help.net, an online counselling service, is that women worry about the future, of how they are going to manage if the husband walks away.

Educate the child
“The only way we can protect our children is to make sure that there are open channels of communication. The child has to identify a person to whom he/she can go if something untoward happens,” she said. This is just as important as teaching the child the difference between good and bad touch, and a hug and wanting something more.

“These lessons have to be a routine and parents should not wait for something to happen before they tell the child,” she emphasises.

Unlike popular perception, studies also show that sexual abuse happens across all sections of society. Parents read about these incidents and think, there’s no way this will happen in my family. It can.

“What is common about most cases of sexual abuse is that more often than not, it is someone known to the family, someone parents trust the child to be with, alone. Social groups, income groups, nothing matters. The only way we can protect the child is by being prepared and the only way to protect other children is by creating awareness,” she said.