"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet,
They belong not to you."-Khalil Gibran

 
Dr. Sanjay Chugh, senior consultant psychiatrist, Delhi, says, "There are various definitions given to explain incestuous rape. However, incest is usually defined as sexual contact between persons who are so closely related that their marriage is illegal (e.g., parents and children, uncles/aunts and nieces/nephews). An incestuous rape would be when such a sexual relationship is carried out by force, without the consent of one person. Child sexual abuse often comes to light when childhood histories are explored and in most cases the perpetrator is a known person who is close to the family or inside the family."

Parents can be tyrants. The word ‘tyrant' is used in the sense of being totally in control of a situation, in the laying down of dictums and regulations and making sure an individual strictly adheres to them. Such manifestations happen when someone has absolute power over someone else. Parents have this power over their children. Since human beings are helpless at birth, they depend on their parents who brought them in the world, for every physical and emotional need, for protection from danger and death. Parents decide behavioural rules in a politico-social, pyramid-like structure, where parents are rulers and children, their subjects. For most parents, the initial euphoria of authority and power is so intoxicating that they find it difficult to give it up. Time, for them, stands frozen at the moment when the child was an infant. They refuse to let it take wings, test its strength against opposition, establish an identity of its own.

The three faces of power

Torture knows no geographical boundaries. Nor can it be ascribed to a single political ideology or to one economic system. It transcends barriers of age, class, language, caste, community, sex, race and blood. The strength that seems to create, sustain and promote the torture by one individual, or a group of individuals on another, is power. This power may be visible in direct action - physically, verbally or emotionally. The second face of power is seen in attempts to stifle an issue as it emerges. Or, in attempts to redefine or reshape an issue into something less threatening. The third face of power is the hardest to discern. This is used to manipulate people's perceptions in such a way that they are unaware of having a grievance and naturalise it within themselves. The history of oppression of children by parents and family is littered with examples of all three faces of power.

This power is the weapon Kishore Chauhan of Mira Road near Mumbai misused and abused to rape his daughter for nine long years. 50-year-old Chauhan is just the tip of a massive iceberg called incestuous rape. She bore the torture in silence because her mother persuaded her, telling her that this would rescue the family from financial ruin. Had her mother raised her voice against this heinous practice, it would not have made any difference to the father's attitude towards his daughter. This, however, does not absolve the mother from being party to the crime. The excuse used was that a tantrik/astrologer/numerologist named Hansmukh Rathod had advised the father that raping the daughter would correct his business gone wrong. He also systematically raped this girl himself! Following the Mumbai sisters' revelation, a 21-year old college student in Amritsar saw television news coverage and gathered the courage to complain about her father who sexually abused her for eight years. The girl's traumatized mother who knew about it all along said, "My husband would always find a pretext to send me away so he could be alone with our daughter." Likewise, a 15-year old's complaint of prolonged sexual abuse by her father led to the 35-year-old father's arrest in Nagpur.

The Mira Road Incestuous Rape Case
To trace our steps backwards, on March 18, Kishore Chauhan, his wife Anjana and the tantric Hansmukh Rathod were arrested after the girls approached their maternal uncle Vijay Parmar and their grandmother. They lodged a complaint with the police. From November 2008 Rathod began to rape the younger daughter of the Chauhan's too and this drove the older sister to talk to her maternal uncle and grandmother. In a chilling account, the traumatised older daughter who was first raped by her father when she was only 12, said, "You ask me why I kept quiet all these years. I was under constant surveillance. My parents used to call me on the cell phone and ask me to return home immediately even if I stepped out of the house for ten minutes. I had absolutely no freedom. But when they set on my sister, I knew I had to stop them at any cost." But despite her best intentions, her 17-year-old younger sister could not be saved from the tantrik's lust. Though the experience of being raped and abused by her own father for nine long years has numbed her to some extent, it has not taken away her sense of justice. "I want my father and the tantrik to be hanged. They do not deserve to live. No one should be forced to undergo such trauma," she says.

Dr.Yusuf Macchiswala, psychiatrist, J.J. Hospital, Mumbai, says, "This is a case of sexual perversion. The tantrik forced his desire on the follower so that he could perform the same act in future. They are sexually hyperactive and are involved in weird sexual acts like group sex. Tantriks and quack astrologers take advantage of depressed and frustrated people and sometimes even drug or hypnotise their followers to put them through such acts." But according to the officers interrogating the criminals, the three accused are not repentant about their heinous crime. They are even talked about ‘compensating' for their crime with an offer of marriage of the younger daughter with tantrik Rathod's son!

The Indian problem is unique because incest in the country is not consensual. It is rooted in physical force and political power which the abuser uses as his strategy to pressurize his victim, in this case, his daughter. K. Anand, a Chennai based psychoanalyst, cites the tragedy of a patient who was abused by her uncle when she was just ten. "It turned out that the person was sexually deprived by his wife who was a god-woman of sorts. But while it does not exonerate such persons, it also helps us place things in perspective. From a victim's point of view, everything boils down to guilt, self-hatred and a feeling of loss. In some ways, our much vaunted spirituality itself could be said to be entwined with sexuality. There are cults wherein the devotees are required to perform sex in front of tantriks. What happened in the Mira Road businessman's case is an example," he says.

The Conspiracy of Silence
Sigmund Freud concealed that many of his female patients were suffering the trauma of sexual abuse by their own fathers. Freud suspected that incest was endemic at all levels of Austrian society. But he was also deeply concerned at the unsettling effect such as assertion would have on then-prevailing, patriarchal family values. As in several psycho-medical matters, the re-discovery of incest, till then swept under the carpet, occurred in North America. The so-called Kinsey Report of 1953 disclosed that 24 per cent American girls had been abused by a male relative and that the average age of such abuse was at nine-and-a-half. A later study suggested that the number of abused was higher though this was disputed by a 1978 report which also found that six per cent of the aggressors was female. These studies maintained that eight to 30 per cent of boys between 11 and 15 were abused by their own families. Over 80 per cent of aggressors were male and 16 per cent were female. Court and clinical records from Europe and America show that over 90 per cent of incest prosecutions involve a father-daughter relationship. Medical evidence suggests that while many children are not permanently damaged by sexual contact with adults, there is a constant risk of lasting psychological harm. This embraces anxiety, depression, loss of self-esteem and sexual inhibition in later life. A tendency towards repeated victimisation such as rape can also arise.

"Besides the shame of rape, women, particularly children, fear that no one will believe them. This holds especially true of incest, where the girl is dependent on her family," said Soniya Gill of the All-India Democratic Women's Association, adding that such cases often go unnoticed because society does not take a sympathetic view and tends to hold the girl responsible. Another expert pointed out that most victims keep quiet for fear that their tormentors might become more abusive if they complained. Lakshmi Lingam, professor of Women's Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai says "information on laws, help lines and women's groups need to be spread through schools, colleges and public transport. Our education system needs to identify signs of abuse in girls so that they can guide them to report the crime as well as seek help. Some police stations with special women's cells have officials trained and sensitised to deal with such cases and girls should be made aware of these support systems." Psychiatrist Anjali Chhabria is not surprised by the prolonged silence of the victims of Kishore Chauhan in India and Josef Fritzl in Austria who remained silent, one for nine years and the other for 24 years. "The victim should blow the whistle immediately. If the attacker is allowed to sustain his power over one victim, he may be emboldened to turn on another member of the family," she says.

Past Cases
On March 28, 1986, 14-year-old Noorjehan was choked to death by her father. Her mother was away at work and she was studying at home when her father tried to molest her. In April 1986, Kadar Mistry was caught red-handed by his neighbour while raping his daughter. The neighbours thrashed him severely, smeared his face with tar, garlanded him with chappals and took him around the neighbourhood. 16-year-old Vilasini was murdered and buried by her father after she complained to the police that he had tried to molest her. He had remarried after her mother's death.

In August 2006, the Nala Sopara (Mumbai suburb) police arrested Satish Chaurasia for sexually abusing his daughter and subsequently getting her pregnant. The girl studied in Std. VI of a municipal school. Chaurasia is reported to have raped his daughter whenever his wife left home for work. The matter came to light when Chaurasia tried to get the foetus aborted. The same year, the Tarapur police arrested Nitin Raul (45) for raping his foster daughter. The 13-year-old victim became pregnant but the abuse continued. In August 2008, the Virar police arrested Rajendra Yadav (29) for molesting his 12-year-old niece during a game of hide-and-seek. The girl had been living with Yadav after her father died in the 7/11 blasts. Ujwala's (30) parents are both in the administrative services. She has vague memories of a young servant abusing her sexually when she was three and her parents were posted in Kanpur. At that time, she did not understand what was happening. But since it hurt her physically, she decided to confide in her mother. But her mother brushed it aside and did not do a thing about it. This has had such a traumatic effect on the girl that she even refuses therapy because she does not feel she needs help! "My world cracked up at that moment since, like all children, I thought my parents were God!"

Eleven-year-old Raja acts as if he is 24. He was sexually abused by his uncle since he was five. The horrified child complained to his parents only to be rebuffed with disgust and disbelief. Since then, lacking any catharsis, he has withdrawn into himself. He feels like the perpetual outsider in school, since none of the other children can relate to his experience. They think he is peculiar and ignores him. "The rejection by his parents who accused him of lying has caused a mental block in the boy. The systematic abuse by his uncle for which Raja blames himself has led to his alienation and lack of self-worth. He has considered suicide many times," says psychiatrist Dr. Chandrika Narayan.

The most tragic case is that of 14-year-old Naseema who lived with her parents and brothers in Kurla, a Mumbai suburb. Her father raped her three times because of the superstitious belief that he would be cured of his STD if he had sex with a virgin who had not attained puberty. The heinous act did not cure him but infected the girl instead. When the father learnt of the daughter's affliction, he bore no guilt or remorse. He was furious and sold the ‘expendable' girl to a brothel madam for Rs.500! Naseema's mother and brothers could do nothing to save her. She was later rescued by a NGO from the brothel but by then, she was too sick with the disease and had to be placed under intensive care at a Mumbai hospital.

Coercion and Emotional Pressures
The abusive parent or relative coerces the child into participating by using threat, bribes, lying and taking advantage of the trust the child places on him/her. The abuser is more powerful than the abused in terms of age, intelligence and control over the child - financial, emotional and physical. Even after being exposed, "it is a tough realization for the family. Very often, people choose to live in denial and skirt reality. This crystallizes the tendency to block our feelings. We need to face reality as it is and cope with it instead of running away from it. In dealing with it, one allows the self to go through the painful emotions and resolve the conflicting feelings thereby trying to free oneself of the responsibility of coping. It should be talked about openly, with professional help being sought to deal with the victim's pain," explains Dr. Chugh.
In Bitter Chocolate - Child Sexual Abuse in India (Penguin, 2000) her investigative book on child sexual abuse focused on incest, journalist Pinky Virani details countless stories of boys and girls whose innocence was violated by members of their families - parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin and sometimes, even close family friends. In most situations of incestuous rape, the victim is reduced to a point of total submission either through subtle terror techniques manipulated by the abuser, or through open threat. If and when the child plucks up the courage to talk about his or her experience, he or she is hushed into silence firstly, for fear of social ostracism, and secondly, as an escape route because the one complained to, usually the mother, does not know how to resolve the problem without an open confrontation which she is not generally equipped to do. The most horrendous cause for not listening to the child is sheer disbelief! Virani recounted her personal experience where her mother did not believe her. When help comes, it at all it comes, it is often too late.
Sowmya's father began to abuse her sexually since she was a girl of ten. "When my mother died, it only got more convenient for him. It was sickening, but then he was my dad, who also showered affection on me and took care of me...But at the first opportunity, I left him. I didn't realize then, the man I chose was worse. He was too violent. I could not handle it. I was reminded of my father, again and again," she says. It is difficult to guess how violent the man was or whether it was the trauma of her childhood that prevented Sowmya from trying to sort out her problems with her husband.
A report from RAHI, (Recovering and Healing from Incest), a Delhi based NGO working with child sexual abuse titled Voices from the Silent Zone, suggests that nearly three-quarters of upper and middle class Indian women are abused by a family member - more than often by an uncle, a cousin or an elder brother. Anuja Gupta, founder-executive director of RAHI says, "Not legislating a strict punishment amounts to the law reiterating that it is not a serious issue. If stringent punishment were made legal, then it has to be accepted that incest exists. But we don't even want to admit that. It is treated more like an aberration so there is no harsh punishment. This is true across the world and it is a terrible truth to own up to."

The Social Angle
A study by the Family Planning Association of India stated that at least one out of six boys and two out of four girls in India are abused. This study explodes the myth that children are in safe hands in the company of people they know. Because almost in 80% of such cases, children are abused by adults or older children they know, trust or loves and who can influence their behaviour by exerting power over them. The study shows that both boys and girls are vulnerable. A Tata Institute of Social Sciences study in 1985 revealed that one out of three girls and one out of 10 boys had been sexually abused as a child. Fifty per cent of child sexual abuse happens at home. In 1996, Samvada, a Bangalore-based NGO, conducted a study among 348 girls. 15 per cent were used for masturbation mostly by male relatives when they were less than 10 years old. Seventy- five per cent of the abusers were adult family members.

Vidya Reddy, who runs Tulir-CPHCSA (Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse) in Chennai, says, "Most people imagine abusers to be shadowy and frightening strangers with a psychiatric disorder." In fact, often an abuser is a "regular" person who leads a ‘routine' life and is known to the victim, but has no inhibition or qualms over having sex with children." This truth has been reinforced in the Mira Road case because neighbours and local residents who know Chauhan well, were shocked by the revelation because he appeared to be a decent and well-behaved person in the neighbourhood. Possibly, the tight-knit family structure, the domineering role of the fathers and uncles, the submissiveness of women who are mute witnesses to gross injustice and the ingrained tendency not to allow "family shame" to be exposed whatever the cost, are factors that help the abusers get away with it all

Chennai-based sexologist Dr Narayana Reddy says that incest is contextually different in India. "It is customary in our culture for uncles to marry nieces. Technically speaking, that is also incest. We just need to use the term carefully. But beyond that, I would say incest is prevalent in India and there should be a separate legislation to handle the crime. But at times, the offenders too have psychological problems." Some experts opine that most children, who are sexually abused when they were small, go on to repeat their experience with someone younger when they grow up because it the sexual violation gives them a sense of power, something they lost when they were abused as children. Dr. Chugh adds, "The psychological harm on the victim is massive as it evokes doubts, raises questions for which answers are not easy to get. The victim may suppress emotions or be filled with feelings of rage, guilt and shame. It is difficult for such victims to trust others later on in life. With due counselling, the victim must be made to realize and understand that what happened was not his/her fault and thus not to indulge in blaming oneself. The victim needs to stand up for himself/herself and not to allow the trauma to make them psychologically and socially weak. Active social support from family, friends, guidance centres and counsellors can bring the victim's faith in the goodness of human beings back."

The deathly beast of incest covers every strata of society, contrary to common belief that it proliferates in slums and ghettos because of penury and confined spaces. Clinical psychologist Narendra Kinger has treated cases involving prominent business families. He says there are children being abused by the father, a trusted uncle or aunt, family driver or servant. The abuse can go on for long periods. Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding throws up a tacit example. "The only thing the molester or rapist needs is access to the child, and the absence of suspicion if not implicit trust. In one case, the victim had written graphic details of the abuse in her personal diary, which the mother knew existed, but did not pry into on grounds of invading the child's privacy. Sometimes, a twisted mind may even interpret the silence as consent," says Kinger. "The curious paradox of ‘family honour' is used as a political strategy to engineer and sustain a cover-up in affluent families. Relatives try to keep up the pretence of a happy household even as they intimidate or hush the child into submission," says journalist Bella Jaisinghani.

Questions
Experts opine that most children who are battered, abused and molested go on to repeat their experience with someone younger since it gives them a feeling of power which they lost when they were molested. Unlike in the USA, where child abuse is an offence and cases of child abuse have to be reported to the authorities, in India, there is no such provision. Reporting the incident to the police is a temporary answer to the problem. It does not solve it. Counselling abusive and tyrannical parents is no answer where parents do not even realise that they are abusive towards their children. So, how can one counsel them? Should they be counselled? Or should they be tried and imprisoned for their crime?

The infamous case of government under-secretary Satish Mehra is a striking example of the judicial machinery's absolute patriarchal bias in cases of child abuse when it happens within the family. Satish Mehra, the under-secretary, was accused of repeated sexual abuse of his eight-year-old daughter since she was three years old. The abuse involved vaginal and anal penetration with a finger and forcing the child to have oral sex. Neither the district court, nor the high court nor was the Supreme Court willing to acknowledge any of the penetrations as rape. On the contrary, the observations by the Supreme Court were shocking in their repeated allegations against the mother of the little girl. They accused the mother of suffering from ‘some peculiar psychiatric condition.' They said that the accusation levelled against Mehra was ‘seemingly incredulous.' They said these were ‘concocted to wreak vengeance' on her husband. Vengeance for what? If it was vengeance for raping the little girl does this not imply that he was guilty of the crime?

The mother of the little girl however, cannot be absolved of guilt. How could a mother of a three-year-old female child fail to notice that her girl is being repeatedly sexually abused by her father for five long years? Her guilt as an ‘indifferent' and ‘naive' mother is no less than that of the father himself. Which however, is no clean-chit given to the openly biased judicial machinery of the country! Yet, laments lawyer Niti Dikshit, "the problem with the existing law on child sexual abuse is that there is no existing law on this." According to American sociologist James Ramey, official recognition and punishment of incest prove more harmful that the effects of the incest itself. Others reject the evidence of victims as ‘unrepresentative' and cite incest partners who appear ‘loving, happy and well-adjusted.' The Mehra case gives the lie to the contention that incest is universally outlawed with penalties that variously include heavy fines, imprisonment and execution. This ‘lie' is given social and legal sanction by declaring that Mehra's sexual abuse of his daughter was not incest at all since the word ‘penetration' does not connote penetration with any foreign object! Should this not be brought within the purview of law? Parental torture of the child, emotional, physical and sexual, is a gross violation of human rights violation. Parental tyranny extending to child abuse is in no way less than custodial torture, rape and death by an inside agency like the family and parents.

There is just a single case of a Nagpur slum housewife who killed her husband with the grinding stone when she came back from work and caught him red-handed raping her 11-year-old daughter. She surrendered to the local police and confessed to her crime but was later acquitted on grounds of having committed the murder to defend her daughter.

Legal Loopholes
Incest is the most under-reported child rights and human rights violation in India. We do not have a single law that specifically deals with child abuse, and there is no clear delineation of sexual abuse in the Indian Penal Code. Indian laws consider only "assault to outrage the modesty of a woman," rape by penile penetration, and "unnatural sexual intercourse" like sodomy as punishable sexual crimes. Custodial rape, an amendment introduced in 1983 that included policemen, hospital and prison staff who abused women in their custody they were culpable for. But it did not include sexually abusive fathers, uncles, cousins and brothers for whom, sexual abuse is the worst form of custodial rape. The Delhi High Court is considering framing guidelines for conducting investigation and prosecution in crimes relating to incest in the wake of several incest cases surfacing at present. Ms. Sudha Ramalingam, lawyer and activist with the People's Union for Civil Liberties believes that the existing laws would suffice to punish the perpetrators of crimes like incest and CSA. Ramalingam points out that if a father perpetrates abuse on his daughter, he could well be arrested for custodial offences. "But in a society like India, the family wants to protect both the perpetrator and the victim. That is why most of such crimes go unnoticed. They are anxious to protect the child's future and safeguard the reputation of the family. The psychological and physical impact it would have on a child is rarely taken into consideration."

Lawyer and women's rights activist Flavia Agnes does not agree. She says, "In most cases of sexual abuse, it is the father who is responsible for the heinous crime. He is the custodian of the child. So a case of custodial rape should also look at the father as a suspect. Somewhere, we do not want to interfere with our family values and choose to keep quiet about such cases." The tight-knit family structure, the domineering role of the fathers and uncles, the submissiveness of women who are mute witnesses to gross injustice and the ingrained tendency not to allow "family shame" to be exposed whatever the cost, are factors that help the abusers get away with it all. Agnes says that in 1983, amendments were made in Section 376 of the IPC (sexual assault including rape) to deal with policemen, prison and hospital staff who raped a woman in their custody. "At the time we said that fathers should be included as a category as well because the children are in his custody. But the government did not listen as it felt we were questioning the sanctity of the family as an institution. I feel that the State and our society should remove its blinkers on this issue and frame laws to protect children," she says.

"Such acts do not fit the conventional definition of a crime because the motive of the criminal is not that of a normal person facing trial. They are more reflective of psychological depravity. So, while discussing the legal issues to deal with such cases, we need to look more at the preventive aspects than at the punitive ones," says IPS-officer-turned-lawyer Y.P. Singh. Though rehabilitation of the victim has been ignored, in the Chauhan case, money is pouring in from many quarters and the police have opened an account in the name of two girls while their three maternal uncles have expressed their desire to be their guardians.

In a famous legal-awareness television serial Bhramar some years ago, where real life legal cases were fictionalized, one story explored the true case of a daughter getting pregnant by her abusive father. For fear of social ostracism and public scandal, the parents decided to poison the 14-year old girl. The paternal grandfather was sole witness to this diabolic murder and complained to the police. But the man went off scot-free because he had other children and if he was to go to prison, the family would be orphaned! Last year, a Mumbai court let off a father who raped his daughter for years because his ‘alleged' crime - incest - was not recognized as a punishable offence!

Provisions
Article 39 of the Indian Constitution that addresses itself to child abuse, states, "young children are not to be abused and are to be protected against moral and material abandonment." The various Child Welfare Acts provide for the prevention of cruelty to children and also for the care, welfare and rehabilitation of abused children. The law against cruelty (Juvenile Justice Act, 1986) can only be initiated with the approval of an officer of the state government permitting for moderate punishment. The National Policy for Children, 1974, states: "Children shall be protected against neglect, cruelty and exploitation" but few are even aware of these provisions, including the legal, judicial and executive machinery, appointed among other things, specifically to prevent, monitor and execute action against such cruelty.

The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (1993) emphasized that ‘one of the most atrocious violations against human dignity is the act of torture, the result of which destroys the dignity and impairs the capability of victims to continue their lives and their activities' (para.55.) This applies precisely to the sexual abuse of children by custodial authorities in power vested with the faith and the goodwill to take care of them. For most people who hold custody over children, including parents, the initial euphoria of authority and power is so intoxicating that they find it very difficult to give it up. Time for them stands frozen at the moment when the child has been handed over to them for caretaking. But can these provisions be applied within the matrix of the Indian family?

Conclusion
Sanjay Chugh says, "Different theories attribute different reasons for the existence of such an act. There could be psychological factors which drive people to carry out such indiscriminate behaviour. Factors such as the perpetrators own life traumas, emotional distress like frustration, aggression, personal inadequacy, low self - esteem, pathological personality traits are very often understood as causes that lead to child sexual abuse and other forms of incest."

Shot in India, Sri Lanka, Canada and the US, The Children We Sacrifice, directed by Grace Poore and produced by SHaKTI Productions, is a 61-minute video documentary that explores the universal crime of incestuous sexual abuse through the prism of South Asian experience. Through stories by women abused from as young as two, the 61-minute video looks at the social and cultural resistance to dealing with incest and how it affects South Asian women across two continents. It is not a sensationalist treatment of the women who share their stories of abuse but a celebration of their struggle and resilience. It is a moving validation of a deeply camouflaged issue. The film won the 2000 Rosebud Award and the 2001 Creating A Voice Award. It featured in the International Women's Film Festival in Korea, United Nations Women's Film Festival in New York City.

Parental tyranny and torture are multifaceted and have several dimensions. Such torture can be insidious, as in the D.H.Lawrence novel Sons and Lovers, where the mother's obsessive love for her sons Paul and William cripples their adult life. They are unable to form satisfying relationships with the women they meet. Their mother assumes the role of a tyrant not because her love for them is excessive, but because it is fatally flawed, possessive and all-consuming. In his magnum opus, The Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust recalls a childhood spent vainly waiting for his parents to leave their guests in the living room to come kiss him goodnight. The opening, claustrophobic chapters sensitively evoke an infancy spent in mortal terror of his parents.

INFORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shoma A. Chatteri won the second prize in Human Rights Defence Essay competition 2008 for this essay. She is a freelance journalist and author based in Kolkata, India. She holds a Ph.D. in History and writes prolifically on ciinema, gender issues, human rights and child rights for around ten Indian print media and electronic publications. She has authored 16 published books till date and has been writing for 30 years.

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Sunday, 28 June 2009

BOX
• ‘Profanilia' in Columbia has undertaken task of training both parents and teachers and educates to identify individual victims of Child Sexual Abuse;
• ‘Inppares' in Peru and ‘Media Alert' in Nepal have made documentary/feature film to expose realities of Child Sexual Abuse to children in school;
• ‘Zamokhula' in Sowato, South Africa has successfully integrated medical, psychological services with legal aid;
• ‘Human Resources Development Foundation' in Turkey has curriculum to train future teachers in Child Sexual Abuse issues,
• ‘BENFAM' of Brazil has adopted a multi-disciplinary approach to confront child sexual abuse.