According to a study on child abuse, over half of all Indian children have endured one or more forms of sexual abuse.
In an effort to curtail this form of abuse, India’s Cabinet has approved a bill aimed at combating sexual abuse of children, but some activists do not agree with one of its provisions: raising the age of legal sex to 18 from 16. This, they say, could push parents to use the new law to sanction older teen’s sexual behavior. Likewise, police may use the law to harass couples. It may lead parents to file reports of rape even though a youngster had consensual sex and no crime has been involved.
At present, India does not have a specific law to protect children from sexual offenses. Current laws guard against sex with minors but prosecutions of abusers are rare. One of the major innovations of the new bill is to set up specific courts to try child abuse cases, which would get around massive backlog of cases in the court system.
The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Bill, 2011, seeks to protect children from offences of sexual assault, sexual harassment and pornography. Under the provisions of the bill, any sexual activity, even if consensual, with children under 18 years of age would be considered as rape and would be subject to prosecution. “In many ways, it would help in fighting the cases of human trafficking and rape,” said Ravi Kant, president of a human rights advocacy organization.
In general, activists welcomed the bill in a country with a massive child abuse problem, but they also question how successful the law will be in tackling child abuse. “A legal framework is necessary, but reality on ground can change only when the community is involved,” an official said. “India already has laws preventing children under the age of 14 from working but that hasn’t stopped child labor. The law will also be very difficult to apply when sexual abuse happens within the home. Very often we think laws are the solution to everything, but with incest it’s even more difficult to prove a crime.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal
