There are countless advantages to video taping the child’s testimony, including the one where even if the defendant changes his lawyer, the new lawyer would still have to watch the video tape before subjecting the child to a fresh cross-examination even if the case goes into appeal in the higher courts. Admittedly, though, fresh cross-examinations can pose problems of their own because children can, and do, construct the same thing in different ways if there is a gap in time. There is, however, one distinct, though addressable, disadvantage to video taping a child’s testimony. A child is being asked to speak in front of a camera about something horrible which has happened to its private parts; would even an adult be able to handle a similar situation without feeling a mixture of inhibiting emotions? But the child’s parents and counsellor can reassure the child, and can help it through its uncertainties and fears by preparing the child for the video tapings. And better a child face a non-judgemental camera than a roomful of strange, hostile adults.

If children’s courts—as distinct from how it is now, a child-victim’s case being lumped along with lakhs of adult cases, in serpentine queue—are not set up, Tanuja’s case will take its toll on the child. It will also take its own time to come up for the pandit to be convicted, the hearings will drag on.

‘Jhootee!’ shouts the pandit’s lawyer as Tanuja forgets and says he touched her there with his left hand. ‘You are lying, last week you said it was his right hand!’

Tanuja goes into distress, all around her are male officials even though it is an in-camera hearing to which she has a right. In-camera for a child is still too many people whom she does not know in a room which is smaller than the court room but as strange: a judge, some policemen, court officials, the pandit’s lawyer. And the pandit, glaring at her from across the room. Tanuja tries to block out the abuse to cope with it. She is asked, repeatedly, to say what happened. Indian laws do not allow for a child’s evidence to be audio or video recorded once and for all and presented in court. Indian laws do not take into consideration that getting children to repeat the story can not only further traumatize the child but also affect clarity and the truth—the child’s truth, the real truth—can get lost in the process.

‘Secondary victimization is the key reason why we do not actively encourage parents from reporting the matter to the police,’ says Javita Narang of Ifsha in Delhi which counsels Child Sexual Abuse cases in both, children and adults. ‘We work so hard with re-building the child’s confidence through counselling and one trip to the court destroys it all. Fresh dates are constantly set and there are so many instances of children growing up into adults before the judgement is actually delivered.’

The secondary victimization of a child can be far worse, if not as bad as, the actual sexual abuse itself. It is something being actively considered in western courts dealing with Child Sexual Abuse cases. Counsellors working in these courts have xeroxed a poem by a twelve-year-old girl child and put it up on their noticeboards.