Inappropriate Touching By Kids In Noida: Are Children The New Sexual Perpetrators In The Society?

Yesterday I came to the office all numb and shaking, not in the haste to arrive on time as I always used to be. I narrated the recent harassment I experienced in public to every female colleague on my team I met. They were horrified, but do you know getting back to my normal daily tasks after such a traumatic event like nothing really happened is even more disturbing. This is the story of countless women who endure harassment daily and get back to their routine life within minutes since they’ve got used to it. However, this story comes with a twist. Society usually believes adult men to be sexual offenders, but in my story, the perpetrator is a 7 -8-year-old kid.

When Did Kids Stop Being Kids?

Late as always, I was stepping down the metro station, determined to punch in at 10 am. “I’ll make it by then”, I said to myself but then something stopped me. A hand swiftly darted below my abdomen, aiming to grab but narrowly missing it. I quickly turned to confront the perpetrator and found myself frozen in place. Was he a devil straight from hell? No! He was a 7 to 8-year-old kid laughing in my face as he ran away to repeat the heinous act with the women behind me. As I stood in my place all I could think was, ‘When did kids stop being kids’?

Don't Miss:8 Heinous Crimes That Brought Attention To Women's Safety In India

Who’s Responsible? Experts Insights

I reached out to two experts, Divija Bhasin, a Counselling Psychologist and founder of The Friendly Couch and Atreyee Das, a Counselling Psychologist to address the pressing questions that haunted my mind. Who’s responsible for such incidents and what’s triggering the young children to act this way and become the new sexual perpetrators in society?

Curiosity

While narrating the incident to Dr Atryee, the first thing she immediately pointed out was ‘curiosity’. “Kids have a lot of curiosity within them about almost everything in their surroundings, especially for the things that are kept hidden or secret from them and they are restricted from the knowledge of certain topics labelled as ‘adult things'. The more we try to keep it away from them, the more their curiosity grows. The lack of proper sexual education by the families in the Indian context leads to more and more confusion. These confusions lead to untamed behaviours towards sexual awareness, which are mostly positive but are sometimes negative as well,” explained Das.

“But then to think about this particular case in the context of children from lower socio-economic strata, we have to add the measure of consciousness. Maybe they are aware of the sexual implications of the human body, which they learned not the healthy way but the unhealthy way, for which their behaviour is maladjusted towards the same. Although they are aware of the negative side of this, they might not be aware of the consequences that can follow their maladaptive behaviour, the legal consequences to be very precise. For them, it is a very fun thing to do, to harass someone and watch them feel uncomfortable and afraid, and for them to feel proud to have successfully accomplished their mission. They might not actually know about the emotional and legal consequences that can follow,” she further added.

Don't Miss:Seven Disturbing Crimes Against Women That Sent Shivers Down Our Spine

Upbringing

Dr Divija introduced me to the other factor that leads children to act this way. “One of the reasons why young boys and teens are getting involved in sexual abuse is that they grow up seeing men in their social circle degrading women. Sexual abuse is often not about sexual urges at all, but about power. It is a way to create an imbalanced dynamic and if an individual grows up seeing such relationships around them they learn the same behaviour as it gets normalised in their brain,” said Bhasin.

She further added, “Even if they don’t actually witness abuse around them but small acts of violence or disrespect towards people seen as “weaker” in the society (in this case, women) they can start to act the same way in their own life.”