Child Sexual Abuse: How Will Boys Heal If We Don’t Let Them Cry?

We might be opening up about female rape cases in India, but what about our boys?

Photo: iStock (This image has been used for representational purposes only)

When boys are 7 to 10 years of age, they look forward to their first steps into adolescence and teenage. But often, their anticipation is shunted by the epidemic of child sexual abuse. A few days back, a 13-year-old in Bombay committed suicide. He battled for his life until he finally gave up on July 25, 2017. He managed to tell his mother that he was sexually abused along with his 10-year-old friend, who had also attempted suicide with him on July 12, 2017. According to an Indian Express report, the 10-year-old’s father had not allowed a post-mortem. In fact, he had mentioned the reason of death as dehydration, as per the analysis done by their family doctor. However, it was discovered that the 10-year-old also had consumed rat poison and was gang raped.

The news about an 8-year-old being raped by a sweeper in his school is equally hard to fathom. When his father asked him about the blood stains on his undergarments, he initially said that he slipped in the bathroom. But what created this initial distrust? Why do kids as young as 8 need further probing? Clearly, this is more about us, the society and parents.

As a survivor of gang rape myself, it hits me hard when memories come rushing in palindromic sequence, where I get a panoramic view of the whole scene in my head. It is a cathartic experience, but you need to live it. There is no escaping it. So, though you get upset and angry, over time you just learn to put your past in your past and live in your present.

I spoke up about my abuse in the late 90s. I didn’t know of any other survivor who was speaking openly about it at the time. It would have certainly helped to know more voices. However, as I spoke up, I had people coming in and sharing their stories with me in private.

“I didn’t know of any other survivor who was speaking openly about it at the time.”Photo: iStock (This image has been used for representational purposes only)

I was not surprised when in 2007 a report by the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare revealed that around 57% of children go through child sexual abuse, of which 54% are male.

I was happy that such a survey was conducted, but everything we didn’t do afterwards made me bitter about academic research.

Between 2007 and 2017, how much has the government done to make the male child safe? We had the POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences act) in 2012, which is gender neutral. That alone took five years! The ‘outraging a woman’s modesty’ is an 1860 law. Women, not girls. And it took so long for us to realise that boys too could have modesty?

I have been told many times to be strong, to not cry, to be brave, to not feel shy. Whereas my brother, who is exactly the opposite, was often labelled as “manly” and “macho”. The emphasis on machismo, not only made me feel like I was less of a man, but also less of a human being. The feeling of falling short of qualifying as a man, made me feel like a failure. So, I understand today that both, my manly brother who had to rise to the occasion and not explore his empathetic side, and the unmanly me who was more quiet and docile, are victims of patriarchy. Yes, victims of patriarchy are men themselves.

Many men, who have survived child sexual abuse, have been told “Why didn’t you beat him up? You are a man!”.Photo: iStock (This image has been used for representational purposes only)

Many men, who have survived child sexual abuse, have been told “Why didn’t you beat him up? You are a man!”. The “supporters” completely tend to forget that a child is only a child. Worse, people like my own father had asked me “if you were quiet for so many years, were you enjoying it?”.

It takes years for battered adult women and men in troubled marriages to speak of their trauma. What a child goes through is only worse. In the case of prolonged abuse, you just lose sense of your reflexes and feel more and more sucked into the dreaded silence of your noise. Why don’t we ask the adults, the parents and the guardians instead? Why didn’t you pick on the non-verbal signs your boys were showing? What makes you assume that boys are programmed to punch back and bounce back at every situation? And I want to ask news reporters, why do they use the word “raped” when it is a girl, but “sodomised” if it’s about a boy?

One post on twitter, and the focus completely shifts to the perpetrator. “Hang him”, “rape him”, “cut his dick” are template reactions. Like, things will change once you do that? If death penalty could make people safer, Saudi Arabia would be the safest place for women.

If we want to save lives we need to do something revolutionary. And anyone speaking their truth, living their truth, openly and unabashedly, becomes a part of that revolution. We need more of that, much more. People are speaking up now. Male survivors have names and faces too. They are speaking up now despite society trying to shame and blame them for their assaults.

Maybe this Raksha Bandhan, calls for the boys to tie rakhis to their sisters too. They need the protection just as much. As for society, it needs to open up to the reality that boys too can cry, and when they do, we must let them without shame.

(We all love to express ourselves, but how often do we do it in our mother tongue?
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