In a shocking incident, a senior official of the Women and Child Development department, Delhi government, was recently arrested on charges of raping his friend’s 14-year-old daughter (now 17) over months and impregnating her.
The official’s wife, who is accused of giving the survivor abortion pills, was also arrested.
Ironically, the official was the victim’s local guardian and the girl used to call him ‘mama’ (maternal uncle).
The accused had allegedly raped the girl several times between November 2020 and January 2021, when she was 14.
Delhi Police has also lodged an FIR against the accused and his wife on charges of rape under the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
According to the survivor, she started living with a family friend, her guardian, after her father’s death from October 2020 to February 2021. She was sexually harassed, physically molested and repeatedly raped by the uncle under whose care and guardianship she was staying at his house. The survivor started having anxiety bouts and was admitted to a hospital .
He added that the girl opened up about the sexual abuse to the doctors after extensive counselling.
She stated having panic attacks after undergoing the termination of pregnancy by the accused and his wife.
This incident affirms the fact that our girls are at risk from acquaintances at home and other known places where she ought to feel safe, rather than unknown places and people, who are perceived to be unsafe.
Our children are more often than not, victims of ‘acquaintance rape’.
Acquaintance rape is a sexual assault crime committed by someone who knows the victim. As a sexual assault crime, acquaintance rape includes forced, manipulated or coerced sexual contact. If someone has forced you to have sex, that is rape – even if you know the attacker.
Here are number crunching facts. As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) Crime in India report of 2021, a total of 43,414 cases of crime against women were registered, showing an increase of 22.9% over 2020 (35,331 cases).
According to the NCRB data, in 31,320 cases of rape, the offender was known to the victim, of which 2,780 were immediate family members, while in 15,972 cases, the offender was a family friend, neighbour, employer or other known persons. In 11,945 cases, the perpetrator was friend, online friend, live-in partner or separated husband.
The total proportion of unknown offenders was only 6.1 percent while percentage share of abuser known to the victim was a whopping 93.9 percent.
A study conducted by UNICEF revealed that 1 in 8 of the global children (12.7%) had been sexually abused before reaching the age of 18. A similar study by WHO (2022) estimated that up to 1 billion children aged between 2-17 years have experienced physical and sexual abuse with female victimisation 2-3 times higher than boys.
Being the basic unit of society, family plays a key role in child survival, protection, and development. The family is often equated with a sanctuary – a place where individuals receive love, protection, and shelter.
While it is naturally and constitutionally expected of parents and other members of the family to provide love, care, and protection to their children, this is not always the case. Gone are the days when children could feel parental love and discuss issues bothering them with their parents.
Worse, the sense of shame, guilt and damage to family reputation prevents the victim from opening up in front of her parents. The situation becomes even more difficult for the child to speak up if the offender is a very close blood relation like father, uncle or grandfather.
The mother tries to hush up the matter fearing repercussions. Consequently, the perpetrator takes undue advantage of this forced silence and continues to ravage his “prey” at every available opportunity.
The assault on the child’s modesty done at a young age by a relative, seeing the assaulter moving around freely leaves scars on their minds forever. The child gets into severe depression, tends to suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.
They tend to get nightmares, go into a shell and become introvert for life. The biggest victim here is trust. The world moves on trust. But if that trust is eroded, then the whole living seems meaningless.
Our politicians, the elders and the godmen who want to dominate the society with an iron fist, especially the women, should rather tell what is this culture they boast about, where our children are not even safe in their own homes?
While our daughters and sisters are bound with restrictions on going out after nightfall, not allowed to travel far from home for studies or work fearing for their safety, the irony is the threat lies right in their backyard. So, the question is, where do our children go? Is there any place in the world that is safe for them?
It’s high we realise that it’s our responsibility to protect our children, not destroy their lives forever.
