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Why
The Kite Runner Matters
text: Amit
Desai
 As I read this wonderfully moving book my feelings and thoughts cruised through many planes – be it the political events described in the book, the madness of war, the suffocation inherent to class systems, the rootedness of culture and rituals, the story of migrants, the strength of human spirit and a number of equally important and moving issues.
But for me the deepest stirring that occured was with the devastating loss of innocence. Of children. The crushing of a tender spirit which hasnt yet fully flowered. And the psychological burden that its going to cause. sometimes for life.
Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). A subject crying for attention. A world wide phenomenon. Brought to light only when a story carries “news worthiness”. But the fact remains that sexual abuse of children exists everywhere. Only in the recent past has this heinous crime started getting some attention, through people who dared to speak up and through cases which were hard to ignore. In India still, however, this subject is still only discussed in a minority of urban homes and schools. That also in a way that skirts the real problem. For most people this does not exist. Or it’s a part of growing up. What’s there to talk about?
Some statistics below might give this the sense of gravity it deserves.
Excerpted from ‘Frontline’, Vol 20, Issue 21, October 11-24, 2003.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), one in every four girls and one in every seven boys in the world are sexually abused. But Lois J. Engelbrecht, a researcher working on the problems of child sexual abuse, quotes studies showing that over 50 per cent of children in India are sexually abused, a rate that is higher than in any other country.
The Delhi-based Sakshi Violation Intervention Centre in a 1997 study that interviewed 350 schoolchildren, found that 63 per cent of the girl respondents had been sexually abused by a family member; 25 per cent raped, and over 30 per cent sexually abused by the father, grandfather or a male friend of the family.
A 1999 study by the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences revealed that 58 of the 150 girls interviewed had been raped before they were 10 years old. RAHI, a Delhi-based organisation that provides support to victims of sexual abuse, reports that of the 1,000 upper and higher-middle class college students interviewed, 76 per cent had been abused as children, 31 per cent by someone known to the family and 40 per cent by a family member, and 50 per cent of them before the age of 12.
Child sexual abuse seems to be pervasive because it is hardly spoken about. And even if it is, there are hardly any legal measures to deal with it. Court proceedings, if things come to that level, are a long-drawn, traumatic process. This is what the abusers take advantage of. Data and statistics hardly exist, given that cases never get reported to the police. Most often, sexually abused children make no noise about their traumatic experiences.
It is this that encourages offenders. This secrecy has to be broken; by laying stress on talking to children about sexual abuse, listening to them, believing them, and recognizing symptoms such as physical complaints and behavioral and psychological changes. And bringing this topic up with children at the right age in homes and more importantly in schools.
What most people dont realise is once the issue is reported thats just the start rather than the end. What is most crucial is re-creating the emotional wholeness of the child. Support, love, deep caring and no judgement help. By any shot its a long journey that the abused child will have to make to become whole again. But its possible. There are countless stories which inspire.
Wish more books - fiction, non fiction, story books, schools text books and even media like magazines, newspapers, movies, television etc bring forth and deal with this grave and all pervasive issue. In a way that does not confuse the child, but empowers her. In a way that dont sensationalize but educate. Speaking up about it is not just one of the ways to bring to the forefront, rather it is the only way. A small attempt of that is through this article.
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