Child Sexual Abuse - India

MUMBAI: When a 12-year-old girl was brought to Cooper Hospital, Juhu, with a finger broken, a little bit of questioning revealed that her father’s anger at her poor preparation for the exams had resulted in the "injury". Whenever this 11-year-old misbehaved, his mother had a standard punishment. She would drag him to the nearest police chowky and ask the policeman to give her son a "dhamki". What she hadn't noticed was that this had transformed the child into a nervous wreck. A ten-year-old boy’s mother had literally whipped up a red-hot recipe for punishment—hours of kneeling on chilli powder. She seemed not to connect the punishing spells with his lack of concentration in the classroom. In a city in which four-year-old Dhurta recently landed in hospital with a fractured arm and several bruises after her step-mother beat her, it emerges that many children are routinely put through abuse — whether physical, verbal or psychological — by none other than their moth...

MUMBAI: A 35-year-old man from Chembur was arrested for raping and sodomising a 10-month-old infant. The accused, Ramkisan Surajmal Harijan, a resident of Mankhurd-Ghatkopar Link Road, took the baby away on Tuesday night on the pretext of babysitting her after which he raped her. The baby was admitted to hospital and underwent an operation on Thursday. The police said that she was still in hospital, but recovering. Ramkisan was remanded to the custody of the Deonar police. The incident, the latest in a string of violent crimes against children which have been rocking the city, only corroborates statistics recently released by the Maharashtra police. Crimes against children have been steadily rising over the last few years—from 832 cases registered in 2000 to 2,281 in 2004. From 2003 to 2004 alone, crimes against children rose by 3.63%. Rape tops this list; in fact, the number of rapes of children in the age group of 10-18 has almost doubled from 2000 to 2004. Girls under 18 accounted f...

MUMBAI: In an interesting turn to the Duncan Grant child-abuse case, two of the five boys who wereallegedly sexually exploited by Grant and co-accused Allan Water, are going to testify as defence's witnesses. "Two of them (names not disclosed) would be presented as defence witnesses on February 14 and 15," confirmed Pervez Memon, defence lawyer. The prosecution had examined two victim boys, and discharged the other two as it thought their testimonies were not required anymore. Now these two, omitted by the prosecution, would be testifying as defence's witness, he said. The whereabouts of the fifth victim boy are not known. The case involves Duncan Grant, a British national who was accused of molesting the inmates of his Mumbai-based Colaba Anchorage Shelter Home. Other two accused are Allan Water, another UK national and William D`souza, who was superintendent of the Shelter Home. While Water and Grant are in judicial custody, D`Souza is out on bail.

Tulir - Centre for the Prevention & Healing of Child Sexual Abuse is organizing a half-day workshop on INTRODUCTION TO ART THERAPY WITH EMOTIONALLY DITURBED CHILDREN on 25-feb-2006 (saturday) at Chennai. To be facilitated by an expert art therapist, the workshop will especially be useful for professionals working with children, such as social workers, therapists, counsellors, psychologists and teachers. Interested people may please contact 26632026 or tulircphcsa@yahoo.co.in by the 24th of February.

The secret crime STORIES BY ROBIN FARMER TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER As the sun dipped on that balmy January evening, Joyce Allan immersed her body in the Arabian Sea and shed in its salty embrace years of guilt, pain and confusion. What began as a vacation to India a year ago led to a long-awaited healing for Allan, scarred by the incest that had rocked her family for five generations. "When I came back up, I felt like everything was being washed away," Allan said as she sat in the airy living room of her mountainside cottage in Crozet. "It really sounds like how people described their baptism." For Allan, who is 61, the immersion was an act of self-forgiveness. For 11 years she felt she had betrayed her children for not protecting them from her father, who had abused her as a girl. "That was the last part that had to be washed away, and I felt like I was straight again with myself and my children," said Allan, a psychotherapist with 40 years of experienc...

From OUTLOOK (Feb 6, 2006): In a world where child sex abuse is rampant, an organisation steps in to spread awareness As a child rights activist for Child Line, a body under the Indian Council for Child Welfare, Vidya Reddy realised they were dealing with several cases of child trafficking, physical abuse of domestic child workers and other such cases, but child sexual abuse (CSA) was hardly getting any focused attention. Vidya was in touch with Lois J. Engelbrecht who had worked in Vietnam, Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia on CSA issues in schools. Vidya and Lois felt the need for an outfit in India that dealt with awareness, prevention and healing of CSA. Workshops are held in schools where concepts like body integrity and personal safety are taught so that the kids can look after themselves. They set up the Tulir Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse (CPHCSA) in ’04. Tulir in Tamil means the first tender leaves of a plant. "There were several ngos wo...