Child Sexual Abuse - India

Views of Children's room attached to the Family Court , High Court of Madras which started in April 2006. The purpose of this room is to allow for a safe and friendly space for children whose presence is required at the Family Court for resolution of various family related litigation. This room has special significance, since otherwise the children are made to unnecessarily witness disturbing situations within courtrooms, and wait endlessly in the court premises, often without adequate access to even basic facilities.

Date:10/03/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/03/10/stories/2006031008560100.htm Front Page First local study on child sexual abuse ready Staff Reporter TOWARDS CHILD SAFETY: Andal Damodharan of the Indian Council for Child Welfare, Tamil Nadu, and Chennai Collector N. Murganandam release a workbook on child personal safety in Chennai on Thursday. CHENNAI: The first comprehensive local study on child sexual abuse was conducted and presented by Tulir — Centre for the Prevention & Treatment of Sexual Abuse, at a seminar here on Thursday. The study has found that 42 per cent of the 2211 children, mostly adolescents, surveyed have been abused. The data, collected by self-reporting anonymous questionnaires filled mainly by class eleven students in schools within the Chennai Corporation zone limits, shatters several myths about abuse. The proportion of children abused in the higher income groups was found to be marginally higher than the proportion among children from families with ...

Newindpress on Sunday Mar 13, 2006 Study dispels myths about child sex abuse in city Friday March 10 2006 08:56 IST Chennai Collector N Muruganandham releasing the copy of the research on child sex abuse. Andal Damodaran of ICCW is also seen CHENNAI: Child rights activists have always known it. Now, it is out in black and white. Forty-two percent of children between the age of 14 and 18 said they were abused and boys were as prone to sexual violence as girls, the first ever prevalence research in Chennai by Tulir, Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse, revealed. The study said that 48 percent of the boys, who participated in the study, had been abused, in comparison to 39 percent of girls who reportedly faced abuse. Alankar Sharma, one of the investigators, said, “While the numbers do establish that boys are vulnerable, this does not really indicate that boys are more vulnerable in the larger social reality. Girls report less abuse, given the patriarchy and the st...

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.