“Every child who is raped by an adult, turns into a statistic. A life barely lived, already a horrific statistic.” – (Virani, 2000)109 children are abused every day and if we do the math, it means 39, 785 cases in a year!Home is considered a safe space for children, a place where they are carefree because they have their family to protect them, but what if those family members turn out to be predators? Over 90% of the times, the abuser is someone known to the child; he/she could be your family member, relative, neighbour and/or teacher! These are some of the people we trust (a lot) but as I said before, the abused is usually known to the child. The abusers are usually above 16 and the abused are usually under 16 years of age, sometimes even 6 months old! A person who the child trusts with food, security and shelter is usually the one who ends up abusing him/her sexually and what step does the government take? I have read about cases where “the grandfather who assaulted a child” and the court discharged the case claiming that the grandfather was incapable of committing the act. There is another case of a mother who tried to save her daughter from the molestation of her husband and was able to, with the help of 2 social workers but the father was not punished, instead the two social workers were tried in the court. These and a lot of other cases point us to the fact that the legal system ignored the seriousness of child sexual abuse cases.
You must have heard of the ‘boys locker room group’ that everyone is talking about. The reason why everyone is talking about it is the fact that the boys in this group send pictures of girls (who are mostly underage) and then passed lewd comments on them. They objectified girls, morphed their pictures and talked about gang raping them. People are not really worried because all this happened in closed doors but this where the initiation of rape culture takes place and the most horrifying fact is that, these boys are just 15 – 16 years old. Telling your daughters to be safe is never enough, one must raise their boys the right way. I always thought that our generation is progressive about females but this incident has disappointed me to the core. These boys are also brothers to someone and if this incident would never have come into the limelight, they would have continued objectifying women and who knows what this would have led to in the future! India stands on top of the child sexual abuse list with 19.87 lakhs reports or 11.7% reports every year and the lockdown across the world, will lead to an exacerbation of the situation and paedophiles who work online are seeking to exploit the situation, to the fullest.
SO, WHAT WILL OUR FUTURE BE? CRASH AND CRUMBLED OR NOURISHED AND FLOURISHED?
