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Safe in school?
Every second child in India is a victim of some form of sexual abuse. The Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights has published comprehensive guidelines for educational institutions for child safety in schools
Pushpa Girimaji

The horrific rape of a six-year-old child in an upscale private school in Bangalore on July 2 has focused attention on the absence of a comprehensive child safety policy in schools around the country and the urgent need for parents to take the schools to task on this issue.

I am not sure if parents in India are even aware of the magnitude of the problem of child sexual abuse in India. According to a study conducted by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development in 2007, every second child is a victim of some form of sexual abuse or the other and every fifth child severe form of sexual abuse.

The study, which interviewed 12,447 child respondents, to gauge the enormity of crime in different environments such as schools, homes, institutions, work place and the street (street children), found that while 20.90 per cent of the children had been subjected to severe forms of sexual abuse, the total percentage of children who had experienced one or more forms of sexual abuse was 53.22 per cent. And the percentage of children reporting different forms of sexual abuse in schools was a shocking 49.92 per cent!

Parents should form associations and ask schools about the policy in place to prevent child abuse at the time of admission itself Photo: PTI

So how does one ensure that educational institutions are safe in every respect? First and foremost, parents should form associations and start questioning schools about the policy in place to prevent child abuse at the time of admission itself. The Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights has published very comprehensive guidelines for educational institutions on this issue and parents should demand that every school should adopt and stringently follow this.

These guidelines not only speak about the background check that schools have to do before hiring teaching and non-teaching staff and the special training in child safety that they need to be given, but also about how to report any incidence of abuse. In fact, the guidelines, which prompt schools to adopt 'zero tolerance for child abuse' says that schools should put up a gist of their policy at the entrance itself. The parents associations should demand that the government enforce these guidelines.

Parents should also refuse to sign 'waiver forms' that state that schools cannot be held responsible for any loss or injury of any kind caused to the students either in the school premises or during excursions or field trips. These days a number of schools have started insisting on parents signing such forms as a pre-condition to admission. Parents, in all such cases, should complain to the Education Department and also the National (as well as the State) Commission for Protection of Child Rights. Besides being highly unethical and illegal, such unilateral and unfair terms go against the very spirit of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to which India is a signatory.

An article in Harvard Health Publications (Harvard Medical School), titled "Pessimism about Pedophilia" (July 2010) says that in most cases of child sexual abuse, the perpetrators know the child and have access to the child. And they manipulate the child and gradually desensitise the child to inappropriate behaviour and then escalate it. In fact, the 2007 government study on child abuse also refers to this fact that in most cases of sexual abuse, the perpetrator is known to the child. So it is extremely important that parents educate the child to such threats. A close interaction with the child on its return from school is also essential.

The police investigation into the molestation of the six-year-old child in Bangalore has clearly exposed the callous indifference of schools to child safety. The school,Vibgyor, where the molestation took place had not done any background check before hiring the perpetrator, the skating instructor. And even after the heinous crime came to its knowledge, it did not report to the Special Juvenile Police Unit or the local police, as required under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act ( Section 19 (1), Chapter V), but tried to hush it up. Equally shocking is the police revelation that the perpetrator had been kicked out of another school following a similar crime, but that school too did not file a complaint against him, knowing fully well that he would commit a similar crime elsewhere.

So it's time parents of came together to form strong unions, take active interest in the pupil safety policies of schools and ensure that their children are safe in all respects when they go to school.

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