Gauri Sinh: How do we protect our children?

In all the celebrations of Ganesha’s arrival in the city, a piece of heart-wrenchingly sombre news: a three-year-old allegedly raped and later murdered by a man in Goregaon.

This, as the poor little one stood to watch the Ganesha immersion processions and got separated from her sibling. A three year old — can you even try and imagine the horror of her final moments, barely out of nappies, at an age too young to fully grasp the extent of what was happening to her? Am I being insensitive in elaborating so? But that is my very point. We don’t seem to be shocked enough to be doing more to prevent such atrocities from occurring again and again.

Because, heartbreakingly, this incident is not an isolated case. In June, a six-year-old was allegedly raped in Malwan. In May, a five-year-old was raped in Mankhurd. Earlier this month, a labourer was held for allegedly sodomising a 10-year-old girl in Dindoshi. All within the space of the last few months, do I really need to go on? And these are just the reported incidents.

Abusing a child is really the most heinous of crimes, no one contests that. Yet, we as a society seem to be clambering deeper, daily, into the abyss of depravation. Else, why would minors face abuse not just in the hands of strangers, but in the hands of those who have taken the responsibility to shield and protect. Are we finding it grievous enough that 12 girls (worryingly between the ages of 4 and 12) rescued from a shelter in Nerul last Thursday spoke of being sexually abused and beaten by the caretakers themselves?

This, on the heels of the earlier incident of abuse of five differently-abled girls from a Panvel shelter in March. To go beyond sexual abuse, there are all kinds of crimes against innocents surfacing at present. Has it disturbed us enough to learn about the possible psychopathic anger in a maid, a minor herself, that she hurled her employer’s 18-month-old baby out the balcony as revenge for a scolding over a broken plate? Are we at all numbed by reports of how a drunken father set his three-year-old ablaze, a little girl who succumbed to her injuries? Who does that? That is perhaps a dangerous question to raise: It has been repeated often enough that morality is only for the middle classes — the very rich consider themselves above it, and the very poor couldn’t care less, they’re too busy trying to survive instead of assessing the consequences of their extreme actions.

The innocent victims of continuing societal breakdown? Our children, vulnerable and fair game, too small to speak up or protect themselves. And while I’m speaking particularly of Maximum city, atrocities against babies/youngsters are rampant worldwide (recall the Norwegian shooting teens at a youth camp in July).

No wonder then, that studies abroad cite how creativity and humour are on the decline in children — it doesn’t take an Einstein to infer that you need a safe, protective environment for such qualities to flourish, and really, is that what we’re providing for our children, at present - in the city and globally?