“Purity defiled: How safe is your child?” (A study of child victims of sexual assault in Imphal during 2001–2006)

In this study, 27 cases of children aged 1–14 years, who were victims of sexual assault and were referred for medico-legal examination to the Forensic Medicine Dept., RIMS, Imphal, during 2001–2006 were taken as subjects. The year and age wise distribution of the cases, the place of occurrence, socio-economic status, the type of victims and assailants, the time lapse in reporting, the mental status of the victim at the time of examination, the condition of the clothes and the signs of struggle in the victim, any complaint of pain at the time of examination, injuries on the victim, the finding in the vaginal smear and the opinion given by the medical officers examining the cases, were studied and the data were analyzed.