Disclosure vis-a-vis Protection of the Identity of a Victim of Sexual Offences through Sharing Experience at a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

The menace of sexual offences has been haunting women of all ages in both the developing and the developed nations of the world. However, in the recent past, the graphs of various sexual offences have seen an acute and startling rise in the developing countries, either because of improved reporting or better awareness amongst the society in general, or the victims, in particular. The increased ratio of sexual offences affecting the females in pediatric age group is of even a grave concern in this scenario. As per a recent report, minors accounted for 75% of the rape victims in the UT, Chandigarh, during the year 2020.¹ The tender age of these victims makes them more vulnerable to suffer greater risks of continued onslaught and mental harassment, in addition to the physical, physiological and psychological injury to a child bearing a pregnancy. Even the male children are increasingly becoming victims of unwanted sexual advances and assaults. All these factors call for a greater sensitivity of the stakeholders towards the issues related to the revelation of the identity of the victims of sexual offences. The authors present a comprehensive overview of the procedure to be followed to protect the identity of a victim of sexual offence, in strict adherence to the various guidelines and laws mandated from time to time by the judiciary in India. They also delineate a pragmatic approach to deal with issues related to the disclosure of the identity in cases of sexual offences through sharing the experience of dealing with a case of a pregnant child, who was subjected to repeated onslaughts of rape by a relative.