The boy cannot attend to his studies anymore as a result of the pills. A male friend visits with books and notes and the boy breaks down. He tells his friend about what is happening to him right then. His parents will not believe him, his psychiatrist will not believe him, his uncle maintains his innocence. The friend makes a few inquiries and is told about Ifsha, an organization counselling cases of Child Sexual Abuse.

Ifsha tries to help Arun, minus all the pills; decent progress is made in Arun’s condition through intensive counselling.

But then one day, Arun simply drops out of counselling.

And that is that; there is no end to Arun’s story because no one, perhaps not even Arun, can know how it will turn out to be.

Boy Versus Girl Victims

Arun’s reaction to Child Sexual Abuse in the form of his horror and disgust is not that of a ‘sissy’ or a ‘chukka’. It is, under the circumstances, not abnormal.

There is no difference at all in how little girls and boys react, and how they subsequently feel when they are victims of Child Sexual Abuse. Perhaps the one, and only, difference would be that little girls are as traumatized when men and women sexually abuse them, boys see this activity with older women—unless they are related—as all right. Boys with early homosexual inclinations also tend not to see it as sexual abuse by adult males.

The sexual abuse of boy-children tends to lessen, if not completely stop, as they approach puberty and acquire the physical strength to ward off their attackers. Lack of body-strength is one of the reasons why girl-children continue to remain vulnerable to sexual abuse even into adulthood. Everything else about Child Sexual Abuse remains the same for both genders. Especially the bewilderment—which is the real world? Does reality belong to the daytime with its smiling grandfather and affectionate uncle? Or is it part of the night with its furtive shadows, groping hands and thrusting penises?

This profound confusion causes internal conflict and this very conflict leads to additional empowerment of the abuser. And guilt—a very high degree of it—in both boys and girls as they grow up, mentally and physically torturing themselves over the ‘shame’ of their abuse. Was It My Fault? It Was Not My Fault. It Was My Fault. Was It?

Boys and girl-children also have identical short-term and long-term effects of Child Sexual Abuse. And the nature and extent of these effects are equally dependent on variables like the child’s age at the onset of abuse, the child’s relationship to the offender, the duration and frequency of abuse, the use of force, penetration or invasion with an object by the abuser and family power dynamics. There is no set gender, age, mode or duration under which Child Sexual Abuse can be quantified and categorized.

There are some children who are far more resilient than others in coping with the effects of their sexual abuse. A study of such resilient children showed some or all of the following to be present: