Sexual Abuse, Silence and the Male Child

India’s hidden crisis of abused boys has been sustained by stigma and toxic masculinity, resulting in victims being unheard and perpetrators going unchallenged.

“Sexual Abuse” is a term which is both by direct implication and by suggestion, refers to the girl child. So, the idea of a little boy being sexually abused when he doesn't even understand the words “sexual” and “abuse” is not only never questioned by anyone in authority but not believed either. In some tragic cases, that small boy grows up to become a sexual abuser himself. A little boy of three, carried by his mother in a crowded bus one day, was taken from his mother by a male co-passenger who kindly took the little boy on his lap. But though the little boy could not quite understand what was happening, he felt uneasy and suffered discomfort. With mixed feelings of guilt and shame, he could not even look at his mother. The feeling of guilt and shame was so deep that till today, as an adult, he has never been able to share his problem with anyone, including his parents, male friends or colleagues of either sex.

A close relative, male, had raped his six-seven-year-old nephew while bathing him in the bathroom. This act went on for months at a stretch because the boy did not have the guts to complain. When he finally gathered the courage to complain to his mother, she paid a deaf ear and did not take action. This small boy went on being abused for eleven long years without reprieve of any kind. In one of the Satyameva Jayate shows in 2012, produced and anchored by Amir Khan, Harish Iyer, a young man who headed a LGBTQ+ NGO, confessed, “I never approached any male member of my NGO. I felt everyone could treat me the same way I was forced to by other boys and men. During that crucial period, the only companion who shared my pain and my tears was my dear, four-legged friend, my pet dog.”

Harrowing Scars

Dozens of small boys, adolescents and juveniles have been victims of sexual abuse. Till today, most of them carry the harrowing scars on their bodies and minds. Forget about taking their complaints to the police, they did not dare confide in their parents because most of them suffered from feelings of deep guilt without understanding why. Some victims kept the painful secret to themselves as they were scared of public reaction and of threatening the position of the family if the word went out.

A Study in 2007 conducted by the Central Ministry for Women and Child Welfare reported that in India, 52.94% boys and 47% girls have been victims of child abuse. But complaints about abuse of boys have been negligible. But POCSO applies to children of either sex. To find out why there are so few complaints filed against male victims of child sexual abuse, from 2024 onwards, Prajak, a NGO committed to child rights interviewed 22 male victims of sexual abuse. The survey discovered that the roots of male sexual abuse go deep.

Deep Purakayastha, who heads the NGO observers that in many cases, this begins with slighting the boy going on to harassment ending in sexual abuse. This slighting can be for flimsy reasons such as a boy showing no interest in outdoor sports, a boy being fair-skinned, a boy with a soft, cuddly body, an introverted male child, a boy more inclined to the arts like music, singing and dancing, a boy finding girls friendlier than boys or simply wearing glasses can trigger feelings of slighting, verbal insults, harassment and then sexual abuse.

Relentless Abuse

Boys in Borstal school where boy prisoners are kept imprisoned during trial, are sexually abused by adult male prisoners and senior boy inmates and no one turns a hair. They are teased with derogatory terms like “hijida” (eunuch) or “didi” or “girlish” and then graduates to great humiliation, insult and abuse. This can come from classmates to a cousin who lives with the family. Complaints to parents or teachers bring reactions like “settle it among yourselves” or “adjust”. Even teachers are reported telling the victim, “This country is not for boys like you so you better settle elsewhere.” But the boy might not be gay at all.

The abuser is such a familiar figure for the abused that it takes considerable time for the victim to ‘catch’ on. It could be the tabla player who accompanied the boy’s mother in music rehearsals. It could be a member of the police force or a male colleague of the mother or father, or, a distant uncle, or the neighbouring shopkeeper. So, the victim shies away from taking the complaint to his parents because either parents will refuse to believe them or will put the blame on them and keep the offender free of suspicion and accusation.

Purkayastha says that often, this abuse continues even when the victim passes out of school and steps into college. “Some of the boy victims confessed that their self-respect, destroyed by the continuous abuse, might have remained intact had they not been victimized for so long and so many times,” he observes.

One gay member of the 22 survey subjects complained that when he was small, a neighbourhood dada would fondle him incorrectly and threatened him with “this is our secret and if you let it out, I will tell your parents of your other secrets they know nothing about.” This boy confessed that constant abuse and its secrecy for a long time, afraid of confessing this to anyone had turned him to an abuser himself! Another victim said that he felt that this was perhaps a natural process of growing up and so, learnt to accept it though with guilt over time. “My life turned into a blind lane without an exit door. I understood child abuse was a terrible crime only when I turned into an adult but by then, it was too late.”

This calls for loud alarm bells for parents, teachers, educators and even the police to keep their mental and social antenna sharp and try to recognize any sign of behavioural changes in small boys who suddenly turn quiet and scared. They need to treat victims with empathy and understanding mainly, the mother which brings to the fore the question of women’s empowerment. Tulika Das, who heads the Child Rights Protection Commission in the East, says, “Parents ought to understand that just like the girl-child, boys can also be made victims of child abuse. So, more awareness should be the call of the day. The same concern must be felt by the police force through workshops organized in schools and NGOs across the country. POCSO should treat children irrespective of their gender. The main reason is that in our patriarchal society, no one even understands that boys are also likely to be as weak as girls are understood to be. Then and only then will the powers-that-be will become more aware of possible dangers to the male child.

(The writer is an award-winning film scholar who writes extensively on social issues. Views personal.)