IV. Abuse in Institutional Facilities

One study estimates that 20 million Indian children end up in institutional residential care.[111] Some are orphans, but most are not. They are placed into care because their parents cannot support them. Others are classified as “juveniles in conflict with the law,” who need to be housed separately. Street children, those rescued from trafficking for labor or sex work, and runaways are all routinely placed in institutions run by the government or by private or religious charities.

The sexual abuse of children left in the care of institutions is disturbingly common. In the first half of 2012, the Times of India newspaper reported cases in eight institutions in different parts of the country. Three of them were in Haryana, with others in New Delhi, Karnataka, Goa, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh. Alleged abusers were members of staff, older children, and outsiders, including, it is alleged in one case, policemen.

Set up by the government in December 2012 in the wake of the Delhi attack, a committee, headed by Justice J.S. Verma, made several recommendations to address sexual assault and expressed particular concern over the plight of children in residential care institutions.[112] “The condition of juvenile homes in the country is pathetic,” Justice Verma said at a press conference after submitting his report to the union home ministry.[113]

In almost all the cases below, the accused deny the allegations. Nevertheless, these cases indicate that the current system of registering and monitoring children's residential care institutions is failing.

As with other cases of child abuse, it is likely that most occurrences in institutions are never reported. The former resident of an institution run by a charitable foundation in north India said that where he lived, “nobody dared to share their experiences with anybody outside. The general atmosphere was intimidating, scary, and oppressive.”[114]He told Human Rights Watch that in his experience both wardens and older children were involved in sexually abusing young boys. In the 15 years he lived there, he said he was not aware of the facility being inspected once. He said:

A child would dare not complain about the wardens, and those older boys were also so intimidating. It had a bullying culture and there were no safeguards. If a warden molested a boy, that boy would be humiliated, a laughing stock.[115]

Bharti Ali of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, a New Delhi NGO, said that even when managers become aware of abuse, they have a strong interest in not making it public:

Institutions fear a bad name if something wrong is reported, which in turn affects their funding. Thus there is an unwritten rule that no abuse should be reported and if it does get reported, it must be denied at the very outset.[116]

Most of the facilities where the allegations were made in 2012 are well-established institutions run either by the government or charities that receive funding from the state. Some are registered under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act (2000).[117] This supposedly ensures that they are subjected to regular inspections and have to respect certain minimum standards of care, as enforced by the local child welfare committee.

But the law lacks clarity. Some of the facilities where these allegations were made have not registered under the Juvenile Justice Act. One of them has even challenged in court the principle that it should be inspected by child welfare committees.[118]

In fact, the Juvenile Justice Act actually contains no provisions for penalizing organizations or individuals who refuse to register their institutions, and across India there are many institutions (for example, ones linked to schools or religious bodies) that are registered under different laws and many more that are not registered at all.[119] What this means is that no one knows how many children's residential care facilities there really are, nor how many children they house and the conditions they live in. Some states are rectifying this. Kerala, in southern India, for instance, has decided to register all institutions, with estimates for the number varying from 200 to 1,000.[120]

Case of Drone Foundation, Haryana

Sita, 12, is a girl living with HIV, whose parents were too poor to look after her. She was placed in a small children's residential facility close to New Delhi, in Haryana’s Gurgaon district, which was supposed to provide her with specialized medical care and schooling. According to its website, the goal of the Drone Foundation was to provide children like Sita with “happiness in life.”[121]

The facility, which housed only 14 children, was run by Sunita Gupta and her 42-year-old son, Ankur Gupta. The children were taught to refer to them as “Aunty” and “Papa” to create a family atmosphere. According to Sita, Ankur Gupta, who is also living with HIV, was anything but a father figure to her. She told a counselor after she left the facility that he used to rape her: “He used to come drunk. He would take me to a room and would say that if I told anybody about this, he would throttle my neck.”[122]

She also said that when she told other people about the abuse, they would slap her. Another girl, Pooja, said that two of the boys staying there also used to do “wrong things” to the girls.[123]

The abuse at the Drone Foundation came to light in January 2012 after an employee of the facility telephoned Childline, a toll-free helpline for children in distress. Within hours, the facility was raided and the children rescued. The police arrested Gupta and his mother, who asserted they had committed no wrongdoing and had been framed by a disgruntled ex-employee.[124] Their trial is underway.

Case of Apna Ghar, Haryana

After their rescue, within 24 hours, Sita and the other children from Drone Foundation were presented to the district child welfare committee to decide how and where they should be looked after. Each child welfare committee is supposed to keep a list of government-run and registered privately-run facilities in its area that must follow a set of basic guidelines and be regularly inspected.[125]

In other states, child welfare committees can act as independent watchdogs to ensure that officials carry out this task. But in Haryana, the committees are actually chaired by the same government officers responsible for the inspections.[126]Haryana is also one of the states that is yet to appoint its own commission for the protection of child rights, so what could be another crucial monitoring mechanism is not in place there.

In Sita's case, the child welfare committee sent her to Apna Ghar, a residential facility in Rohtak district, which was run by a respected charity that also managed the local Childline and other government-funded welfare programs for destitute children, women, and persons with disabilities. Its owner, Jaswanti Devi, was a member of the district's Juvenile Justice Board, which deals with children accused of crimes. In March 2012 she received Haryana's top award for women “role models,” and was presented with a large cash prize by the Haryana chief minister's wife.[127]

However, as it turned out, Sita had landed in yet another abusive situation. Three months after she was placed there, Childline in New Delhi received a call from three residents of Apna Ghar who had managed to escape so they could report the abuse that they had suffered. Vinod Tikoo, a member of the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, then led an inspection team to interview Jaswanti Devi and many of the children. Tikoo told Human Rights Watch:

I rushed there immediately and reached at about 8:30 p.m. I called the local administration and told them to be there too. We interacted first with Jaswanti. Then I spoke to the children and they started to tell me what had been going on. It was insane, unbelievable. It would baffle anybody's mind.[128]

Tikoo discovered that Sita and five other girls sent to Apna Ghar from the Drone Foundation had been ordered to work as cleaners.

Other children, who had been at the facility longer, complained of being sexually abused by Jaswanti, her son-in-law Jai Bhagwan, and other members of staff. Some of the alleged abuse was extremely violent.[129] One of the girls later told reporters that “there used to be beatings and ill treatment. They would do bad things. She used to beat some people naked. Some were hung from the ceiling fan and beaten by her. Others were tied to their bed or the window grill.”[130] Another told inspectors that “they made us do such disgusting things. I felt so dirty that even the water I drank afterwards tasted like it had been contaminated.”[131]

A committee of lawyers was appointed by the Haryana High Court to interview the 101 children and women at the residential facility. They heard complaints that some were forced to have sex with policemen and other strangers. Five “grown-up girls” said for example that they were sexually molested, as ordered by Jaswanti, at the hands of Jai Bhagwan, her driver Satish, policemen, and outsiders. Some were forced to have abortions, by taking unknown tablets and inserting foreign objects in their vaginas.[132]

Tikoo said the Haryana state government could and should have discovered this abuse much earlier:

The mechanism of monitoring the facilities has actually entirely failed in the state of Haryana. If anybody did go there they just stayed confined to the corridors and didn't interact with the children. It is not neglect. It is systemic failure.[133]

After the raid, Apnar Ghar was closed down by the state authorities, and the children and women shifted to other residential facilities in the state. Under the instruction of the NCPCR, the government then launched a series of initiatives to improve the protection of children in institutions in Haryana.[134]The NCPCR said that it approved of some of these measures. However, it was still concerned about the children. “We are not happy with how they have dealt with the children, moving them around without verifying those new homes, treating them like they were products,” Tikoo said.[135]

The NCPCR also filed a court case against the Haryana government, as well as those of neighboring Punjab and the union territory of Chandigarh, to get them to establish their own state commissions for the protection of child rights. The commission has also recommended that child welfare committees be properly appointed instead of deputing district officials to the post, who have no training in handling cases involving children.

Jaswanti Devi, her daughter, son-in-law, and six others were awaiting trial at this writing, as was the head of the original police investigation in Rohtak. He has been charged with destroying evidence and for his own alleged role in the sexual abuse.[136]The investigation has been handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, India's top police agency.[137]

Case of Shivkuti Shishu Grih, Allahabad

The sexual abuse taking place in the Shivkuti Shishu Grih government residential facility for girls in Allahabad, in Uttar Pradesh state, was only discovered by chance. It had been going on for years, but had been successfully covered up. It was exposed in March 2012 when a couple who adopted one of the children found blood in her underwear. The investigation that followed alleged that a watchman, Vidya Bhushan Ojha, had sexually abused seven girls over a period of six to ten years. According to a high court order, the investigation showed that:

[O]ther employees including superintendents, house mothers, cook, class 4 workers such as helpers, nurses, nursery teachers, and sweepers have either facilitated (or at least overlooked) the immoral acts of Ojha, sometimes even after being eye witnesses of this grave crime. In fact their indifference or active concealment is tantamount to their virtual connivance in the crimes of Vidya Bhushan Ojha.[138]

During the investigation, it was found that when some of the girls complained to the superintendent, she ignored them. On one occasion a couple refused to adopt a girl after she told them she had been raped – they took her back to the residential facility, but nothing was done and no one outside the institution was informed.[139] The Allahabad Child Welfare Committee even used to regularly hold meetings there. But members said they were not aware of what was going on. “Nobody complained to us,” one said.[140]

Following the investigation, which was ordered by the Allahabad High Court, the watchman and the institution’s supervisor were arrested. Ten members of staff were suspended pending another inquiry, while three senior officials, including the district's child protection officer, were transferred out of Allahabad but not otherwise penalized.[141]

The judges said the cover up of sexual abuse had demonstrated that “government servants across the board ... have lost the capacity to do any work or to assume responsibility; their conscience appears to have died.” They also criticized the “indifference” of senior officials and child welfare committees for simply “passing orders in a mechanical and bureaucratic manner, with no sense of mission.”[142]

Case of Church of Christ Home for Needy Children and Widows, Bengaluru

A boy living in the Church of Christ Home for Needy Children and Widows called Childline in February 2012, prompting an inspection by Bengaluru's relatively strong child protection institutions, namely the Karnataka Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, the police, and a child welfare committee.[143] According to the commission, the inspectors interviewed the 42 children, “all of whom without exception, reiterated details of the physical abuse inflicted on the boys and girls” by the facility’s manager and “the molestation of the older girl inmates” by a board member, who was also the manager's father. They also saw children with “welt marks and bruises.”[144]

After the raid, the child welfare committee moved the children to other registered institutions in the city or reunited them with their parents. The two men were arrested, and counselors spoke to the girls who said they had been sexually abused.[145]

The subsequent investigation found that the institution, which had been operating for 20 years and was funded by donors in the United States, was not registered with the government under the Juvenile Justice Act. According to the Karnataka Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, it was in breach of several of the act's rules regarding standards of care and management processes.[146] For example, when parents or guardians admitted their child to the facility they had to agree not to visit the child until he or she was released at the age of 18.[147] This is contravention of the law, which states that parents have the right to visit their child at least once a month, except where they have been found responsible for subjecting him or her to violence, abuse, or exploitation.[148]

Although the facility is not registered under the Juvenile Justice Act, the organization that runs it is a legal entity in India. According to the investigation, it is a registered society, with permission from the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs to receive funding from abroad. The organization runs two other children’s residential care institutions in southern India, holds church services, and operates several Bible colleges.[149]

The organization's treasurer, Prabhu Vara Kumar, told Human Rights Watch that the allegations of physical and sexual abuse were not true and were being exploited by enemies of the Christian organization, including a property developer and right-wing Hindus. Kumar said, “When you keep children you sometimes need to discipline them. They said they were mistreated, but this was not the case.”[150]

At the time of writing, the trial was underway.

Case of Arya Anathalaya, New Delhi

Uma had placed her daughter in the Arya Orphanage because she was too poor to properly care for her.[151]Uma's husband was an alcoholic who had abandoned the family. Since the Arya Orphanage was a well-known New Delhi institution with over a thousand children, run by a charitable foundation headed by a senior lawyer, Uma thought her daughter would be better off there. She was confident she would be safe and receive a proper education.

But by the time Uma found out that something was wrong with her daughter, the 11-year-old was already dead. She had died of diarrhea, 15 days after falling sick in the residential care facility where she had lived for three years. After her death a post-mortem revealed the girl had been subjected to repeated vaginal and anal sexual abuse.[152]

The police sent officers into the facility to investigate and invited child rights experts from a New Delhi-based NGO, HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, to help with the children's interviews. On the basis of these interviews, as well as separate visits by the local child welfare committee, the police filed charges against a 15-year-old boy and a watchman for raping the girl.[153] A second case, involving the alleged sexual abuse of an 11-year-old boy was also reported, and the chief warden and another warden were arrested.[154]

But the team from HAQ said they had heard many other “heart-rending stories of physical abuse, mental cruelty, and sexual abuse ranging from eve-teasing [i.e. sexual harassment] and molestation to rape and sodomy,” which indicated that these were not isolated cases. They became concerned that the children who made these allegations were still living in the facility and at the mercy of its staff.[155] The local child welfare committee also directed the police to file charges not just against the alleged perpetrators for their crimes, but also against the people running the facility for “neglect.”[156]

However, a week after the investigations began the management barred the team from HAQ from entering, on the grounds that the institution did not have to submit to such inspections.[157] The management strongly denied any of the allegations of wrongdoing. “It is only this boy who has been apprehended and against whom there is proof that such acts took place inside the walls of the orphanage. Just because of him, the whole institution is being blamed,” Viresh Pratap Chaudhry, president of the Arya Orphanage told reporters.[158]

The management contended in the Delhi High Court that the child welfare committee had no authority over it.[159] Meanwhile the juvenile accused of sodomizing another boy in the Arya orphanage has been convicted for that offence, while in the case of the girl who died (where he was also being tried as an accused), the decision was pending at the time of writing. The warden accused in the case received bail and continues to be employed by the orphanage management in another location.

According to Anant Asthana, an expert on juvenile justice, this case demonstrates ambiguities in the Juvenile Justice Act that need to be resolved. The Juvenile Justice Rules applicable in Delhi do not clearly explain the implications of residential child care institutions being “registered,” “licensed,” or “recognized” under the law. Nor, he says, do they clearly explain monitoring mechanisms applicable in various institutions. As a result, he says, “the existing laws on residential child care institutions leave scope for considerable confusion and possible manipulation.”[160]

The Anchorage Shelter Home

Securing justice in cases of child sexual abuse that involves foreign nationals is especially complicated.

The Anchorage Shelter Home was set up in Mumbai in 1995 by a former officer of the British Royal Navy, Duncan Grant, for boys begging at the Gateway of India, the city's main landmark. Grant had been a regular visitor to India for years and was well-known to social workers like Sangeeta Punekar. She remembers seeing him at Mumbai's main train station in 1989-90, picking up sick homeless children and taking them, sometimes in a handcart, to hospital. She started to become suspicious of him when she saw what he used to give the boys:

He used to give them bizarre gifts like Ray Ban sunglasses and mobile phones, which were a huge luxury at the time. It was very striking and strange behavior, and I was very curious about what he was up to. But he said he was a just a tourist, working in the navy, who was fond of children.[161]

In 2001 the first formal accusations against Grant were made. Childline received a call that Grant and a former navy colleague and regular visitor to the facility, Allan Waters, were sexually abusing boys at the shelter. A journalist living in Colaba heard similar stories and informed Maharukh Adenwalla, a high court lawyer specializing in child rights. When the police initially refused to record the statements of the children, the activists wrote down the details themselves.[162]

Both Grant and Waters left the country when they learned of the allegations. For the first time in a case of child sexual abuse, India then used Interpol to have them extradited. Grant was found in Tanzania where he ran three more children's residential facilities, and Waters was arrested arriving at a New York airport. In 2006 a lower court sentenced the two men to six years in prison. One of the boys told the court:

Duncan had sex with me on many occasions. He used to tell me to hold his penis and also he used to hold my penis. This must have taken place at least on 20 to 25 occasions ... Allan Waters also had sat with me on many occasions. He also used to tell me to hold his penis and he also used to hold my penis.”[163]

The men maintained their innocence and the British charity, Fair Trials Aboard, campaigned on their behalf, asserting that the accusations were motivated by revenge, and witnesses had been paid.[164] The men appealed to the Bombay High Court, which in 2008 ordered their release on the grounds that the statements of the two main witnesses were not consistent and had not been corroborated by the many other children who had passed through the shelter. The judges also said that since the boys had not tried to run away during the years they claimed they were being abused, this indicated it had not happened.[165] They stated as well that the sexual acts described by the boys (including oral sex) were not necessarily illegal under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that outlawed “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” which they considered to mean penetrative anal sex.[166]

Childline's subsequent appeal to India's Supreme Court argued that, “the Ld. judges have completely ignored the fact that the victims of sexual abuse were vulnerable and defenseless street children, who were so desperate to get a roof over their heads that they were prepared to put up with the sexual abuse.”[167]

Three years later, in 2011, the Supreme Court agreed, overturned the High Court ruling, and sent the men back to prison.[168]