India's hidden incest

[Lady Macbeth]

Close-knit family life in India masks an alarming amount of sexual abuse of children and teenage girls by family members, a new report suggests.

Delhi organisation RAHI said 76% of respondents to its survey had been abused when they were children - 40% of those by a family member.

The report suggests that disbelief, denial and cover-up to preserve the family reputation is often put before the individual child.

Women who gave evidence to RAHI spoke of the nightmare of abuse that haunts them still.
Every time my parents went out to a party the bastard used to do it," said one.

Another said: "When I told people in my family about the abuse there was hostility, contempt and anger targeted at me - I became an outcast."

RAHI founder Anjua Gupta said she set up the organisation because she believed sexual abuse was rampant in Indian families and no one was doing anything about it.

"When I started working in this area people used to say 'Where are the Indian statistics?'. It was thought of as a Western phenomenon.

"One of the reasons there hasn't been any data collection is because it is not considered to be an Indian problem."
The report, Voices from the Silent Zone, suggests that nearly three-quarters of upper and middle class Indian women are abused by a family member - more than often an uncle, a cousin or an elder brother.

Disbelief, denial and cover-up

Incest and child sexual abuse occurs everywhere.

Psychiatrist Achal Baghat says the particular problem in India is that the concept of family is almost sacred, and abuse, if it happens, is met with disbelief.

"I think there is a great myth about Indian family systems being supportive," he says.

"What do you do if you're the mother in a family where the child is being abused? You do not have that much power to do anything about the abuse.

"Generally there is this thing about harming the name of the family. This need to prevent the family being laughed at leads to a lot of cover-ups."

Women on a pedestal

Activists in the field say the position of women in India is another problem. Society puts them on a pedestal as mothers and wives, but doesn't allow for their protection from domestic abuse.
Voices from the Silent Zone pinpoints another problem facing victims of abuse in India - the complete absence of any structure outside the family to help with abuse.

Achal Baghat says he often faces the grimmest of choices when considering how to help the victim.

"What is there if not the family? Where are the other support systems? There aren't any. There might be a few NGOs working in India - but can they really cope?

"The juvenile homes, the social support system is so lacking and so insensitive to the children, that I wouldn't be sure what is worse - to stay with an abusive family, or the environment the system would put them in."

Changing the law

In India, there is no specific law covering sexual abuse of children by strangers, let alone by family members. The legal definition of rape calls for proof that the rapist actually penetrated a victim, even a young child.
Judges have even said that it is impossible for fathers to rape their daughters, despite evidence to the contrary.

In the end, all Indian counsellors and activists can do to help victims of abuse is convince them that nothing has been their fault; that they are a survivor of a damaging, but not necessarily fatal experience, and they can continue to live life - never forgetting what happened to them, but getting on with it.

Everyone who works with victims and survivors of abuse agrees that awareness begins in the schoolyard. But in a profoundly conservative society like India, raising such sensitive issues in school would be controversial.

The chances that more than half of India's schoolgirls have experienced or will experience sexual abuse remain very high.

Family facts of the abused

68% were living in nuclear families
16% in semi-joint families (nuclear and grandparents)
15% in joint families (extended)

Mothers of the abused

Despite common perception that the mothers of abused children were working, the report said that of those surveyed who said they were abused, 60% of mothers were housewives and 40% were employed.

[Lady Macbeth]

A 1985 study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences revealed that one out of three girls and one out of 10 boys had been sexually abused as a child.

Legal Loopholes-

-There is no central law on child abuse.

-Laws dealing with sexual offences do not specifically address child sexual abuse.

-The India Penal Code 1860 does not recognise child abuse. Only rape and sodomy can lead to criminal conviction.

-Anything less than rape, as defined by the law, amounts to 'outraging the modesty.' These laws are already problematic when applied to adult women. They are even more difficult when applied to children.

-While sec. 376 IPC seeks to provide redress against rape to women, it rarely covers the broad range of sexual abuse (particularly of children), that actually takes place.

-Most of these forms of abuse are sought to be covered under sec. 354 of the Indian Penal Code as a violation of a woman's modesty. Though offences under Sec. 354 of the IPC are cognizable, they are also bailable, allowing the perpetrator to abscond before the case comes up in court.

-The Juvenile Justice Act, amended and rewritten in 2000, makes no attempt to identify sexual abuse on children. Sec. 23 of the Act deals with assault, exposes, willful neglect, mental and physical suffering, for which imprisonment prescribed, is only for 6 months.

-Section 5 of the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act 1956 prescribes punishment of not less than 7 years for inducing a child into prostitution, but does not directly address child abuse.

-The word 'rape' within law, is too specific because it does not include abuse on boys.

-'Intercourse' is often interpreted to mean with an 'adult' and almost always implies 'consensual' sex.

[ferrari]

Its a 10 yrs old article and it doesn't even tell how many people they have surveyed. Stinks of BS

Next time do provide links of what you post.

[Jana]

So all this is ok but marrying wiithing a family or tribe is not allowed in the name of not marrying in the same Gotra??

How hypocratic

[Lady Macbeth]

Originally Posted by ferrari

Its a 10 yrs old article and it doesn't even tell how many people they have surveyed. Stinks of BS

Next time do provide links of what you post.

Oh so since 85 its all gone hunky dory......
And it doesnt matter how old the article....dont we discuss it if its got a few cobwebs attached to it?


BBC News | South Asia | India's hidden incest

Oh and post number two..... quoted from an article written by your very own brothers....
India Together: Incest and the conspiracy of silence - 30 April 2009

Go ahead jump for joy....I have given you the links now. How childish!

[ferrari]

Originally Posted by Jana

So all this is ok but marrying wiithing a family or tribe is not allowed in the name of not marrying in the same Gotra??

How hypocratic

Child abuse is not OK and it is there and we should do as much to prevent such atrocities. But how prevalent is the question.

Not allowing marriage within the family/gothra prevents inbreeding and thus prevents genetic diseases associated with consanguinity . As far as the article goes it is BS which doesn't even talk about sample size.

[Jana]

Originally Posted by ferrari

Child abuse is not OK and it is there and we should do as much to prevent such atrocities. But how prevalent is the question.

Not allowing marriage within the family/gothra prevents inbreeding and thus prevents genetic diseases associated with consanguinity . As far as the article goes it is BS which doesn't even talk about sample size.

We had already talked about marrying within families and there is hardly few percent evidence that its cause genetic diseases.
However this Gotra thing in India is exploited too much.

Many boys and girls have been killed by their families for marrying into same gotra.

[ferrari]

Originally Posted by Jana

We had already talked about marrying within families and there is hardly few percent evidence that its cause genetic diseases.
However this Gotra thing in India is exploited too much.

Many boys and girls have been killed by their families for marrying into same gotra.

It is scientifically proven that cousin marriage is not good for the child as they can be born with genetic diseases. Here is a BBC article on cousin marriage ills.

The risks of cousin marriage


By Justin Rowlatt
BBC Newsnight

Many people would find the idea of marrying a first cousin shocking, but such marriages are not unusual in some British communities.

Watch the report
It is estimated that at least 55% of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins and the tradition is also common among some other South Asian communities and in some Middle Eastern countries.

But there is a problem: marrying someone who is themselves a close family member carries a risk for children - a risk that lies within the code of life; within our genes.

Communities that practice cousin marriage experience higher levels of some very rare but very serious illnesses - illnesses known as recessive genetic disorders.

Open debate

Now, one Labour MP is calling for an end to the practice. "We have to stop this tradition of first cousin marriages," Keighley MP Ann Cryer tells Newsnight.


Family events are really nice because my in-laws and his are related
Neila Butt
Mrs Cryer believes an open debate on the subject is needed because - despite the risks - cousin marriage remains very popular.

Mrs Cryer's constituency is in the Bradford area, where the rates of cousin marriage are well above the national average. It is estimated that three out of four marriages within Bradford's Pakistani community are between first cousins.

The practice remains so popular because the community believes there are real benefits to marrying in the family. Many British Pakistanis celebrate cousin marriage because it is thought to generate more stable relationships.

Strong unions

Such unions are seen as strong, building as they do on already tight family networks.


"You have an understanding," explains Neila Butt, who married her first cousin, Farooq, nine years ago.

"Family events are really nice because my in-laws and his are related," she says.

"You have the same family history and when you talk about the old times either here or in Pakistan you know who you are talking about. It's just a nicer emotional feel."

But the statistics for recessive genetic illness in cousin marriages make sobering reading.

British Pakistanis are 13 times more likely to have children with genetic disorders than the general population - they account for just over 3% of all births but have just under a third of all British children with such illnesses.

Indeed, Birmingham Primary Care Trust estimates that one in ten of all children born to first cousins in the city either dies in infancy or goes on to develop serious disability as a result of a recessive genetic disorder.

Variant genes

Recessive genetic disorders are caused by variant genes. There are hundreds of different recessive genetic disorders, many associated with severe disability and sometimes early death, and each caused by a different variant gene.


My skin is really fragile, and can blister very easily with a slight knock or tear
Myra Ali
We all have two copies of every gene. If you inherit one variant gene you will not fall ill.

If, however, a child inherits a copy of the same variant gene from each of its parents it will develop one of these illnesses.

The variant genes that cause genetic illness tend to be very rare. In the general population the likelihood of a couple having the same variant gene is a hundred to one.

In cousin marriages, if one partner has a variant gene the risk that the other has it too is far higher - more like one in eight.

Myra Ali has a very rare recessive genetic condition, known as Epidermolisis Bulosa.

Her parents were first cousins. So were her grandparents.

"My skin is really fragile, and can blister very easily with a slight knock or tear," she says.

Myra has strong views about the practice of cousin marriage as a result. "I'm against it, because there's a high risk of illness occurring", she says.

Denial


We all have to get involved in persuading people to adopt a different lifestyle
Ann Cryer MP
According to Ann Cryer MP, whose Keighley constituency has a large Pakistani population, much of the Pakistani community is in denial about the problem.

She tells Newsnight that she believes it is time for an open debate on the subject: "As we address problems of smoking, drinking, obesity, we say it's a public health issue, and therefore we all have to get involved with it in persuading people to adopt a different lifestyle", she says.

"I think the same should be applied to this problem in the Asian community. They must adopt a different lifestyle. They must look outside the family for husbands and wives for their young people."

[Lady Macbeth]

Oh so now its come down to shifting the blame?
Incest is a hidden feature in all communities, remember Josef Fritzl ?
Its just that we need to bring attention to ''harsher punishments for incestous beasts of the subcontinent''.....and where better to start but India...the country that doesnt advocate ''cousin marriages''.....

[ferrari]

Originally Posted by Lady Macbeth

Oh so now its come down to shifting the blame?
Incest is a hidden feature in all communities, remember Josef Fritzl ?
Its just that we need to bring attention to ''harsher punishments for incestous beasts of the subcontinent''.....and where better to start but India...the country that doesnt advocate ''cousin marriages''.....

I'm not denying that there is no incest in India. But how prevalent is the question. I've know many cases where people indulging in incest have been punished for rape as it happens in any democratic nation. Its all about how do you solve this problem. More punishments? Better education? is something to ponder about.