The Social ION

Child abuse is a recent major problem and has been a reality that children in India have been facing continuously irrespective of their gender or societal strata they belonged to. Various studies as well as reported cases revealed that in India large numbers of children are sexually abused by known persons like relatives, neighbors, at school, and in residential facilities for vulnerable children. The government has failed to prevent much of the child abuse and the existing systems of child protection and the stakeholders involved including police, lawyers, media, teachers, parents etc are unable to develop any way to curve this problem and also most of the time fail to ensure that perpetrators are punished due to one reason or other. Most cases go unreported. Poor awareness, social stigma, and negligence remain attached to the issue. There is a culture of silence around it. In this backdrop, the present paper is an attempt to analyze the situation related to child abuse. The paper is based on secondary sources of data.