Naina Kapur, the director of Sakshi, remembers this case well. ‘The mother was being accused of sexually abusing her child, she was utterly distraught even otherwise; there is this odd acceptance of the idea that a woman at such a time must present a composed and balanced picture.’

The woman got her divorce and custody of her daughter, they now live in Delhi. The father went back a free man to the United States, perhaps to even remarry, have more children and carry on with his life as before.

Look at the laws again. Think about the around one hundred documented cases in this book itself. Even if all the laws are rewritten to be truly sensitive to children who are victims of Child Sexual Abuse, can a child ever get justice?

No. A court of law can only give a judgement, never real justice to a child who has been sexually abused.

And yet judgements must remain as the final yardstick. Because justice, if it cannot be truly done, should at least be seen to be done.

Like in the case of a doctor who forced oral sex with several little girls of his neighbourhood. One eight-year-old refused to suck his penis, he undressed her, placed his penis just inside her vagina and sucked her lips until he ejaculated. The lower court refused to consider the complaint as rape, said ‘no normal man would have been able to restrain himself from full penetration’, and dismissed the case as ‘concocted’.

The case went on for several years at a high court. Here too the accused was acquitted on the grounds that ‘the absence of ruptures negates a case of rape’, and that the accused had only outraged the modesty of the girl. The court further defended the accused saying, ‘Now that the doctor had got married and was not indulging in nefarious activities . . . no useful purpose will be served by sending him to jail.’

The case reached the Supreme Court eleven years later, the girl was now nineteen, and the doctor was finally given seven years in prison.

There are several judgements which destroy the very notion of justice when it comes to girl-children and sexual abuse, far too many to be narrated here which refer to virginity as being a girl’s only virtue and marriage being her only goal. All judges are clearly not sensitized to gender issues.

To address this, post their Purple Report, Sakshi also conducted a gender equality and sensitization programme with a small group of judges. Well into the workshop when all the judges were relaxed, they were asked to think about their first sexual experience which was the most pleasurable to them. After a while they were invited to speak about that experience. There was immediate reaction.

‘How can you ask us to speak about something so personal in public?’

Sakshi then made just one point.

If the judges could not speak of something which had given them so much pleasure, how did they expect a little girl to speak—loudly, clearly, without confusion—in court of her sexual abuse that has caused her so much hurt?