When saviour turns predator

A study in Chennai has found that as many as 42% of school kids are sexual abuse victims, writes Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Mar 31, 2006, 16:01:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The spectre of child abuse just gets more and more alarming.

A study in Chennai has found that as many as 42 per cent of school-going children are victims of forced sexual abuse.

And in most of the cases, the perpetrators are either close relatives or family members.

According to Chennai-based NGO Tulir, which released the survey in Delhi on Thursday, the 42 per cent figure could be a suggestion of the prevalence of sexual abuse in the country.

The magnitude of the problem can be gauged from the fact that 38 per cent of the population is less than 18 years of age.

The study was conducted between September 2005 and January 2006 in 24 schools in Chennai and 2,211 children studying in Class XI were interviewed.

It found that contrary to popular belief, boys (48 per cent) were more sexually abused than girls (39 per cent).

"There is a myth that boys are not sexually abused and it is reflected in parental, familial, community and professional attitudes. The study refutes this myth," the report says.

Not only is the number of abused boys more, they are also the victims of the worst forms of sexual abuse.

As many as 21 per cent of boys who were abused suffered from trauma resulting from severe form of abuse.

In comparison, only 11 per cent girls were severely abused. "This is because most believe that boys are more safe than girls," the study states.

And giving more credence to the growing belief that sexual predators are closer than you think, the study found that over 75 per cent of offenders were friends or close family acquaintances.

In only eight per cent of cases were the abusers complete strangers.

For most children, abuse takes place between 11 and 15 years of age. At that age, many of them don’t have the courage to speak about the wrong done to them.

The few who do are asked to conceal the trauma for the sake of the family’s honour. "Only a few cases are reported," the report says.

Another myth the reports wants to nullify is that sexual abuse of children is more among the lower strata of society.

The study found that most cases of abuse against children came from the higher income group. About 55 per cent of children from higher income groups who were interviewed reported abuse while the least was from the lower middle-class.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.