Hyderabad: Sexual abuse of children is increasingly becoming a major concern in the city. More disturbing is the fact that many of these abuse cases continue to go unreported, police officials say.
In most of the crimes that are not reported or talked about, children are abused by a cousin, an uncle or even worse, a teacher, senior police officials said to an english news paper.
“Sexual abuse of children is rampant in the world we live in. But unfortunately, our society refuses to acknowledge the fact. Some cases are brought to light after several years of isolated psychological trauma endured by the children,” Vishy Teki of Communication Resource Center (CRC), who recently directed a film on the issue, said. “The worst part is, instead of standing by the child, parents try to silence the matter by asking the child not to speak about it to anyone,” he said.
According to Additional Commissioner of Police Swati Lakra, 152 cases of sexual abuse of children were registered here between May 2016 and April 2017, under the provisions of Protection of Children against Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
“Regardless of their gender, or where and whom they live with, all children are vulnerable to sexual abuse. Most cases do not come to light because parents fear social stigma,” she said adding that people must know that even boys were being sexually abused.
“Boy child abuse instances are brushed under the carpet for various reasons. People should come forward to report these cases,” the Additional Commissioner said.
Owing to a slew of child sex abuse cases that emerged in the last one year, the Hyderabad City Police, under the initiatives such as Bharosa and SHE teams, is conducting outreach programmes.
“We have case workers and professional counsellors visiting schools, slums and other residential areas to make parents and teachers understand that the child will have a devastating and long lasting effect if they do not come out to report these crimes,” Swati Lakra said.
Children subjected to such crimes were counselled at Bharosa, which had officials trained to take necessary measures to bring the child out of the trauma through sustained professional counseling.
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