7,200 children raped in India every year: the panel discussion that asked why

The moment

In February 2013, two things collided. Sitarist Anoushka Shankar publicly revealed she had suffered sexual and emotional abuse as a child "at the hands of a man my parents trusted implicitly," while backing the One Billion Rising campaign. And Human Rights Watch released an 82-page report, "Breaking the Silence: Child Sexual Abuse in India" (February 7, 2013), calling the abuse of children "disturbingly common" and the government's response inadequate. Around the report's release, Indian media cited figures of more than 7,200 children raped every year — with activists believing the real number far higher.

CNN-IBN's Sagarika Ghose convened a panel to ask the obvious question: is child sex abuse in India far more widespread than we admit? The panelists were Harish Iyer, himself a survivor turned activist; Vidya Reddy of Tulir, the Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse; Bharti Ali of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights; and advocate Utsav Bains.

The abuser is usually known

Harish Iyer's testimony set the tone: his abuser, like Anoushka Shankar's, was someone his family trusted. "It cuts across barriers of age, gender," he said — he was a boy abused by a man — "it is more to do with the fact that children are more vulnerable." The panel agreed on the pattern: the danger is rarely the stranger. It is the relative, the family friend, the person no one suspects.

The conspiracy of silence

Vidya Reddy called it "the most public well-kept secret in India" — every family seems to know someone the children are quietly steered away from, yet disclosure is vanishingly rare. Worldwide, she said, no more than 24 percent of abused children ever disclose, and only a fraction of those disclosures reach the authorities. Worse, children who do speak up are often blamed, disbelieved, or told to keep it secret. Her research found that even when children disclosed abuse, families hushed them — "a sad commentary," she said, "that when a child does even have the courage to talk about something like this, we do not actually respond in an appropriate way."

Bharti Ali added that the child's first thought is usually "am I wrong?" — and that believing children, including believing their discomfort, is where change starts.

The numbers problem

The panel wrestled with statistics. A 2007 government-sponsored study of 12,500 children across 13 Indian states found 53 percent reported some form of sexual abuse — but only 3 percent of cases were reported to police. Vidya Reddy warned against leaning on official numbers at all: "there are lies, there are damn lies and then there are statistics." The National Crime Records Bureau, she noted, recorded only 267 cases of incest in all of India in 2011 — a figure that says more about data collection than about reality.

The law: progressive on paper

The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, was months old at the time. Bharti Ali called it one of the most progressive child-abuse laws anywhere — covering penetrative and non-penetrative assault, aggravated abuse by trusted persons and authority figures — but flagged mandatory reporting as a weak link: the law demands reporting, yet agencies weren't following the provision. Vidya Reddy added that media intrusion itself deters reporting: of 100 cases reaching her organization, 98 families refused to report, largely fearing press exposure. POCSO's Section 22 restricts how media may report such cases — a provision she said was "completely breached."

Street children and shelter homes

Utsav Bains turned the focus to the most invisible victims: street children and shelter-home residents. He described filing a PIL at 18 after children in a juvenile home reported abuse, returning five years later to find abuse still happening, and escalating to the Supreme Court — with little to show. "Where is the redressal for these children?" he asked. "The conspiracy of silence, the indifference, and the insensitivity of the people who have the power to give justice must end."

What the panel agreed on

Listen to children. Believe them. Teach them the language for their own bodies — Harish Iyer noted he couldn't even name his body parts as a boy, so how could he have told his mother? Vidya Reddy drew a distinction the whole panel picked up: not "sex education" as reproductive biology, but "sexuality education" covering safe and unsafe touch, since abusers exploit exactly the gray zone between affection and violation. And reform from every direction at once: family, school, law, media, and the state.

"Even if one child is abused," Iyer said, "it is the responsibility of the government and of the law, and everyone, that every child is protected."

Archive summary, February 2013, of the CNN-IBN panel discussion. The original IBNLive transcript link is no longer live.