» interviews » In Conversation With Ms. Megha Bhatia Founder of Our Voix on Child Sexual Abuse

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Ms. Megha Bhatia, Founder of Our Voix, working for the prevention of Child Sexual Abuse. In this Interview, she is sharing her views and work experience on the issue of Child Sexual Abuse. It was a pleasure interviewing Ms. Megha Bhatia. Here’s the conversation with her:

Question No. 1: Varun Kumar, from Law Audience: First, of all, thanks for agreeing for this interview, how you would like to introduce yourself to our audience?

Answer: Thank you for having me at the Law Audience Online Interview Series. I am Megha Bhatia, Founder of Our Voix, LLM, University College of London.

Question No. 2: Varun Kumar, from Law Audience: Tell our audience something about your organization (Our Voix), its mission and how your organization works towards the prevention of Child Sexual Abuse?

Answer: Our Voix is a youth lead organisation working for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse. We envision a safe society for children. We organize campaigns such as #istandforbachpan, #learninglawswithourvoix, #musicwithourvoix, #dramawithourvoix as methods to engage youth for the cause. We have launched India’s first comic book on child rights and safety, a YouTube Channel on the prevention of abuse and a podcast series covering the stories of survivors of abuse. We have also been engaging youth from different States and conducting training sessions to ensure that they spread the message about the prevention of child sexual abuse.

Question No. 3: Varun Kumar, from Law Audience: How did the idea of Our Voix come into your mind?

Answer: During the final year of my law college in India, I was dealing with rape cases of young children as small as 6 years old, for two months. The stories of children about sexual abuse were enough to shake me up and ignite the fire within me to work for the cause. I decided to pursue human rights; I got an offer letter from University College London. In London, after campaigning for the rights of the children in the United Kingdom Parliament on issues such as Yemen Crisis, Syrian crisis, etc, I observed the utter need to end violence against children. My research on the prevention of Child Sexual Abuse helped me realize the need to work on prevention in India. Primary prevention of child sexual abuse is crucial. When children are sexually abused their voices are muted by society, thus we need to add Our Voix to theirs in order to make it heard. Hence, Our Voix was formed to provide a platform to children where they can raise their voice without being blamed or ashamed for the same. After hearing a lot of stories of survivors, experiences, researches, ignited a zeal in me to help the little souls and start Our Voix. I came back to India and started building a team of lawyers, psychologist, teachers, students, etc.

Question No. 4: Varun Kumar, from Law Audience: According to you, what is the psychological and long-term impact of Child Sexual Abuse?

Answer: There is a huge long term impact including depression, changes in behavioural habits, fear of sexual relations, post-traumatic stress disorder, there is an endless list of long term impacts of child sexual abuse on survivors. That is why it is important to prevent it because prevention is anytime better than cure.

Question No. 5: Varun Kumar, from Law Audience: According to your work experience, who are the most common wrongdoers?

Answer: In 94.4% of the cases, sexual abuse is done by a known person. Wrongdoer can be anybody, there is no specific gender involved, it can be a male, a female or even a child.

Question No. 6: Varun Kumar, from Law Audience: According to you what is role of parents & schools regarding the same?

Answer: Parents and schools can play a very crucial role in ensuring that there is primary prevention of child sexual abuse. Parents can initiate a conversation with children where they teach children about private parts, sex education, safe and unsafe touch. It is important that we do not shy away from these topics. It is important that parents share this information with the children and provide a safe space for them to speak up about any such incidents. It is important for schools to have mandatory courses on prevention of child sexual abuse, teachers should be trained on The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (hereinafter referred to as POCSO Act), and moreover, a child abuse monitoring committee should be set up at every school. I think these are certain steps that every school should be taking to ensure children’s safety and comply with the rights that children have under UNCRC (The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child) in this case, The Right to be Safe under Article 19.

Question No. 7: Varun Kumar, from Law Audience: In most of the cases children do not tell even to their parents that they have been sexually abused. According to you, what is the main reason behind this issue?

Answer: First of all, children are not able to identify that they have been abused; they don’t know whether it’s right or wrong. Secondly, in some cases, they do not tell their parents because they are groomed by the abuser as a result of which they are fearful that if they inform their parents, then the parents will not believe them, they will be beaten, restricted from going to school. The children are scared to have the conversation with their parents so they do not share the incident with them when an abuse happens. They are also worried about the repercussions it can bring, how their parents will react to the issue and in certain cases, the children feel that it is their fault.

Question No. 8: Varun Kumar, from Law Audience: What steps parents should take if sexual abuse is reported?

Answer: If a child shares an incident of sexual abuse with the parents, it is important that parents listen to the child, make the child believe that it is not the child’s fault, and ensure that proper counselling is provided to the child. It is vital for the parents to report the incident which is not only their moral obligation but also a legal obligation as per the POCSO Act. They can also report the matter to the Child Helpline number which is 1098.

Question No. 9: Varun Kumar, from Law Audience: According to you, is Indian Law enough cable of prosecuting the wrongdoer or amendments are needed in this area?

Answer: We have a strong law that is the POCSO Act which is related to prevention as well as protection of children from sexual offences but I strongly believe that merely having a law is not sufficient. It is important to have proper implementation mechanisms. We have a lot of child friendly provisions mentioned under the law, the problem is not with the law but we must ensure the proper implementation and awareness of the law in the grassroot level. After conducting workshops for more than 15000 children, we have observed that teachers are not even aware about the POCSO Act which prescribes different punishments related to sexual offences, therefore awareness about the legal provisions are crucial. There is always a scope for improvement of laws and we need to focus on reformative steps rather than retributive steps, an eye for an eye approach will not work in this scenario. It is important that even the accused is provided with proper counselling. There are cases when children are the accused, they shall be punished under relevant sections of the JJ Act (The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children)), but it is also essential to provide proper counselling to the child so that the child never repeats it.

Question No. 10: Varun Kumar, from Law Audience: In most of the cases children cannot understand the difference between a good touch and bad touch. How to tackle with this problem?

Answer: In some cases children are unable to identify safe touch or unsafe touch because we are not conveying the information correctly; there is some kind of a hesitation that parents adopt. It is essential to have open conversations and dialogue with children. There are different mechanisms available to start the conversation with the children on this topic. You can refer to various free printables and materials available on our website, i.e., www.ourvoix.comor you can also organise a workshop conducted by Our Voix in which we teach the children through a unique concept of POWERS. Moreover, there are various cyclic materials available, such as our comic book which can be used to convey the message in a very child friendly manner.

Question No. 11: Varun Kumar, from Law Audience: Any special message for children or for our audience?

Answer: It is high time that we raise our voice against sexual violence that is happening with our children. Let us not just think about the statistics because for a lot of people statistics are just numbers. Every second child is getting sexually abused in India but we need to think about the story behind every child because the impact of sexual abuse is huge. It is important that we save lives now and make childhood safe together because children are not the future, they are the present of our country and it is important that we amplify their voices.

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