Break the Silence
on Child Sexual Harassment!
More than six months back, a class IV student
of a government school in Delhi returned home only to tell her mother that she
would not like to go to her school again because the Principal touches her in a
way she doesn’t like. The mother went to the school the next day which started
a chain reaction. A few other girl students also came forward to complain
against the wrongdoings of the Principal. It was only after the intervention of
some local activists, DCW (Delhi Commission for Women), National Commission for
Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), MLA etc that an FIR got registered after a
period of two months and police arrested the Principal under the POCSO (The
Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act, 2012.
Sexual offences against
children are not unaffected by the factors of class and caste of the victims.
In order to fight for justice victims have to run around administration and
courts which in turn depends upon their socio-economic conditions. In the case
mentioned above, one of the affected girl children had to leave her school and
the city. We are not even equipped to understand the mental and physical
repercussions of the whole incident on the girls; which may have happened or
happen in future. Media’s seriousness in reporting such cases is again determined
by the fact that whether the incident has happened in a big private school or
in a government school.
Recently, many cases of
sexual harassment in schools have been reported in media; a Class X girl was
raped by a teacher for a year on the threat of failing her in exams in Chamba
in Himachal Pradesh; a British man who used to give funds to a school in Delhi
sexually harassed three of its blind children; a seven year old boy was killed in
an attempt to rape him in a big private school in Gurgaon.
Though
many of these incidents were successful in drawing attention of the administration,
media, and public on the issue of ‘child sexual harassment’, however most of
the measures suggested as solutions only create an illusion of ‘security’
instead of addressing the real problem. For instance, there is no mention of the
need of increasing gender sensitization in schools, building legal committees
and raising awareness about the same.
CCTV has garnered maximum
force in the hit list of ‘security measures’. It requires no social-political
effort to install CCTVs. Administration only has to spend public money to
benefit the private companies in buying these cameras. What is the surety that
the CCTVs installed in the name of ‘protection of children’ will not later be
used to harass teachers or that the recordings will not be misused for
peeping-eye purposes? The teaching-learning environment shall also get
adversely affected by the same.
It is a reflection of the
intellectual poverty of our times that schools will be taking psychometric
tests of the prospective employees to determine whether children would be safe
with them or not. How can we blindly believe something which itself is a matter
of debate in the discipline of Psychology? Another such proposed measure is
‘not to hire male teachers in girls’ schools’. Though it may appear as an easy
way out to protect girl children in schools but is it not unjustified to put
all male teachers under suspicion? All these measures are basically kneejerk
reactions from an administration which wants to appease the sensational media
and not indulge in any dialogue with the affected parties. Should there be no
difference in the manner in which we secure/take security measures in a jail, a
hotel and a school?
The safety of children is also linked with that economic
policy under which on one hand posts in government schools are not filled with
regular appointments and on the other hand education is handed over to the profiteering
private management. By outsourcing various school services to private bodies
which change their employees on a regular basis and allowing free hand to the
NGOs and philanthropic actors, conditions in schools are being made more
uncertain.
In
fact, sexual exploitation has a strong socio-politico-economic basis without
attacking which it cannot be put to end. In patriarchal societies, sexual
exploitation has been used as an age-old means to subjugate women. In such
societies, women and children are considered as lesser beings and their
sexuality is used as an ‘object’. The reality of our
society is that child sex-abuse exists as an organized crime under which every
year lakhs of young girls from the marginalized sections are forced into the
exploitative business of prostitution.
What girl-students do receive in the name of safety through
their childhood years is in fact the gift of surveillance and restrictions. Like
the wider society, even in
schools, much harsher disciplinary restrictions are imposed upon girls than
boys.
There
is a continuity across various forms of violence upon children which exists in
schools; such as, passing disparaging comments on their religion, culture,
economic condition, caste, gender and family or scolding and beating them
for ‘their own good’ etc. We will have to work hard to know the logic and
experiences of children, their fears and dreams, to find out when they feel
humiliated and when secure, for otherwise we will only remain filled with the
false pride of a dictator who claims to mean well.
Appeal
·
Do not
ignore any incident of child sexual-abuse and take just action. Develop a democratic
environment in classrooms so that students feel confident to share their
experiences of abuse or otherwise.
·
Oppose
elements of anti-women culture amongst ourselves and students.
·
Increase awareness on laws such as POCSO (2012) and
Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (2013) and put pressure on the
Department to implement all their measures in schools.
·
Wage struggle for the regular filling of all posts in
schools and resist privatisation-NGOisation.
