The World Health Organization says one out of every ten children in India is being sexually abused at any given point of time.

A Tata Institute of Social Sciences study conducted in 1985 among adults between the ages of twenty and twenty-four proved that one out of three girls had been sexually abused as children, and one out of every ten boys. That is: 30 per cent of the girls had been victims of Child Sexual Abuse, and ten per cent of the boys. 50 per cent of this Child Sexual Abuse happened at home.

A 1996 survey—now considered a landmark in work on Child Sexual Abuse—conducted by Samvada in Bangalore among 348 girl students from eleven schools and colleges, threw up startling data. Conducted scientifically by Anita Ratnam with Lucy Kumar, Dr Arun Kotenkar and Dr Shekhar Seshadri, the first doctor in the country to specifically study Child Sexual Abuse, it found:

• 83 per cent of the girls had been subject to eve-teasing, 13 per cent of these had been vocally and visually sexually harassed when they were less than ten years old
• 47 per cent had been molested, 15 per cent of these when they were less than ten years old: they were used for masturbation, mostly by male relatives
• 15 per cent had been seriously sexually abused as children, 31 per cent of them when they were less than ten years old: they had been raped, forced into oral sex or penetrated with foreign objects and 75 per cent of the abusers were adult family members
• around 50 per cent of these Child Sexual Abuse cases involved family members and close relatives, they happened at home.

Dr Shekhar Seshadri has recently completed a study on boys, 146 of them between the ages of sixteen and twenty. He has found that 15 per cent of them have been abused as children by uncles, male cousins, family friends and neighbours; this homosexual abuse starts at six years of age. Another 8 per cent of the boys had their first sexual experience with elder women from the age of twelve onwards; with family friends, the neighbouring aunts, female cousins and mother’s friends. The boys saw these experiences with older women as pleasurable initiation into the world of sex, it is not a reaction that came up equivocally in connection with the homosexual experiences. Much of this sexual abuse of boy-children happened at home.

Sakshi, the Delhi-based organization which spearheaded work on Child Sexual Abuse in the early 1990s, has a study of 357 school-going girl children. 63 per cent have been victims, around half had abusers from within their homes and close family circles.

Rahi of Delhi has run a survey specifically addressing non-lower-class women. This Child Sexual Abuse survey conducted among 600 English-speaking middle-and upper-class women in Delhi, Mumbaii, Calcutta, Goa and Chennai has women of ages ranging from fifteen to sixty-six.

• 76 per cent of these 600 women had been sexually abused in childhood
• out of these 457, 40 per cent had been sexually abused by at least one family member
• 71 per cent had been sexually abused by relatives and family friends
• 2 per cent of the 457 were sexually abused before they were four years of age
• 17 per cent between four and eight years of age
• 28 per cent between the ages of eight and twelve years
• 35 per cent between twelve and sixteen years