Or the child might not even get hysterical, it might not say anything at all. It might slowly, and quietly, begin playing telling games with its toys; and how many parents care to monitor what the child is doing with its toys? Child counsellors often allow, and encourage, their little patients to tell them ‘stories’ through toys during therapy. These ordinary looking toys which appear to be scattered around among cushions and colourful books are specially placed there to assist the child in talking about what has happened. Well into a few unsuccessful sessions, the child might pick up a toy tiger and stuff it under a cushion. ‘Lock it up in that jail,’ the child will tell the doctor, ‘otherwise it will eat you up.’ Later, much later, the counsellor will keep near the child an anatomically correct doll: a male doll with reasonably defined genitals; some counsellors view this as obscene and feel it frightens the child, others see it as enabling children to bring their experiences from the abstract to the concrete. Even if the counsellor has introduced the male doll into the proceedings with great caution and sensitivity, the child might get frightened. Or it might ignore it for the longest time. And then, without warning, pick it up, point towards the penis and say, ‘Naughty tiger, hurts me.’ Several conversations will follow, perhaps running even into weeks, about the naughty tiger and hurt without the child disclosing the perpetrator’s name. That a toy will, and can, be such an important means of communication with a child; do the parents ever realize this?

And some children might bury it so completely that when it resurfaces in their late teens and early adulthood it is almost unrecognizable as Child Sexual Abuse.

A twenty-two-year-old girl participating in a sex-and-gender workshop has fits when they begin to discuss Child Sexual Abuse.

A twenty-year-old medical student refuses to go to college, she is extremely fearful about it. The clinical diagnosis is anxiety neurosis with panic. During therapy she reveals that she had been raped by her uncle when she was eleven years old and threatened with dire consequences if she ever told anybody. The uncle continued to be a frequent visitor to her house, interacting freely with her father and brother who were always happy to see him. This made her wonder about her father and brother too, and she became reserved in all her interactions with them.

When she finished with her all-girls school to join medical college she developed panic attacks when speaking with male classmates. She hated her male classmates so much that no amount of therapy helped, she had to drop out of college altogether.

The uncle continues to visit their home.

Home as Hell

All right.

Granted that Child Sexual Abuse is an evil practice.

Also agreed that Child Sexual Abuse is about a ruthless combination of sexual abuse, of emotional abuse and of physical abuse.

But why now, all this and so much of it too, when these are acts restricted to perverts?