Once, after a blazing row over our professional lives (the only time I seriously thought a journalist being married to a journalist is not a good idea), I bitterly ruminated that having a baby would have been better, it would have served Aiyar right! He would have had to earn vast quantities of money for the child’s future and possibly be chained to a hated job as a result; I would have had to do nothing at all save slave over the child, smug in my motherhood—even if secretly unsatisfied—I could have shut myself off from all other worries of the world. I could have actively practised learned helplessness. As Martin Seligman explained in 1975, when he developed the theory of learned helplessness: experiences which are perceived to be inescapable seem to sap human motivation to the point that desire to initiate action, solve problems and overcome obstacles declines. Further, the ability to perceive success is undermined and messages that are indicators of success tend to be missed. A point of helplessness and depression is reached.

Not the best reason to have a child, fortunately for us, I snapped out of it. Learned helplessness, though, is what happens to children who are sexually abused over a period of time and receive no external assistance at all. Learned helplessness is also what happens to educated and intelligent young men and women after social and family pressure has been successfully exerted on them to produce babies. Hide-bound by tradition, they blindly have these babies. Is tradition a good reason to bring a child into existence?

It is with all young couples in mind that I write this book. And I must thank the sexually victimized children who spoke to me, even if I did not go beyond their comfortable questioning. That I could be responsible for their secondary victimization made me feel wary; but it is clearly something which does not bother most legal practitioners who tear the child to shreds in court. I have also considerably pared down the case studies which, when put down on paper, can easily read like child pornography. It takes very little to titillate a certain kind of person. Almost all the investigation and research for this book has, therefore, been condensed into a reader-friendly but near-academic presentation. Perhaps I err on the side of caution. But I have been petrified that I could do worse—turn the child’s plight into some kind of distant but delicious horror which does not, or cannot, happen in any reader’s home.

If, as a reader of this book, you have been sexually abused in childhood, please know this first—it was not your fault. Some of you may nevertheless feel unsettled while reading sections of this book. It is all right to feel this way, Child Sexual Abuse is unsettling; anyone who is not unsettled by the subject would be the one with the problem. If you are a reader who has been sexually abused in childhood, never disclosed it to anybody and are now grieving as you look at this book, it is all right. It is all right to grieve, in doing so you honour your pain. But you must, thereafter, move on.