Child abuse

Child abuse is usually classified into three major types: physical, sexual and emotional. Each has recognizable characteristics. The indicators of physical abuse in the child are bruises, burns, fractures, lacerations and abrasions, abdominal injuries and human bite marks. The behavioral indicators of physical abuse are the abused child is wary of contact with adults, he /she becomes apprehensive when other children cry, show aggressiveness in behaviour, seem frightened of parents or caretakers and afraid to go home or cries when it is time to go home. Child sexual abuse has been defined as the involvement of dependent and immature children in sexual activities they don’t fully comprehend to which they are unable to give informed consent.

The Juvenile Justice Act 1986 defines child sexual abuse as interaction between a child and an adult in which the child is being used for the sexual stimulation of the perpetrator or another person. Sexual abuse is not often identified through physical indicators alone. A child can confide in a trusted person that she /he has been sexually assaulted. There are some physical signs of sexual abuse like difficulty in walking or sitting, pain or itching, bruises or bleeding, venereal disease and pregnancy in early adolescence. The sexually abuse child may appear withdrawn or retarded, may have poor peer relationships, may be unwilling to participate in activities, may indulge in delinquent behavior  Emotional abuse is the neglect or maltreatment of children. It may involve a disregard of the physical, emotional, moral or social needs of the children. Besides these there are social abuses of children like kidnapping and forcing them to beg in streets.How do we define modesty?                                                                

The major causes of child abuse are adaptational failure or environmental maladjustment mostly on the part of the adult perpetrators but to some extent on the part of adults responsible for family socialization as well. The dominant causes of battering children found in a study were children disobeying parents, quarrels between the parents and the child beaten as scapegoat, child not taking interest in studies, child spending time away from home, child refusing to hand over his total earnings to his parents/guardians and child indulging in deviant behavior like theft and smoking etc.The main causes for sexual abuse given are adjustment problems of the perpetrators, family disorganization, victim’s characteristics and the psychological disorders of the abusers. Four important causes of emotional abuse can be identified are poverty, deficient parental control and non cordial relations within family, maltreatment faced by parents in their own childhood or inter generational transmission of child maltreatment and alcoholism of parents.

There can be multiple effects of abuse on children like self-devaluation, dependency, mistrust, and re victimization, withdrawal from people, emotional trauma, deviant behavior and interpersonal problems.

According to The Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 1 defines “the child” as “every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier”.

In the Indian legal system, the child has been defined differently in the various laws pertaining to children.

The Indian Penal Code defines the child as being 12 years of age, whereas the Indian Traffic Prevention Act, 1956 defines a ‘minor’ as a person who has completed the age of 16 years but not 18 years. Section 376 of IPC, which punishes the perpetrators of the crime of rape, defines the age of consent to be below 16 years of age, whereas Section 82 & 83 of the IPC states that nothing is an offence done by a child under 7 years, and further under 12 years, till he has attained sufficient maturity of understanding the nature of the Act and the consequences of his conduct on that occasion.

There are very few sections under the Indian Penal Code that deal with child sexual abuse. Some terrible home truths are:

The laws for women are extended to include children.
The major weakness of these laws is that only penile penetration is considered a grave sexual offence. The crime is considered lesser when it is oral, or through penetration with an object.
Although section 377, dealing with unnatural offences, prescribes seven to ten years of imprisonment, such cases can be tried in a magistrates court, which can impose maximum punishment of three years.
If the abuse is repeated several times it affects children more severely, however as yet there is no law for repeated offenses against the one child.

How do we apply section 354, on outraging the modesty of women, with respect to children? 

The gravity of the offence under section 509, dealing with obscene gestures, is less. Yet even in such cases, the child’s psyche may be affected as severely as in a rape.