Saturday, July 21, 2007

CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE-2 The Abuse

O Rose ,thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
of crimson joy
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy

William Blake


Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) as defined by the US Dept of Health Education and Welfare , consists of contact or interaction between a child and an adult when the child is being used for the sexual stimulation of the perpetrator or another person.

It is not solely restricted to physical contact ; such abuse could include noncontact abuse such as exposure , voyeurism an child pornography. Abuse could be physical , psychological, emotional and ritualistic. (Ritualistic abuse is defined as child physical torture, hurt, or forcing the child to do somehing sexual during some sort of ritual meeting, cult gathering , or religious activity of forcung a child to watch any of the above to happen to someone else.

CSA takes place in almost all cultures, races and in all strata of society. Most of the reported cases and personal interviews reveal the fact that girls are more victimised than boys and the abusers are mostly men and not women.But this does not necessarily imply that the victims are mostly girls alone and that women never come in the garb of the perpetrator.

And friends, who are the perpetrators? You think that they are the typical movie- villain type strangers with a dirty sneer on their lips and a sinister-looking scar across their faces? No, my friend.He/she knows your child and your child knows him/her. Researches show that 70% of the perpetrators are known to the victims intimately.They come either as a friend , a cousin, an uncle, or saddest of all. as the step father or even father.

The mere mention of a child brings to ur mind a pair of wide eyes filled with innocence, curiosity ,and yes, trust. But ironically it is these very traits in the child that act against them.

Children are the most vulnerable , gullible lot among human beings. They can be talked into anything the adult wants to get done because their guileless minds cannot comprehend the enormity of the mistake they are about to commit. They are curious about every leaf that rustles in the wind...and more so when the adult presents it before them with an air of mystery and secrecy.

Kids look up to the adults and and trust them blindly. So it is easy to manipulate and exploit them.But when this trust is shattered , the child is totally lost and the emotional havoc it creats stays for a whole life-time. Children become easy preys because they are relatively powerless. This unbalanced power equation is very important here.The abuser is an adult who commands a very powerful equation in the family and the children are taught to repect and obey the powerful adult. The perpetrator plays on this sense of powerlessness of the kid.


CSA is either under-reported or it goes totally unreported , , mainly because of the stigma attached to it As said earlier , most of the abusers are intrafamilial and so the family's reputation is threatened. However , the matter is hushed up and the child is either asked to shut up or his/her disclosure is totally ignored. Children on their part, most of the time, fail to communicate their problem properly to another adult member of the family.

The fear, anxiety and guilt experienced by them make them incapable of proper comunication and as a result , they are not understood and believed. All the while, the perpetrator sits smugly in the knowledge that his/her secret is safe.
It is saddening to note that family, which is supposed to be the very source of safety and security turns out to be the place where the child is victimised both physically and emotionally . In our eagerness to cover up the issue and to preserve the so-called strong familial ties, we ignore the trauma experienced by the children. The way the abuse is handled when the disclosure is made, has a lot to do with its subsequent impact.

Researchers have found that the experience of sexual abuse can have a negative impact on the child that often persists to adulthood. It colours the individual's life in a negative manner and robs the survivor of many of the finer aspects of life. This aspect of CSA will be discussed in detail later.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE-1 The Child

Do ye hear the children weeping
O my brother,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning



She began in a low voice...groping for words, looking at the faces around her,searching for understanding,reassurance.

Father (who incidentally is her stepfather) would give nice gifts
to us kids,play hide and seek with us...


It was in Kannada. Anju sitting next to me doing the job of the interpreter , was whispering the words in English into my ears.

With every present, he would hug me, kiss me, press me tightly to him,
make me sit on his lap...


She stopped, looking at her mother for a moment , moving closer to her.

I was his favourite,he would tell me. Then he started to teach me
these secret games which somehow made me feel bad. I was scared...


Her lips trembled, voice faltered.

He hurt me often, said I must not talk about it to anyone.
One day there was no else at home...


From there it was a torrent of words. With wild gesticulations intermingled with sobs, she came to the climax of her narration.Terror in her eyes and tears on her cheeks. somehow along the line I could hear Anju's voice faltering. But I couldnt take my eyes away from the horror that was being enacted infront of my eyes. The poor child was reliving every painful moment of the horrible experience. I wanted to ask her to stop, but felt powerless to move. Anju had stopped her interpretation. But I didnt need to be told what the kid was trying to say. i knew what it was- the horror, the pain. Oh God, didnt I?

Then eveything came to an end. the child stopped talking, her head buried in the sympathetic , reassuring, strong bosom of asha, the heart and soul of the NGO who was helping such unfortunate children to pick up their shattered lives.

I looked around me and was surprised to find that most of the eyes around me were moist , some of them even had their faces covered in their kerchieves. But all the women sitting in the small room had given me the impression of belonging quite confidently to the 21st century - the new "successful" women who could juggle a responsible job, and demanding family with quiet ease.

The look in the eyes of the gentleman sitting next to me caught my attention.He had a desolate expression on his face...that look of a small boywho had lost his way. Then I realised that ,that was what we all were deep inside - small kids , terribly insecure, feeling lost and lets admit it, feeling dirty,soiled and ashamed of ourselves - ashamed of something which we had not done.

Do we ever come out of this? Will we ever be able to make it in life? This journey from the victim to the survivor is not an easy one. But life has to go on. Ofcourse we will learn to overcome this. but how do we save our children from these horrid nightmares? Are we capable of building up a better world for them?

Let us move on...we have to