The rising cases of child sexual abuse

Every day, we are horrified by the many cases of sexual abuse of children which are being reported. They have become a sickening reality of our times. One that shows the rot in our society, of how maladjusted some of us are. Girls and even little boys are no longer safe even in their own homes.

I recently read a very comprehensive article on the subject and am providing the link. It also has some suggestions.
http://newindianexpress.com/magazine/How-safe-is-your-daughter/2013/04/28/article1560480.ece

This judgment makes no sense to me!

A man rapes a minor daughter. His wife lodges an FIR, he is found guilty and sent to jail for 12 years. Out on parole, he hacks his wife and daughter to  death with an axe. Another daughter watches the killings, runs and shuts herself in a room. After her father runs away from the scene of crime, she comes out.
The Supreme Court judges deciding the case converted the
death penalty into imprisonment for entire life. This is what  Justices Sathasivam and Kalifulla are reported to have noted: "One significant factor in this case, which we should not lose sight of is that he did not harm his other daughter even though he had a good chance for the same." Read the report in Times of India.

I have some issues with the judgment -

1. Is not a rape of a minor followed by two murders where the bodies are hacked not "brutal enough" to be "the rarest of the rare" category?

2.I wonder why the judges feel that because he did not kill his other daughter the law should be lenient for him? She reportedly shut herself in a room and saved herself. Why should the 'credit for not killing' (for that is what the judges appear to have considered) be given to the culprit?  Using the same reasoning it could be said that as he did not kill or rape other women he came in contact with while out on parole, his punishment reduced. Sounds absurd?

3. I am puzzled by another observation by the judges of our highest court.TOI  reports-
Justice Sathasivam, writing the judgment for the bench, said,
"It was highlighted that he being a poor man and unable to earn his livelihood since he was driven out of his house by his deceased wife. It is also his claim that if he was allowed to live in the house, he could easily meet both his ends and means, as the money which he was spending by paying rent would have been saved. It is his further grievance that his deceased wife was adamant and he should live outside and should not lead happy married life and that was the reason that their relations were strained."

Now, once a man has raped his minor daughter, the mother would be out of her senses to let the man continue to stay in the same house as her and the child. She would want to protect her daughter/s. Moreover, it is her choice if she wants to live with the man or have him move out. Which self respecting woman would continue to live with a man who rapes his own daughter? And then, just because he was not allowed to live in the house, is no excuse to kill.

Why should the judges even consider such utterances by the criminal and make it a ground for reducing the punishment?

When will our judges stop looking at cases from the narrow lens of patriarchy? Why don't they see the woman's point of view?

And what is also horrifying that the judges believe that such a man can be reformed! And have kept the case open for remission.

A comment on Indian culture

One day earlier this month, I found a stream of visitors landing on my blog. This was surprising for I had been neglecting my blog, had not posted for weeks and was used to seeing only one or two visitors stop by. Feedjit and Flagcounter informed that they were from Denmark.

The next day, I had an unusual friend request. It was from a young man from Denmark, a student in a business school. I discovered that my blog was part of a curriculum designed to teach the young students about culture. A creative teacher had based a set of questions on my blog.

My blog is titled the india of today for I meant to post about things that bothered and amazed me about this land. But posts that are unfavourable far exceed the positive ones. And my first reaction was – Oh! what a negative image of India I must be giving out. My blog was all about sexual harassment, the violence women face, about rape, the horrendously stupid judgments given by our judges, men in authority who made idiotic pronouncements about women, while this land I called home had much more to offer... its rich arts, its spiritual heritage, its cuisine, its freedom to speak out, which we the people so zealously guarded. Was my blog, a comment on Indian culture?

My blog is a long rant against the system and the way it affects me as a woman in today's India. Had I been living as a brown skin woman in Europe, it might have been about race. For on my very first trip there, the few hours that I spent in Amsterdam, I was made very conscious of the colour of my skin by a shop assistant at a food kiosk, who despite repeated requests did not attend to me.

My earliest recollection of something not being right in being a girl in India was when I found my aunt crying at the birth of my sister. A third daughter? How unfortunate! was the refrain from relatives and neighbours. Why were daughters unfortunate? It was something I would learn as I grew in a middle class north Indian family. As a growing girl who travelled by public bus to get a college education, as a young woman who went out to work using public transport, as someone who had to work late at the job I chose to do, I was wary of sexual harassment every waking moment I was out on Delhi’s streets. I could not let my guard down. As a mother, I have tried to raise my daughters to be conscious of this daily violence, be aware of its dangers and to be safe. As a mother, much of my effort went in training them to survive the city, the system.

This is what concerns me today as an Indian woman. The mindset of our politicians, our police and our judges horrifies me no end. For it curbs my movement, it stifles me, it prevents me from being free. The way female foetuses get aborted here, the manner in which the girl child is treated by the family, the control Indian men feel they should exercise on women, the commodification of the woman as a sex object in our films, in the raunchy item numbers, the moral police that go around slapping women for being in a bar or enjoying an evening out with a friend, where children even babies are raped. Was this contemporary Indian culture? And as I debated….

Another horrific gangrape happened. A 23-year-old medical student was brutally raped while her friend was beaten up by six men in a bus. They felt they had the right to question the couple as to why they were out! And then they were thrown out of the bus and left to die. It is amazing that not one of the six men felt that they should not be behaving in this fashion. Not one of them made an effort to stop others from commiting the crime. After their heinous act, we are told they went about their normal routine, showing no guilt, no remorse.

But this time something snapped in Delhi. Its young girls had had enough and were not prepared to take it anymore. And they came out to voice their protest, to demand justice for the medical student, to demand that our politicians, the police and the judicial system acts… With these young school and college girls were middle aged women. Even a 70 plus I know braved the cold winter to register her protest at India Gate. And there were a large number of men, who are fed up of this crass apathy towards dealing with one of the most serious problems of our times - verbal and physical violence on women.

And yes, it is sad but true that this violence, this ill treatment of girls and women personifies contemporary Indian culture.

But the new Indian woman, the middle class, the educated, is not prepared to take it any longer. She is forcing society to act. 

Haryana police should first learn how to deal with women before it begins its school campaign

The following news item in today's Times of India caught my attention. I could not help but think of Ruchika and what one of Haryana's top cops did to a young girl.

And also how Haryana policemen are among the most gender insensitive of men I have encountered.  And now, they are going to reach out to school girls! Hope the police force has been sensitised enough before being allowed access to the girls, especially those who are being sexually harassed and molested.

Read the newsitem

Haryana police reach out to girls, place drop boxes in schools for complaints


ROHTAK: Haryana police have decided to reach out to girls in every school in the state to get their feedback and complaints about incidents of sexual abuse and harassment with them. The police, in association with the education department, will launch a special drive to interact with the girls. They also plan to place feedback boxes in each school for girls to drop their complaints into them. The feedback from girls of six government schools in Rewari has stirred the police into action. During a special campaign undertaken earlier this ...link ....

A three-year-old this time

New Delhi: A three-year-old girl was drugged and raped by the husband of a playschool owner in Delhi, police said Thursday. The accused has been arrested. Click here to read further.


The depravity never stops. Another case, this time a three year old raped in Delhi. What is wrong with these men? Have they lost all control over themselves?

Some sensitive rules to enable sexually abused children to get justice

Finally, we are going to see some change in the way child rape victims are treated by the state and their cases tried. It is indeed, harrowing for children who have been abused to testify in court and come face to face with the abuser. A child sensitve set of rules has been put in place.
But have the lawyers and judges been sensitised? And the cops who will be handling such cases?
Let us see how things go from here, and the punishment that will be given to child abusers.

Rape and molestation, mindset and judgments

It has been a rather sad first week of the New Year. It is difficult to change mindsets and again and again the same kind of judgments land making light of the plight of girls and women on the receiving end of gender violence.

No faith that the legal system will help
First came the news of a mother wanting to opt out of the legal system which had failed to bring justice to her daughter now 18, who had been raped in Delhi four years ago. The girl fearing ridicule and bias by the society had tried to commit suicide by swallowing acid. Her damaged food pipe had to be replaced by an artificial one and the mother informed the court that her daughter lay in a vegetable state. The mother pleaded in court that the case be closed. She expressed the family's inability and unwillingness to fight the case and seek justice any longer.

Waiting for four years is indeed a long harrowing time, especially when the authorities do not act. It leaves the victim and the family which also suffers trauma, double victimised, first by the rapist criminal and then by an inactive state system. In this case, the parents had pursued the case for four years, during which the girl's father suffered two heart attacks and her mother had to work as a maid to feed the family. There was no help from the state, monetary or otherwise.

Finally, the Delhi court ordered Rs one lakh as compensation, pointing out that the apex court too has held that subordinate courts trying rape cases have the jurisdiction to award interim compensation as the offence of rape is against the victim's basic human rights and violation of her fundamental right to life and liberty.

"I'm shocked to observe that despite this pathetic state of the victim and her family, who, I find, are feeling a sense of physical and psychological isolation, no assistance has been provided to her by the state," the judge observed, ordering Delhi Government to award her the compensation, noting the vegetative state the victim has reduced to.

The judge, who has given some gender sensitive judgments in the past, noted: "Rape of a minor not only affects her but has also a devastative impact on her entire family, which equally suffers in silence as has happened in the present case."

"It is cases like these which the Ministry of Women and Child development needs to target for restorative justice so that the medical and legal assistance, besides professional and psychological counselling, shelter and other support is provided to the victim, which, in the present, case has not been done," the judge is reported to have said.

Pack of molestors
And just as the New Year dawned we learnt of yet another very sad case of a gang of raucous men pouncing on a young girl. Check out the complete lack of restraint by a group of young men on New Year's eve in Gurgaon. A similar case had happened in Mumbai some years ago. The poor men get so out of control at the mere sight of a woman that they pounce on her.  The Hindustan Times quotes an eye witness as saying, “They were touching her initially and ended up tearing her clothes. They were passing lewd remarks in the middle of the road. I was shocked to see what could happen on Gurgaon roads."

Society should be very concerned that it raises its members to behave in this fashion. These men need urgent psychiatric help to be able to control their impulses. Otherwise they need to be put behind bars.

When we have a top cop talk of "josh food" and that "clothes can provoke men to rape" one can only wonder at the sheer ignorance of these men in powerful positions. I had the occasion to go through the training course of Haryana cops. There was just no effort made to sensitise them on  gender violence and how to deal with it. So it comes as no surprise when you find these men indulging in gender violence themselves and the rising number of custodial rapes.

In all such cases, as our top cop, society feels the women ask for it. This is what prevents women from lodging a case. In the Gurgoan case, the FIR has been registered by the policemen who got injured in the melee that followed their attempt to rescue the girl. Not by the girl. For the girl knows better. She will have to relive her trauma if she lodges a complaint. And then what? What will happen to the men? Their families will probably laugh it off. The men will continue to strut around and nothing would have changed.

Where is justice?
Now, look at another mockery of justice: The judgement given by the Bombay High court in the case of a 10-month old baby girl who was sodomised. The court actually reduced the sentence  handed out to Ramkishan Harijan, who worked as a labourer with a brick-trader in Mumbai, from 10 years to seven.years, accepting his contention that "he lost control over himself as he was living away from his family".

The Indian Express reports that in his judgment, Justice M L Tahaliyani also said that the six years Harijan had already spent in jail be taken into account. “Trial judge was aware of the fact that the appellant (Harijan) was married and (had) two children and his family was staying in Uttar Pradesh... No doubt, this by itself may not be a reason for lenient sentence. However, had it been considered in the proper perspective, the learned trial court probably would have imposed lesser sentence than 10 years,” Justice M L Tahaliyani wrote in his judgment recently. Click here for earlier shocking judgements.

Increase the sentence, keep the man locked up, for he is a beast and cannot be trusted among humans
Why should the fact that the man is married and has children reduce the sentence? In fact, there is all the more reason to free the wife legally from such a man so that she and the children have nothing to do with him. If the man is so deranged to force himself on a neighbour's child, a  10-month old baby at that and injuring her so brutally that she was left bleeding from her private parts, just think of the danger he would pose to his own wife and children. Think how cruel he could be with them over whom he has more control. So, there is all the more reason for the court to increase the period of the sentence so that he poses no threat to his own and other children. And arrange psychaitric counselling for him. For only a totally depraved and deranged being (I cannot call him human) can act in this way with a baby.

You might like to read-
Chemical castration for rapists, why not?

Singapore court awards 30 years to a child rapist

Thirty years in jail for raping a child. This is indeed the kind of punishment that should be awarded to child rapists. Singapore shows the way. Read the story in Strait Times.

Contrast this with the punishment meted out to child molesters and rapists in India.

The Ruchika molestation case

The Ruchika suicide case signifies all that is wrong with the Indian system. And how it can be twisted by those in power, to harass simple law-abiding citizens.

SPS Rathore, a senior Haryana Police officer, used the system to play havoc with the lives of the Girhotra family, pressuring them to withdraw the charge of molestation the 14 year old Ruchika Girhotra had made against him. The result - the vivacious Ruchika, a promising tennis player, was forced to end her life, after her family was hounded for over three years following her complaint and her brother was tortured and false cases of auto theft slapped on him.

And what is the punishment that our judiciary system awards Rathore? Six months in jail and Rs 1000 as fine. That too after 19 years!

In fact, in this blog, all the reasons that led to Ruchika's sucide have been discussed in various posts.

First, a sullied police force - Haryana Police, one of the most corrupt in the country. Rathore as a senior police officer, molested the young girl after calling her to his office. It could have led to a rape, but for the arrival of her friend Aradhana, an eye witness to the case. After a complaint was filed against Rathore he went on to harass the family no end. Her friend, Aradhana, and her father have said that her school, Sacred Heart Convent, expelled her follwoing pressure from Rahore. The school has however denied bowing to any pressure. But the case still shows an education system that is most child unfriendly. The school should be like a child's second home. Ruchika had been molested. She did not have a mother. Her teachers should have stepped in, giving her the strength to cope with the trauma. But our education system does not put the child first, many of our top schools are money making rackets open to being exploited by the powerful. If all the teachers and the management of the school had decided that they would stand by the child, Ruchika could have been saved. Aradhana tells us that after the school expelled her, the once vivacious Ruchika went into a shell. The school failed her.

After Rathore had a string of auto theft cases slapped against Ruchika's brother, had him arrested and tortured, the family, which was well settled in Panchkula, was forced to shift to another city as the police, who is supposed to protect, had turned predators. One wonders why Ruchika's neighbours did not protest? Why couldn't they have demanded action against Rathore? And why the management of the Gymkhana club where Ruchika was molested by Rathore, did not throw Rathore out after the charge was made against him? The fact that two teenaged girls had penned a complaint against him, should have been reason enough. Young girls do not go around saying they have been molested, and the complaint should have been ground enough to remove Rathore from the helm of a gymkhana where young girls were coming to play. So the third failure was that of the civil society. Why don't we protest a wrong being done to our neighbour?

What do you call a police officer who tortures children? Is there a word for it? The departmental inquiry against him soon after the crime, which had found him guilty, was put into cold storage and ignored by the state's top politicians. Instead of seeing that the complaint was speedily looked into and the man punished, the political bosses promoted him. He went on to become the DGP of Haryana police. The political system failed the young girl.

It took the complainants nine years to lodge an FIR! And 19 years for the courts to pronounce Rathore guilty! And a sentence of six months of imprisonment and Rs 1000 as fine was awarded to the guilty man. An absolute failure of the judicial system. Our laws do not recognise that a child can be molested.

Thank God for the free press that we have. The only reason it is being given another look is because the television channels took it up, providing regular updates. The public was aghast. The pressure has built up. The case is being given another look. The critics call it trial by the media, but when institutions fail to deliver, it is the media that shows the society what has happened. Like a mirror, it shows the way things are.

The vile men of religion

God help us from these men of religion.
You find these sorts everywhere.
Two stories below – one from India and the other from Ireland!
Does anyone have any views on why men who claim to show us the path to God, resort to abusing children?

First, the story from India.
A court in Kerala has sentenced self-styled Godman Swami Amrithachaithanya alias Santhosh Madhavan to 16 years rigorous imprisonment for raping two minor girls. He ran an orphanage, giving scholarships to orphan girls. This served as a smokescreen for the child abuse he indulged in.
The second story is about the bishops who regularly abused children in Ireland.
The children were regularly abused in the religious schools in Ireland run by the Roman Catholic Church. A nine-year investigation by Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse recently published its final results. The commission paints a horrible picture of these schools. “Sexual abuse was endemic in boys’ institutions,” states the Executive Summary of the report.

Why do these men of God do such things to children? Any answers?