parcha: Break the Silence on Child Sexual Harassment

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.