Curb the menace of child molestation

TWO four-year-old girls were sexually abused by a sweeper in a privately run school in Badlapur, a small town in Thane district adjoining Mumbai city. He had been employed just days before the crime took place. He was reportedly the only male employee in the pre-primary section of the school. On two consecutive days, he was sent by a teacher to take the two girls to the toilet.

There is an urgent need for case studies by top psychologists to list the root causes of the malaise and suggest remedies.

It turned out that no background check was conducted prior to his hiring. Police investigations into his antecedents revealed that the man was just 24 years old but had been married thrice in a short period of less than a year. He had discarded his first wife two or three days after marriage and the second one within 10 days. The third wife, who is presently with him, is in her fifth month of pregnancy.

Even if a proper background check had been done, it is doubtful if the man’s proclivities would have been detected. But his act of changing his partners should have alerted the principal against taking him on in a school which had many girl children.

Sexual offences are being reported almost daily in the media. This particular case hit the headlines probably because the school was rumoured to be owned by someone connected to one of the ruling parties in Maharashtra. The Assembly elections are due in the state before the year ends. The Opposition perhaps felt that since a crime like this disturbed the peace of mind of parents and even common citizens, it would be a fit issue to create a ruckus that could affect voting patterns.

A bandh was announced by the Opposition parties, but it had to be shelved after the Bombay High Court, hearing a public interest litigation, decided that such bandhs were illegal. A city-based NGO, Public Concern for Governance Trust (PCGT), set up 30 years ago by former Cabinet Secretary BG Deshmukh, former Medical Director of Mumbai’s Jaslok Hospital Dr RK Anand and I, had moved the high court against this practice of political parties depriving workers of earning their living and forcing the closure of shops and offices.

The PCGT won its case in the court. The two political parties then in the Opposition, the BJP and the Shiv Sena, were each fined Rs 20 lakh for the mayhem caused by the bandh. More importantly, the bandh as a political weapon had been laid to rest, at least in the city of Mumbai. The hardship it caused to the homeless, who depend on eating houses for their daily meal, and little children, who depend on the arrival of the milk vans for their sustenance, was highlighted in the court by a few affected citizens in sworn affidavits.

In place of the projected bandh, parents of schoolgoing children, politicians and their followers taped their own mouths with black cloth and marched through the city streets demanding better security for schoolchildren.

Five years ago, a delegation of fathers of little boys going to private schools approached me with an offer of professional help, according to their individual expertise, to counter the menace of young children being molested in schools. The PCGT then tied up with another NGO working on the same issue, and approached the Commissioner of Police, Mumbai, who earmarked a DCP from the Crime Branch to liaise with us. We organised a number of seminars and meetings, including training workshops for principals of government and municipal schools, on the basics of the POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act and how it could be effectively implemented.

Unfortunately, Covid-19 struck soon after our preliminaries were completed. The city police had started a ‘Didi’ programme in which a woman police constable, specially selected, was assigned to each of the 91 police stations in the commissionerate to visit each school in the precinct every month, address the parent-teacher meetings and impress on the parents first, the teachers next and the senior students later the lurking possibility of molestation and ways and means to prevent it.

The steps to be taken in case sexual offenders from within the school or outside manage to break the law were also listed. The police presence at the parent-teacher meeting was meant to engender confidence in the minds of parents that attention was being paid by the school and the state to the security of their wards. The police, too, would not have an excuse for any delay in dealing with complaints made by the school authorities.

The steep increase in incidents of child molestation in buses hired by schools to transport children, in classrooms or staff rooms and in lavatories by the non-teaching staff or senior students preying on juniors is a sign of a sickness that needs to be combated head-on.

There is an urgent need for case studies by top psychologists to list the root causes of the malaise and suggest possible remedies. That will help to draw the attention of parents and teachers to a danger that afflicts not only our country but most countries of the world. In some European countries, child pornography has become such a menace that special squads have been created in crime-fighting units to address the problem.

The steady proliferation of sex offenders in many cities and even towns in our country needs immediate attention and involvement of the state. In Mumbai, NGOs involved in helping the authorities combat the menace are many. The current government at the Centre distrusts civil society bodies working to address such secular issues. Corporate funding has been discontinued to such NGOs and diverted to the PM Cares Fund.

The government would be well advised not to frown on such NGOs whose only motive is to better the quality of life of ordinary citizens. To dump every NGO in one basket is a strange way of going about the business of governance.