New Delhi: The union minister for woman and child development, Maneka Gandhi, seeks law to compensate boys raped or sexually exploited.
Maneka, while announcing a study on male survivors of child sexual abuse – first of its kind, Wednesday proposed that the existing “scheme” for boys be amended and those boys who have been raped or sexually exploited to be compensated on the lines of a similar law for girls.
The minister, in response to a petition sent by filmmaker Insia Dariwala’s Change.org, has instructed the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) in September 2017, to look into the issue of male survivors.
“Another much neglected sphere of child sexual abuse is male survivors. Child sexual abuse (CSA) is gender neutral. Boys who are sexually abused as children spend a lifetime of silence because of the stigma and shame attached to male survivors speaking out. It is a serious problem and needs to be addressed,” she said in her response to a petition of Change.org .
A preliminary research conducted by Dariwala with 160 male survivors of sexual abuse from across the country revealed a possible correlation between unresolved sexual trauma on boys, and increasing violence on women and children.
The ministry’s official study on child sexual abuse of 2007 found that 53.2 per cent of children had experienced one or more form of sexual abuse. Out of this, 52.9 per cent were boys.
