Young women also react similarly when sexually abused in childhood by men, they turn to other women for sustenance. This in itself leads to enormous sexual identity confusion, as listed in the long-term effects of Child Sexual Abuse (see chapter ‘The aftermath’). Geeta Kumana who has been valiantly trying to run a phone-line in Mumbaii for lesbians in emotional distress, says, ‘There have been calls asking if they have turned lesbian because they were sexually abused in childhood.’ This is not to suggest that all women, or men, sexually abused in childhood by men become lesbian, or homosexual; or that all lesbians and homosexuals have been sexually abused in childhood. This is also not to suggest that homosexuals and lesbians who have been sexually abused in childhood—like the forty-five-year-old abused by her aunt when she was five—still don’t hurt by it. Just as there are cases of young men taking to homosexuality after being sexually abused by men—and the one, as above, by his mother—there are cases of women turning to lesbianism after being sexually abused by men. There are also cases of young girls turning lesbian after being sexually abused by older women with lesbian or bisexual tendencies.

It is not a part of this book’s brief to enter into a ‘born this way’ or ‘nature versus nurture’ debate in connection with homosexuality and lesbianism. This is also not about numbers and statistics: this is about children. And even if it was about only one child—it is not, there are enough cases and international studies—this point would have to be made. What is relevant here is that children are being sexually abused by both, opposite-sex and same-sex adults. This is traumatizing them to the point where they are unsure of their own sexual grounding; this also leads to incorrect decisions as they grow into adulthood. Ergo, the real choice is taken away from the child and this is the tragedy: that a decision to be ‘gay’ is being taken from within an area of darkness and pain, not out of one’s free and happy will.

A heterosexual trapped in a gay body can be as emotionally shattering as the other way round. Homosexuals and lesbians running support groups for themselves would do well to remember this when dealing with adolescents and adults who profess marked sexual preferences but who have been sexually abused as children.

For instance Nisha who works in Hyderabad and has eyerything: the intelligence and looks, wealth, her own flat and car, a good career with a computer company. She has a girlfriend working in a computer company in Bangalore and so they fly across to meet up over weekends. Their sex is ‘satisfying’, Nisha finds her girlfriend’s company ‘not boring’. Then why is Nisha not happy? Nisha was sexually abused by her aunt when she was nine, that was her first sexual encounter, there were others after that with other women, elder female cousins and her mother’s friend. In her late teens Nisha had a man friend but she found that she ‘could not respond to him as sexually as I would have liked to even though I prefer the company of men as more mentally stimulating to that of my women partners’. Nisha went into therapy, she still does not have the answers. Has her sexual identity been formed because of her sexual abuse? Has it been formed by the thought-process set off by the abuse? Or has it really and truly been a process of self-questioning which has led her to think about her affinity for women? Nisha flicks her lighter to a slim cigarette, takes a drag and looks out of the window of her flat at Banjara Hills; she sighs and says, ‘Not happy this way.’