Tags:
Journalism of Courage
What a ghastly start to the year. In that ongoing battle between Good and Evil, believe you me, Evil’s laughing all the way to the bank. It’s not just the revolting reports of the skeletal remains of children (God’s original innocents, anyone!) in Noida. It’s not just that they were born the wrong side of the tracks, so the system looked away. It’s not just that life is so damn cheap in this country.
What is also distressing, as any psychiatrist working in the field will tell you, is that paedophiles roam free — through the country, through our cities, in fact, through our very families. They roam free, at ease, because they are rarely called out (despite what you may think, given Monsoon Wedding).
There are some disturbing surveys which show that, most of the time, victims fear disbelief and that nothing will happen to their abusers. Most of the time, that is, when victims are not torn apart by the guilt that they internalise and the mind-numbing shame that they cannot quite shake off. The surveys show, and mental health experts agree, that the victims are right. Often, nothing is done, no action is taken — especially if it is that uncle or cousin or whoever is on the right side of the class/family divide. Except there is no right side, you see?
It’s all very well to avoid talking about abuse because it is a deeply uncomfortable topic, but it is a huge disservice to our children not to do so. To not talk about it, to not give them leeway to question the way grown-ups (or even older kids) behave, to not tell them to go with their gut — if something feels wrong, often it is. To not get help, even.
What doesn’t help is that we traditionally shy away from these topics. A few years ago, international authorities put Goa firmly on the paedophile map, right up there with Sri Lanka and Thailand. It was put down to cultural sensitivities that locals often would not remark on an elderly European tourist holding hands of a little boy, buying him candy or chocolate and escorting him around. So sweet, no? Though if it were a little girl, people would be more suspicious, it seems (unless they were cashing in on the perversity, and then the amiable foreigner would have to part with more money to fulfil whatever nasty fantasy). It is all very well to point at the perverted foreigners polluting our cultural landscape, but it is not as if our own perverts are not part of the problem. Just that, it seems, we are not wired to think “that” way. We’re not wired to have “that” conversation with our kids.
What a gruesome reminder that it is more than time that has changed.
