The urgent need to “TALK” about child sexual abuse by Lalrengpuii

Introduction

Talking about child sexual abuse was something that I had never done before on a large scale; My field work was limited to two places one in my hometown Lawngtlai, Mizoram with the methodology of questionnaire and another by using phone survey methodology to talk to my college mates in Delhi. I talked with 10-12 people who were my neighbors, friends and family. Most of them were welcoming to this conversation. When asked about if they have undergone something, a lot of them said no, while few recounted their experiences to me. I listened to them and was shocked that often people I see in my life, had gone through so much without me realizing it. I have tried to summarize whatever I learnt from my field work and phone survey through this article, It was a golden opportunity for me to learn and to be more sensitive about everything around and to be alert about child sexual abuse.

Childhood is one of the most precious times of a human being. A lot of poets have written about the beauties of childhood. Childhood is considered to be so precious because of the immaterialist quality of having innocence, It’s something which helps us to be contained and happy in whatever we do whatever we have. However, this world is not perfect. Many children face atrocities due to various factors and their childhood remains far from perfect.
These factors are something that are most of times not in control of our hands but there are certain wrongs which we can correct. Child sexual Abuse is one of the most relevant incident in contemporary world which takes away innocence from so many children as sexual abuse is one of those menace, which is as appalling and horrific as it sounds.

It has irreversible effect on the psychic of the child. often people who go through child abuse take life long to recover from the trauma. They’re scared of everything and to build relationships. It also stops them from living a beautiful adult life, often children are hurt physically which results in lifelong impact. There is no certain answer to why do child abusers do what they do. They are just bad human beings devoid of sympathy and human emotions but there are certain steps which we can do to protect our children from these predators of the worst kind.

First and foremost is to educate them as to what abuse consist of, often children get abused because they don’t understand that whatever is happening to them is wrong.
Giving them proper sex education and teaching them the concept of good and bad touch is very essential from young age. Parents should also be cautious as to not trust anybody completely and keep a watch on servants, relatives etc. If your child is trying to tell you something please listen and believe them as when we don’ believe children it discourages the child and then later he or she would not confide with others.

On a personal front if you come across a child abuse survivor be patient with them trying to understand what exactly he or she needs from you to help them in their trauma. often people just need somebody to listen to, sometimes they need somebody to help them with certain things. don’t try to impose your opinions on somebody’s trauma. It often makes people uncomfortable and specially with children they might feel uncomfortable and will make them more frightened. On legal front what we need is more stringent laws and the proper implementation of them. we need to have educational seminars so that parents are educated and they realize these are nothing to be ashamed about. this is something which happens very rampantly in a society and we need to accept it and work together to remove it. As a child should never be devoid of his or her childhood.