The state’s child welfare committee has decided to campaign in schools to tell children that if they face any form of sexual assault or overtures, they should come forward and lodge a complaint instead of suffering in silence.
Members of the committee said they had asked schools in and around Kolkata to arrange for classroom sessions with students to discuss types of abuse that they may face and how they should always speak up about it.
Panel members said they would convey to the students that teachers and the child welfare committee would stand by them.
The children will be told about legal provisions to penalise offenders, the officials said.
“It can be any experience. If a child feels traumatised seeing the father beat up the mother at home, if someone touches the child inappropriately or does anything that leaves the child traumatised... these things should not be bottled up,” said Mahua Sur Ray of the Kolkata district child welfare committee.
“We want to reach out to the children and tell them to speak up, even if it’s about someone close in the family.... The CWC will take up the complaint and take necessary steps.”
Earlier this week, a student at a school in Sarsuna, on the city’s southwestern fringes, complained of sexual assaults by her brother and one of his acquaintances. A teenager had allegedly filmed the second assault, the Class XI student said in an email to one of her teachers.
The mail was forwarded to officials of the child welfare committee and a complaint under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) was drawn up. The accused were arrested and the child, an orphan, was sent to a child care institution.
“The child is still scared thinking about the possible fallout of her complaint. She has stopped going to school but has decided to appear for the final exams,” a senior official of the child welfare committee said. “This isn’t a lone case. Many complaints of sexual or mental abuse are getting registered these days, though not in enough numbers.”
Crime against children has witnessed over 20 per cent rise in 2022, compared with the pandemic years of 2020-2021, in the city, according to the data collated by the National Crime Records Bureau in December 2023 said.
From 486 cases reported in 2020 and 497 in 2021, at least 602 cases of crime against children were recorded in Kolkata in 2022.
Nationally, abduction accounted for 46 per cent of the cases of crime against children. Those registered under Pocso accounted for 40 per cent of the cases.
Sur Ray of the committee said: “Our experience so far has been that the perpetrators are mostly those who are known to the child or family members of the child.”
“We want to tell children that the support framework is really strong and it will not only ensure their protection after a complaint is lodged, but take care of their education,” she said.