Child Sex Abuse in India

Transcript of above news item:-
"A study into child abuse in India has found that more than half the children questioned said they had been sexually abused. Researchers spoke to more than twelve thousand children. Two-thirds said they'd experienced physical abuse. India's Minister for Child Development, Renuka Chowdury, called the findings disturbing and said it was time to end the conspiracy of silence surrounding child abuse. From Delhi, here's our South Asia correspondent, Damian Grammaticus:-
Of all the world's children an astonishing one in five live in India. Four hundred and forty million Indians are under the age of eighteen. Quite openly, many are used by adults, children made to labour in mines and factories, children made to beg on street corners or railway platforms, but there's a vast hidden problem of abuse too, according to this vast nation-wide study. Fifty-three per cent said they'd been sexually abused, mostly by a person known to them. But most of the children never reported their trauma, such is the taboo around the subject. Two-thirds of the children said they'd suffered physical abuse, in most cases being beaten by a parent or teacher. The government is now drawing up a new child protection law, but too late for millions whose childhood has already been lost."

The extremely revealing research was commissioned by the Ministry of Women and Child Development of the Government of India and carried out by independent researchers. It is supported by Save the Children and UNICEF and is a major and authoritative and highly representative social psychological study which goes into great detail and spans the whole of India: see the whole report in its systematic detail at http://www.wcd.nic.in/childabuse.pdf (If unavailable in future, click here)

Those engaged in bringing the facts to light about Sathya Sai Baba have long been pointing out the extreme taboo around the subject of child sex abuse, especially the many abuses so widely and credibly alleged by many of the injured parties about Sathya Sai Baba's sexual use of boys and young men.
Dr. Naresh Bhatia was a very close devotee and servitor of Sai Baba through many years and told the Daily Telegraph reporter, Mick Brown - plus various others who contacted him after he was banned from the ashram - that he had been a sexual partner of Sathya Sai Baba for years. He stated that he knew well that Sathya Sai had the sexual use of at least several of his college boys daily through many years! But because the prestige of so many gullible and self-seeking Indian politicians and judges, they have done everything to cover up the facts and have quashed all investigations and even a Supreme Court petition. Even Dr. Bhatia has - after physical threats - fallen silent and has been 'persuaded' by Sai officials not to dare to speak out further.

Fifty-three per cent of India's forty million children claim to have been sexually abused. That is over 20 million child victims!
The numbers surpass anything else in the world and are a tremendous indictment of India's education and childcare. How many sexual abusers are active in India, one may ask. Evidently, they number in the tens of millions. It is not irrelevant here at least to note that the Indian followers of Sathya Sai Baba - 99.9 % of whom totally avoid any mention or investigation of the sex abuse allegations against him also number in the millions! Following such a widely reported sex abuser - whatever else he may have done - over so many decades as God Incarnate and Creator of the Universe necessarily throws doubt on the human decency of those followers, now that the allegations have been so clearly presented and widely known about, also throughout the Sai movement (in which it is taboo even to read these allegation or think anything negative whatever about Sathya Sai Baba). And among these millions of followers there are several Indian Presidents and Prime Ministers, dozens of ministers and other high officials, high court judges and famous Indian people! This report - as unavoidably mentioned by Minister Renuka Chowdhury (also spelt Renuka Choudhury) - shows the world what is actually happening to children in India on a massive scale and is thus most lamentably a reflection on much of Indian life and culture today, not least the dangerous tolerance acceptance of sex molesting gurus and self-proclaimed deities and even the official recognition of one of them by the courts and former Congress politicians as 'an Indian national treasure'.

The report "Child Abuse India 2007" was - most laudably - prepared by Dr. Lovleen Kacker (IAS), Srinivas Varadan, Pravesh Kumar, supported by Dr. Nadeem Mohsin and Anu Dixit. Contratulations to them for this extensive and most sound and psycho-sociological investigation!