Yes.

Child Sexual Abuse includes:

• an adult exposing his, or her, genitals to a child or persuading the child to do the same
• an adult touching a child’s genitals or making the child touch the adult’s genitalia
• an adult involving a child in pornography which includes showing a child pornographic material
• an adult having oral, vaginal or anal intercourse with a child
• any verbal or other sexual suggestion made to a child by an adult
• an adult persuading children to engage in sexual activity among themselves
• an adult inserting foreign objects into a child’s body for his, or her, own sexual gratification

A comprehensive, albeit wordily academic, definition of Child Sexual Abuse would be the one provided by Driver and Droisen in 1989: ‘Any sexual behaviour directed at a person under sixteen years of age without that person’s informed consent. Sexual behaviour may involve touching parts of the child or requesting the child touch oneself, itself or others; ogling the child in a sexual manner, taking pornographic photographs, or requiring the child look at parts of the body, sexual acts or other material in a way which is arousing to oneself; and verbal comments or suggestions to the child which are intended to threaten the child sexually or otherwise to provide sexual gratification for oneself. It must be defined by every circumstance in which it occurs: in families, in state-run and private institutions, on the street, in classrooms, in pornography, advertising and films.’

To be noted, carefully: the definition encompasses both adult males and adult females since Child Sexual Abuse is a crime committed by women as well even if their numbers are miniscule when compared with men-perpetrators.

Also to be noted: the use of the phrase ‘informed’ in the first sentence itself of the definition by Driver and Droisen. It is a phrase that has been carefully applied. For what would constitute sexual ‘consent’ in an under-sixteen-year-old child? What are the criteria for deciding that the information the child has makes him/her suitably informed? Which is why, the world over and in India too—after extensive surveys, studies and professional opinion on the intelligence and emotional quotient of teenagers—it is generally prescribed that all those sixteen years of age and below are to be considered as incapable of informed consent. These children, even if teenagers at sixteen, have not formed certain defences inside themselves, like older people. They, therefore, need special protection. The phrase ‘informed consent’, then, takes on a very important connotation in a definition which encompasses almost every walk of life for the child.

There are large sections on the internet as there are pockets in the real world—unfortunately, they exist in India as well—who appear to delight in the sexualization of a child; they revel in its early eroticization, completely ignoring the very adult—and mostly perverted—reasons for this being the case. These people tend to comprise sexualized adults, as also religious fanatics who see women purely as procreative objects, paedophiles and one stream from among the homosexuals and lesbians who cite ‘sexually active’ children as their reasons for ignoring that important lakshman rekha of a child’s age.