Poster #185 - Magnitude of Child Sexual Abuse in India: The Need of the Hour

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Sex, Gender

Integrative Statement

Background:

Information about sexual abuse among child and adolescents in India is very less and unexplored due to socio-cultural taboo, faulty and unattended concentrate by responsible department and man-made sensitiveness of issues related to it. There is big elephant in side room, no one is bothering or exploring i.e. child sexual abuse issues in India. Child sexual abuse is so rampant irrespective various child protect rights i.e POCSO (Prevention of Children from Sexual Offence, Act-2012), Juvenile Justice (J.J.) Act, 2015. Everyday, any national news paper or electronic media are given place for sexual abuse news in its main headline. Even, in the school atmosphere, few incidences also happened as reported in the various news channels. Minors are also raping children in many places in India. So it is a need of the hour to sensitize and make children more vigilant, skillful, and awareness about the prevention of child sexual abuse in India.

Methods: A case study of all Class IX-XII students in senior secondary school in a rural State of India (n =404) was conducted . Two sets of questionnaires were developed for this study, one set for students covering the entire adolescent and educational issues at school level and another one for teachers. The schedules piloted in collaboration with the adolescents, school teachers and principal, elicited information on education, reproductive health, sexual behaviours and the experience of violence and sexual abuse.

Results: Twenty three percent of adolescents had experienced some form of sexual abuse in studied school. Sexual abuse experiences were associated with the experience of other forms of physical and bad touch or illegal verbal slangs. Coercive sex had been experienced by approximately 4 % of adolescents and this was done by known person to the child as reported by students. The main favourable conditions for sexual abuse are during social ceremony in family/society, in nuclear family, illiterate mothers, alcoholic fathers and brothers of that family. These adolescents had significantly poorer academic performance, more stress and hostile, poorer mental and physical health, greater substance abuse, poorer parental relationships and higher rates of consensual sexual behaviours. Sexual abuse found in both gender. Differences in risks were found for poor and non-poor school students; while poor adolescents were more likely to have experienced sexual abuse than non-poor adolescents (27.3% v. 12%), lower economic households girls were more likely to have experienced any form of sexual abuse than non-poor girls (35 % vs 14%). Five percentage of girls have already been engaged (social/traditional preparation for marriage) forcibly done by parents by this age (15 years) and it is found more among poor girl adolescents.

Conclusions: Abuse and violence in school-based adolescents is a common experience and is associated with too much stress, poor reproductive health and greater prevalence of risk behaviours. Interventions like adolescence education programme through which adolescent can get life skills for facing risky behaviours, engaged for improving their reproductive health, prevention of sexual abuse.

Author

• bijaya kumar malik, NCERT
  Presenting Author