This must remain among life’s greatest ironies. One of the judges who did brilliantly during the workshop and appeared to be the most sensitized, subsequently dealt with a Child Sexual Abuse case. He refused to believe that a grandfather could do anything at all to harm his little granddaughter.

Secondary Victimization

Now let’s go back to Tanuja and the pandit. Tanuja’s father lodges the complaint with the police, and the inspector on duty wonders aloud, as a chief justice once did, ‘what modesty such a small child could possibly have that it can be outraged’. The policeman advises Tanuja’s father to not lodge a case as there would be a lot of ‘bey-izzatti’.

‘The policeman simply will not be interested in the case because our law is still based on physical evidence,’ points out lawyer Meghna Abraham, an Oxford fellow on children’s law. ‘The Indian police, anyway, is not trained to understand anything other than law and order. To get parents to approach and then deal with the police, the state is going to need to set up a very special kind of police force for children, like the Child Protection Units abroad where the policewomen do not even wear uniforms.’

And special children’s courts where all, and only, offences against children by adults can be speedily tried. This is not to be confused with juvenile justice courts; these would be children’s courts where all crimes—including sexual—committed by adults upon children would be speedily tried. British courts, for instance, have a very clear rule that crimes against children must come up for their hearing within three weeks, after which the defendant has a maximum of ninety days to plead his case. The courts are also very child-friendly. A few American states have also begun to amend the legal codes to meet the special needs of child witnesses. For instance, some judges no longer wear the formal robes or even sit on an elevated platform; everyone sits around a table at eye-level with the child. More family members are being allowed into the courtroom to be with the child, care is being taken to see that the child does not see the offender before the hearing. Washington state has courtrooms where children sit on the floor with toys, the judge sits with them; the room is equipped with a one-way mirror and the defendant can see the child but not the other way around while the judge takes the child’s testimony. In Israel, children do not even appear in court if they are part of incest cases. A counsellor is assigned by the police department to get the child’s statement and that counsellor then testifies on behalf of the child in court.

What is working very well in England as also America—even though it is not yet admissible evidence in court in the latter—is video taping. Video taping is so very simple, quickly done in a simple room with simple questions to the child; no suggestive questions need be asked like, ‘Did the man show you his penis?’, open-ended questions which authoritatively yet affectionately guide the child into truthful answers are all that is required. In England, this video is played in court and everyone watches it while the child is not present. If the defence lawyer wants to cross-examine the child, he does so in a special room which is linked with closed circuit television to the courtroom.