II. Inadequate Responses in Cases of Abuse

We know that a lot of abuse is happening, but people don't talk about it.

—Anand Prakash, People’s Vigilance Committee on Human Rights, Varanasi, May 2012.

What happens after a child has been sexually abused is critical, not only to his or her recovery but also to the protection of other children, since if the perpetrator is never identified or allowed to remain free, the abuse might well be repeated.

The experience of the sexually abused children and relatives we interviewed indicates that the current system is failing. Children’s complaints are often dismissed not just by family members or persons in positions of authority, but also by the police, medical staff, and others. Instead of compassion, victims may be re-traumatized by how they are treated once they make their abuse known.

Within the Family and Community

Children need the assistance of trusted adults to protect them from sexual abuse, but the response of adults to these cases is often completely inadequate. They might not wish to confront a relative or risk attracting social stigma to the family. The government’s failure to create public faith in its institutions further discourages them from coming forward.

The failure of individual police officers, teachers, doctors, and government workers to respond appropriately to cases cannot also be divorced from wider social attitudes to child sexual abuse. Little has been done to address this. While some state governments and NGOs run programs on child safety in schools, such programs are still relatively rare and are centered mainly in major cities such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru[28] and Chennai. As a result, most children who do decide to complain or otherwise display signs of their abuse do not receive the support they need. According to Anuja Gupta, who counsels survivors of child sexual abuse and incest through her NGO, RAHI, this can have a devastating impact:

It is often better not to tell, than to tell and not be helped. Children somehow find a way of living with the abuse. I'm not saying that that is ideal, but if they do tell someone and are told to shut up, and are not believed, and nothing happens, you're adding two or three layers of trauma on top of the abuse. So it is absolutely essential that the children's caretakers are trained, so that children be helped and received appropriately.[29]

Jyoti's Story Now aged 32, Jyoti grew up in a middle-class family in a very small town in western Uttar Pradesh. The town had no decent schools, so Jyoti's parents hired a tutor to help her with her studies. The tutor, a college-educated friend of one her cousins, started sexually abusing her when she was about six years old. Because the tutor was well liked by the family—Jyoti lived in a traditional Indian home with about 20 members of her extended family—for a long time she was unable to expose his crimes against her. Having undergone therapy for the trauma she suffered, Jyoti now feels able to describe her experiences publicly, which she hopes will raise the profile of child sexual abuse within Indian society. Because children find it so hard to describe what has happened to them, the voice of adult survivors is especially important in bringing attention to the issue. Jyoti told Human Rights Watch: He was this nice young chap, you know, who talked nicely with all the women of the house. Everyone really trusted him. The abuse started soon after he began teaching me, when I was six years old. I don't remember the exact day the abuse began, but it was around that time. Basically this guy would touch my private parts and also beat me up…. I was just so scared of him. At five o'clock every day he used to knock on the door and it made me so scared. The abuse went on for the next six years. The more I was abused, the worse I did at my studies, and the more my parents insisted the tutor come and teach me. They knew he used to beat me. But they too would hit me. At one point my parents even bought a special cane with which to punish me for not doing well in school…. I just did not have a way of telling them why I was not doing well. I was just a small kid. I wasn't sure if the abuse was a normal thing that happened with everyone around, or just me. I didn't know. Then my health started getting worse. I used to have this temperature above normal all the time. I had problems with my private parts. It would itch when I went to pee. I told my mum about that and they took me to a doctor but they didn't realize what was happening. In our society we are always taught to respect our elders. Not that you shouldn't, but sometimes it goes too far, you know, that relationship. Can you really go against someone who is elder than you? Would anyone have trusted me if I had told them? The sexuality of a woman is a big issue in our society and no matter what happened a woman is always blamed. A woman would never think of going to the police and I don't trust the police for anything in India. The abuse stopped when my tutor got a job in a foreign country. But it was much later that I told anyone. I was aged 19 or 20 then, and studying at a college close to Delhi. I went to a local hospital. I just knew I needed help, so I made an appointment with a psychiatrist. But that meeting turned out to be disastrous. I explained everything to him and he just wrote out some medicines and told me to come back next week. Then, several years later, I heard about an organization called RAHI [Recovery and Healing from Incest], that offers counseling to abuse survivors. That was like the turning point of my life. If you saw me five years back I was in a bad shape. Really low on confidence and afraid and I couldn't even talk to people. But after undergoing therapy, that feeling of not being good enough, being smaller, just goes away. I finally plucked up the courage to tell my mother. It is very embarrassing to talk about sex with your parents, and it was a very small conversation. But she believed me. I really think there needs to be a major nationwide campaign to teach people to pick up the clues that a child is being abused. One day I was so nervous I rubbed my finger so badly that it started bleeding. I thought it might just help me not study that day. The signs were there and my parents couldn't pick them up. So I would say that kids who are being abused are telling, but adults are not listening.[30]

But even if the child is believed, he or she is often discouraged from filing a complaint. Police officers, family members, and influential voices in the community often prefer to handle allegations of abuse unofficially and discretely.

A 2012 case in New Delhi demonstrates how dangerous this approach can be. Nandan Prasad Shah was convicted and received a life sentence after he abducted, bound, and raped a six-year-old girl who was a member of his extended family.[31] During the trial it emerged that Shah had previously attempted to rape another female member of the family and had also attacked a different girl. In neither instance did the family take any action against him. Presiding Judge Kamini Lau said that the family actually had tried instead to protect the accused and to impede the trial:

Having come to know that a person in the family was a sexual maniac who spared none, was it not necessary for the other members of the family, particularly the male members, to have checked him and to have taken suitable action against him?... It is ironical that rather on the contrary, their attempt was to assist the accused by trying to prevent the material witnesses ... from deposing in the Court.[32]

Another recent court case provides a wrenching example of a family member failing to respond properly to an incident of child sexual abuse. In July 2011 a female resident of a slum in New Delhi briefly left her six-month-old granddaughter in the care of her neighbor, Sonu Lalman. According to the statement she later made in court, she next saw the baby after about 15 minutes, in tears, and bleeding from her vagina. She then went to confront the attacker:

I asked him what had happened to the child ... Sonu fell on my feet and sought forgiveness as he had committed a wrong. When Sonu repeatedly asked me for forgiveness, thinking that the child was a female and it would affect her future, I did not raise any alarm and kept quiet.[33]

It was only because the bleeding continued into the following day that the child’s family decided to take her to hospital. The doctor alerted the police, and Lalman was arrested. The case was dealt with quickly and he was sentenced to 10 years for raping a minor.

Emotional Conflict in Reporting Abuse: Case of Deepti

Therapists say that sometimes children misread abuse as evidence of special attention and are unable to blame the person, particularly if the abuser is a parent or someone close to the child. Deepti, now an adult, still admits to being confused about her abuse at the hands of her father because, she says, he is a “good guy.”

Deepti says her father has molested her since she was 13 but she does not want to report his behavior. She is now 18 but still lives with her parents in their two-room house in a Bengaluru slum. Human Rights Watch was put in touch with Deepti by a child rights NGO that provides her with counseling. She told Human Rights Watch:

We all used to sleep together in one small room. There was no protection for us. One day I told him to stop what he was doing or I would leave home. He stopped for two to three months then started to do that thing again. I told my mother about it, but she said I was lying. I felt very bad and spoke to the head of the NGO and some friends about it. They told me to speak to my father again, and he stopped completely. But he did it again only the day before yesterday, when we were watching TV together in the same room. I don’t know how to escape this situation. My father is a good guy and I know he feels bad about what he is doing.[34]

Although Deepti refused any offer to take any further action, she did speak with her sister to ensure some protection. Meanwhile she is continuing her education and is an intern at the NGO that is helping her.[35]

Angry Response by Family Members: Case of Aditi and Ria

If a mother confronts a family member alleging child sexual abuse, she often is at risk of being thrown out of her home, particularly if the allegation is against one of her in-laws. There are no easily accessible programs to assist a parent in such situations.

Aditi left her home in a village in West Bengal at the age of 16 when her parents sent her to work as a maid in New Delhi. There, she became pregnant by the man who was supposed to be finding her a job. He abandoned her when their baby, Ria, was born. Aditi was homeless until she was rescued by an NGO working with destitute women, Shakti Shalini, which then found her a job. She settled down and later married a friend of her employer. But the marriage collapsed after Aditi accused her brother-in-law of molesting Ria, who, by this time, was four years old. Aditi said:

One evening at about 8 o'clock, I left my brother-in-law playing with my daughter when I went inside to make dinner. Later, she said that she wanted to pee. When I started helping her take off her jeans, I noticed he had done something to her. I brought her inside and washed her off. I didn’t say anything to anyone that night because I wasn't sure if someone would accuse me of lying. After that, whenever I’d leave the house he would do these things to her, so I stopped leaving her alone at home.

One day however a water tanker came to our neighborhood and I had to run to fetch water. I did not even think about my daughter, who was sleeping inside. When I came back something had happened to her. So I called one of the women in the family who agreed that she had been abused, and she told my husband. My daughter told everyone what had happened to her, so we decided to go to the police. They questioned me, and my daughter, and then spoke to my brother-in-law.

The police asked me what they should do with him, and I said they should put him behind bars for a few days. They took him in and beat him up. They also interrogated my husband who said he hadn't seen anything. He said his brother couldn't have done something like this, and he would only believe it possible if he saw it with his own eyes. So then I told the police to let him go, to tell my brother-in-law to take his stuff and go away from us.

But after that my husband said he didn’t trust me and said that perhaps I had inflicted these wounds on my daughter myself. That’s when I decided that I had to take my child elsewhere.”[36]

Ostracism by Community: Case of a 12-year-old in Varanasi

Even in cases where an adult does decide to help an abused child, reporting the abuse can result in social stigma.

In February 2012 in the city of Varanasi, in northern India, Ahmed's 12-year-old daughter, Abida, said she was gang raped by three men. Ahmed took the case to the police, he says, because he was afraid other girls would be attacked if the men were not stopped.[37] But rather than win the admiration of the community, his decision to make the case public has led to the family being ostracized. The community shunned the child because she was a rape victim and blamed the family for making her so-called disgrace public. The parents of his elder daughter's fiancé cancelled the engagement because they felt that public knowledge of the attack had brought shame to their family. Ahmed is extremely worried about the impact this has all had on the child. “She no longer likes to go out, and she just sits at home, very silent,” he said. “She's losing weight and from her face you can read what's going on in her mind.”[38]

The People’s Vigilance Committee for Human Rights, an NGO, is providing counseling for Abida, but there are no government services she can draw on for rehabilitation and support.

Settling Privately to Avoid Stigma: Abuse of a Two-year-old near Varanasi

In an effort to avoid the situation confronting Ahmed and his daughter, families cover up the most horrific treatment of children. A local human rights activist told Human Rights Watch that he had been approached by the parents of a two-year-old girl, who they said had been molested. The girl’s mother had walked in on her child being abused by a 17-year-old male second cousin in April 2012, in their village near Varanasi. The parents wanted to file a case with the police but were then persuaded by the extended family, including the victim's grandmother, to settle the matter privately. Rather than having the perpetrator arrested, they instead told him to leave the village.[39] Anand Prakash, the activist, explained that people in the area always try to keep matters like this private: “We know that a lot of abuse is happening but people don't talk about it. It is all related to respect and the dignity of the family. If it comes out, the family will be disrespected.”[40]

Fearing Retaliation: Case of Nikhil

Nikhil is so scared of the repercussions of revealing his abuse that he does not even want the name of his home state revealed in this report.[41] He says that his abuser, a European man, lived in his village for more than 10 years, sexually abusing numerous boys, some as young as 12. Nikhil explained to Human Rights Watch how this man became very popular in his impoverished coastal village by helping poor people out. He would give free English lessons to children and encouraged them to play table tennis in the house he rented from one boy’s family. Nikhil said that the man made a point of befriending the boys of the village:

He’s very brilliant because first of all he finds out what is in a child’s mind. Some children want money, so he gives them money. Some children like food, some children like to go to school, so he helps them.[42]

The man paid for Nikhil, a school dropout aged 15, to have lessons in Ayurvedic massage and told him to practice on him. Nikhil said the abuse started when, one day, the European told him he should massage his penis. The man said that if Nikhil refused to do so, he would have to return all the money he had spent on him.

Nikhil said it was impossible to tell anyone about what was happening because the European man had become popular in the village, and many boys had become financially dependent on him. “We are a poor family and we cannot fight with them,” said Nikhil. “Even now I am afraid of them. I am afraid of these people.”[43]

The man’s abuse was eventually reported to the state authorities by a European couple who discovered what was happening. A local NGO persuaded Nikhil and three other boys to go to the police, but after only one day the others withdrew their complaints, leaving Nikhil alone to confront his abuser. The police agreed to file charges against the European and confiscated his passport. A trial began in 2009. He was given bail and has subsequently absconded. Nikhil says he still receives threats:

The village people support him. They believe he is innocent, they don’t know what happened inside his house. I am afraid of some people and don’t go alone anywhere at night in case they see me. One time they came to my house and said that if I talk against him they will kill me.[44]

Abuse in Schools

Teachers and other school staff hold positions of trust and authority. Yet, when cases of sexual abuse are exposed, schools sometimes choose to deny or discredit the victims. In 2012, for example, officials ignored serious complaints made by 11 girls staying at a hostel attached to primary schools in Kanker district of Chhattisgarh state, in central India. The girls, aged 8-12, said they had been repeatedly raped by one of their teachers and a watchman. An investigation by Tehelka magazine found that the girls had told other school staff members about the abuse, as well as district education officials, and the village council. But even though the allegations were investigated, no action was taken for months.[45] Eventually the district administrator heard the allegations and the police were finally called in. At the time of writing, they had arrested the two men accused of rape and six others, who had not acted on the girls’ complaints.[46]

This was a particularly shocking case, but schools across India need to introduce rigorous child protection measures. Teachers and managers need to do much more to ensure that all schools are safe. This includes the proper vetting of all adults who have access to students, including support staff like school bus drivers. In one of several recently reported cases, a driver and conductor were accused of raping a seven-year-old girl in Ghaziabad, near New Delhi, for months on a regular basis after they had dropped off the other children. According to press reports, the girl’s parents complained to the school, which did nothing.[47]

Case of a Government School in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh

On October 25, 2011, a group of 15 mothers made the following complaint to a police station in rural Uttar Pradesh, close to the city of Allahabad:

Our girls are students of the [name withheld] school where on 22-9-11, at around 1 pm, the headmaster Chintamani Mishra called them one by one under the pretext of a health exam, took their clothes off and touched their private parts, while talking to them in a lewd manner. We request you to please register our plea and do whatever is needed.[48]

According to local activist Govind Saran, the women only went to the police because of the courage of one girl and her mother, who approached the others to persuade them into seeking action against the school principal for his alleged repeated abuses. The girl’s grandmother, Maya, said that the others were initially reluctant:

Some of the villagers said, “This matter is too complicated for us handle, so drop it. Otherwise, you never know what people may do. They may kill you. They may shoot you. Just hold your tongue and sit tight.” But we refused. We may be poor, but we are going to fight. We are going to fight for our honor.[49]

The 15 women decided to make the abuse public and sought assistance from Saran to lodge a complaint with the police. “If this girl did not break her silence then no one would have known about it,” Saran said. “Then if our NGO had not got involved nothing would have happened, except the community would have gone for negotiation [with the teacher].”[50]

Following their complaint, the police arrested the headmaster and charged him under section 354 of the Indian Penal Code, for “assaulting a woman with intent to outrage her modesty.”[51] The local teacher's union did not support the students but went on strike in protest of Mishra’s arrest. The teacher’s union accepted Mishra’s account that he had been framed by the villagers because of a dispute over jobs and money and held strikes in more than 80 schools and protest marches in Allahabad, which were supported by local politicians.[52]At the time of writing the case had not gone to trial.

Case of a Government School in Chikkaballapur District, Karnataka

In Karnataka, the South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring (SICHREM) investigated allegations that a headmaster at a public school was molesting pupils. SICHREM was asked to intervene by a parent sitting on the school's management committee who felt that the state’s education department had ignored the complaint.[53]

A SICHREM team visited the school and interviewed the school authorities and more than 20 students. The mother of the 12-year-old girl who made the allegations did not want to involve the police and so did not have her daughter speak to SICHREM.[54] The girl's sister, however, did speak to the organization, and said that, “He [the headmaster] asked all the children to go to another classroom, and told her [the sister] to come into his room. He hugged her and kissed her and touched her private parts.”[55]

Other children said that the headmaster asked them do odd jobs for him, and if they refused he used to “pinch their cheeks and breasts.”[56] Following SICHREM's intervention, the local education department sent a committee to investigate, but it found there was no evidence against the teacher and cleared him of any wrongdoing. Gangadhara Reddy of SICHREM believes that education officials have covered up the incident. He said the department report, “is biased and far from reality. We are urging the state commission for protection of child rights to look seriously into this issue and take appropriate actions against the accused.”[57]