Child Sexual Abuse

Face of a child is the canvas to express his emotions where each shade of emotions appearing on his face pertains to some colour. Most unfortunately, colour of the sadness and pain too appears on this canvas with so many questions to ask, but what else an innocent soul can ask from God, anything more than a place so safe for that innocent mind.
As a famous proverb goes, ‘As you sow, so you reap’, but the goodness of this proverb is unexplainable in regard to the plight of mentally and physically exploited children, who get paid so harshly for their innocence. They are even deprived of their capacity to enjoy ‘childhood’ leading to immediate and long-term repercussions. There can be multiple aftermaths of abuse on children, which may include mistrust, withdrawal from people, emotional trauma, psychological problem, behavioural problem and suicidal tendencies.
Owing to the highest vulnerability and naivety on part of childhood persona, the childhood being the most cherished phase in man’s life sometimes becomes the most cursed and helpless phase.
These abused children are being constantly chased by horrifying dreams of past ruining their present. It’s the fear in their subconscious mind, which clutches their soul so badly that at the tender growing age of innocency, they are made to experience the fear-ridden plight of cruelty. For no sin of theirs, they end up paying heavy price, in terms of living life under the dark shadows of mistrust, fear and pain where trust and faith become mere words from alien land.
Life of those children become more of a hell gifted not by God but the very human beings who are far away from knowing human values. Those few psychopaths or morally errand people who make beautiful dreams of those tiny ones, a dreaded nightmare. It becomes more shameful when abuser is among known faces, it could be a trusted uncle, a family friend, or teacher, or worst of all, one’s own father. Thus ever-increasing cruelty of sinful mind snatches privilege of being innocent from younger minds that have yet to explore their world around.
To heighten the misery of fear stricken children, they are even unable to share their pain with their parents and friends. They are afraid of being laughing stock on disclosing their haunted dreams. They may just know that something is very wrong, but may be intimidated into keeping mum, and perhaps such children know that even if they do tell someone, they may not be believed on the contrary will be blamed.
That’s what stops them from sharing their pain with their very own people thus making children unable to overcome such crucial time.
The question arises whom to blame, the children who are afraid of sharing their misery or the parents who are not encouraging their children to come up with the issues haunting them so badly.
Here lies the responsibility of parents to help their children to come out of such crucial situation by showing concern and trust. If parents understand their children and encourage them to express themselves, the situation would not become so worse.
Redefining a positive self identity from a “damaged”self-image is not an easy task.It takes a whole gamut of courage and positive energies to bring old self back.It is important that parents reinforce positive image and inspire confidence in children. Parent should empower their children and have regular positive communication with them since children's feelings of esteem are highly influenced by their interaction with their parents. Besides, it is also important to take a more active approach to self-determination thus making children more assertive that can lead to warding off potential abusers at first place.
Most pathetically, child sexual abuse so far has been largely ignored by the Indian legal system. Yet, there is no separate law on Child sexual abuse. These Child abuse cases are still dealt with under the laws on rape and sexual molestation. And as there is no clear definition of sexual abuse, victims are mostly at the mercy of legal discretion. That only adds to the growing misery of the plight of those mentally and physically abused children and their families who sometimes find it more convenient to keep quiet due to lack of proper legal support, thus encouraging wrongdoers or perpetrators furthermore.
Moreover, due to sluggish legal system where even penalties are low, India is fast becoming a haven for international pedophile networks.
On the legal front, there is an ardent need of separate law on child sexual abuse keeping in mind the unique nature of such cases wherein the lack of evident definition leads to wrong doers getting away without being punished.
The child physical and mental abuse is an issue of great concern having prevalence worldwide. This being a dynamic and yet controversial issue demands a lot of inputs in terms of efforts to raise it to a platform for global perspective and make the search for solutions a meaningful endeavour.