LET US face it, how long can our society live in a denial of the fact that 53 per cent of our children are sexually abused, as revealed in a statistic from a survey done by the Government of India?
The recent case in Mumbai where a father was raping his two daughters for several years is not a rarest of the rare case. It’s happening in our society and most of the time, it is the people close to the children who are doing it.
It is not all that possible that other family members do not know about it. Basically it’s a conspiracy. There is a silent understanding among the family members and in society to keep this secret inside the four walls of the house.
Frankly, those of us who just want to project an image of a happy family with high morals are all hypocrites. We just love the respect we have in our society and to withhold that respect, we are ready to sacrifice our children. We call it practical approach of living but is it not a selfish approach of living?
Children are innocent. They don’t understand the concept of sex, they crave for love, care and attention. The sexual predators master the art of manipulating the child to do sexually perverted acts under the guise of fun and play.
The children indulge in the activities thinking of it as a new game of playing with the body parts. By the time, children grow old enough to understand the moral part, they are deep into this mess. They cannot come out even if they want to. It’s a vicious cycle in which things become worse with time.
The victim lacks self-confidence and is always under a sense of guilt and denial. It’s not about the body. It’s more about the mind. Child sexual abuse is a rape of the mind and thought processes.
My humble question to our society: what should a victim do when she wants to stand against her own family member(s) for sexually abusing her since childhood? Let us see:
1. Going by the image of our law enforcing agencies, the police will be the last option for a girl to confide to.
2. Suppose the victim gathers the courage to disclose it to family members. Firstly, the whole family always knew it but they will pretend as if it’s news. This issue will be just a hush-hush. Relatives will give some condolences to the victim, blame it on destiny and de-motivate her from taking any action against the abuser.
3. Everybody has their own selfish interest. Nobody wants the world to know this ugly truth about their family.
4. Some clever relatives will advice the girl to forgive the abusers and forget about the incident. They will manipulate some religious philosophy to advocate their point.
5. Some will show their concern for the marriage prospects of the victim as if they will spend the rest of their lives to find a groom for the victim.
6. But inspite of all this, if the victim is not ready to close the issue, the victim will be outcasted by the family members.
7. The victim cannot approach lawyers because she needs money to pay fees and family support to understand the intricacies of law and redtape.
The crux is nobody stands for you because nobody else has been raped. One needs huge courage to stand for this cause. The victim is on the verge of losing everything. Her social rehabilitation is difficult and her marriage prospects are next to impossible.
We as a society have conspired to leave no other option to our children. Once they fall prey to a sexually perverted relative, they have to accept it and live with this reality for life. Once a victim is married, she becomes more vulnerable. Abusers have access to their houses, they meet them in family functions, and they are always there to ask for their share of her flesh. Now if anything comes to light, it’s all about her chastity and promiscuousness.
Sadly, we have no specific laws to deal with child sexual abuse and incest in our country. The cases are still tried under the IPC sections of rape. The conviction rate in such cases is too low due to obvious reasons. The relatives of the victim turn hostile and never turn up in the court to tell truth. Ironically, there are relatives who stand for the abusers in the courts of law.
There is also no medical evidence as it is not a typical case of rape by a stranger. The victim faces a lot of embarrassment and humiliation in the courts.
It’s my personal opinion that society will pay a huge price for neglecting their children. As per the citation from the Mahabharata, dharma eva hato hanti dharmo raksati raksitah (It is dharma that destroys when destroyed. It is dharma again that protects when protected.)
We as a society have failed to protect our dharma and we have failed to protect our children. When 53 per cent of our children are being abused, we can imagine the number of abusers roaming free in our society. There is nobody to check their moves and there is no one to stand against them.
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