Because a fifteen-year-old, a student in one of Chennai’s best colleges, has taken to being a high-class call-girl on weekends. This is how she deals with the ‘guilt’ of not being able to sexually ward off her mother’s second husband, an industrialist.

Because a young wife holds her breath as her husband bathes their little daughter in their Mumbaii flat; the wife has been sexually abused as a child by the family cook in their Andhra Pradesh village.

Because a four-year-old is being abused by her father in Calcutta and her mother is hesitant to take any concrete steps against this since they are well known and this would create a public scandal. The parents have a history of marital disharmony, the Child Sexual Abuse might well be carrying on even as this book is being read. ‘We are absolutely helpless to do anything as there are no guidelines, acts or social service networks that professionals could resort to in such instances of suspicion,’ says psychiatrist Dr Sujit Ghosh. ‘The existing legal framework, too, is completely unrealistic apart from being user-unfriendly when it comes to intervening on, and even preventing, Child Sexual Abuse.’

Because on 26 January 2000, a ragpicker found six-year-old Sunny’s sexually assaulted body in a dumping ground at a Mumbaii suburb. His friends later said Sunny never disclosed his name but he did often speak of an uncle who gave him chocolates. Sunny’s grandmother said he told her too about the chocolates but she never paid attention because they were busy with the preparations for Sunny’s chacha’s wedding.

Because Dr Sharda Chand of the Dufferin Hospital in Lucknow, the only approved centre in Lucknow for the medico-legal examination of rape victims, says that the youngest victim of child-rape that the hospital has recently seen is a six-month-old girl. ‘The child was in a mess, badly mutilated and bleeding profusely. It took our team all their skill to sew up her internal organs.’ February 2000, say other doctors sardonically at the same hospital, was their leanest month, only eleven cases compared with twenty which they get of rapes, half the victims being below thirteen years of age.

Because Syeeda Hameed, member of the National Commission for Women, says in her inaugural address at ‘Recognising Violence Against Children in the Private Sphere’ that, ‘It can be a myth that home is the safest place for children.’ She adds that around forty children had deposed before the National Commission for Women in 1999, narrating tales of sexual abuse at home.

Because at the same seminar super-cop Kiran Bedi says that 56 per cent of sexual violation cases against children take place within the home of the victim or the offender. She adds, ‘The victim cuts across all categories of class, caste, religion and educational background; the offender belongs to no particular age group.’

Because an eleven-year-old girl has been raped by ‘Sirji’, her class teacher, in his home. He took her from her home in the central Mumbaii area of Wadala to his home in the distant suburb of Ghatkopar, with the help of his sister who phoned the girl’s parents and said she would be safe.