Are our children safe and secure?

When the trial of a high-profile British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of a newspaper tycoon was going on in a USA court a couple of days before the dawn of the New Year, a 6-year-old tribal girl, who was allegedly raped before being killed by her 30-year-old neighbour in Hyderabad's Singareni colony in September 2021, came to my mind.

All hell broke loose following the heinous crime in the State capital but the 'issue' died down once the perpetrator was found dead on railway tracks at a far away place. We don't know whether the State machinery took liberties to deliver an instant justice to assuage the feelings of the agitated people but a series of news reports on the atrocities and abuses against children, globally as well as locally,has set alarm bells ringing.

The ghastly crimes proved to be committed by Ghislaine to fulfil the sexual pleasures of her late boyfriend, Jeffrey Epstein, another high-profile American financier, at the cost of the lives of minor girls has sent shock waves across the world.

A jury of a New York federal court found Ghislaine, now 60, 'recruited and groomed'teenagers for about a decade starting from 1994 for Epstein, who committed suicide in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell while waiting trail. One of the richest ladies with connections with high and mighty, Ghislaine was convicted on five accounts, including one count of sex trafficking. She has to face up to 65 years in prison, if her lawyers' appeals go in vain.

Married couple ganging up to commit gruesome crimes against children is not a rare phenomenon. Ghislaine-Epstein's series of chilling crimes have many similarities to the most heinous crimes jointly committed by another couple, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, who terrorized Canadian teenagers in 1990s.

Homolka and Bernardo met in 1987, and tied the knot in 1991. On Christmas Eve in 1990, they claimed their first victim, who is none other than Homolka's own 15-year-old sister, Tammy. The couple had made believe the world that it was an accidental death but a Canadian court later found that Homolka drugged her sister and then brought her to Bernardo to rape. After the death of the teenager (choked to death on her own vomit), in June 1991, the couple raped and killed a 14-year-old and in 1992 another 15-year-old fell victim to them the next year.

The couple, to the surprise of the investigators and jurists, filmed their sadistic violence.In February 1993, Homolka turned herself in to police claiming that she had been an unwilling accomplice to her husband. Homolka was released in 2005 after serving a 12-year sentence to settle as a volunteer in a school while Bernardo is still in prison.

Britain's late TV presenter and radio host Jimmy Savile was another high-profile personality who sexually abused hundreds of people. Police were shocked to figure out nearly three-quarters of his victims were children, with the youngest only 8 years old.

Though Jimmy passed away in 2011 at the age of 84 before his crimes were uncovered, an inquiry conducted by his former employer BBC found that the predator had molested approximately 72 children over a four-decade campaign of brutal sexual abuse. Ghislaine's case sheet promoted me to moot these startling international cases against children but many surveys and statistics clearly indicate that such predators are on the prowl.

UNICEF maintained that violence against kids takes place in all settings: at home, school, child care institutions, work and in the community and often violence is perpetrated by someone known to the child.Though India has a wide range of laws to protect children and child protection is increasingly accepted as a core component of social development, according to it, the challenge is in implementing the laws due to inadequate human resource capacity on the ground and quality prevention and rehabilitation services.

As a result millions of children are prone to violence, abuse and exploitation unabated.A reputed NGO,Child Rights and You (CRY),analysed the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data and revealed that a total of 1,28,531 crimes against children were recorded in India in 2019, indicating that an average of 350 such cases were reported each day.

The NCRB data shows that as many as 4,18,385 crimes against children were recorded in the last three years. Out of these, child sex abuse offences under the Protection of Children against Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, alone accounted for 1,34,383 -roughly one third! It means every third crime registered against a child is under POCSO and it lays bare the vulnerability of children in our society.

Further, more than 99 percent of crimes (28,058 out of 28,327) registered under the POCSO in 2020 were against girls. Crimes against adolescent girls within the 16 to 18 age group were the highest at 14,092, followed by 10,949 crimes against girls within the 12 to 16 age group.

Furthermore, the pandemic-triggered environment has made children more vulnerable. Media reports suggest that children are subjected to domestic violence committed by the frustrated parents. More than 400 per cent increase in cyber-crime cases committed against children was reported in 2020 in comparison to 2019. Most of the crimes were related to publishing or transmitting of materials depicting children in sexually explicit acts, according to the latest NCRB report.

According to Interpol, an estimated 2.4 million instances of online child sexual abuse were reported from India from 2017 to 2020 and 80 per cent of these victims were girls under the age of 14. In November 2021, Interpol called nations to urge local online end-to-end encryption providers 'to take responsibility' and design products with the aim of protecting children against abuse.

A resolution in this effect was adopted at Interpol's annual General Assembly in Istanbul recently calling member countries to approve laws enabling local law enforcement to prevent and respond to online child sexual abuse cases using the technology.

Time and again, it is proved that children fall prey to known people or close relatives. Parents should suspect the motive behind the unusual interest being shown by others on their wards. Acts such as leaving kids in the homes of unreliable relatives and allowing kids to stay in not-so-familiar neighbours' homes also proved to be dangerous.

Ghislaine, according to court indictment document, first attempted to befriend some of Epstein's minor victims prior to their abuse including by asking the victims about their lives, their schools, and their families. Along with Epstein, she would spend time building friendships with minor victims by for example, taking minor victims to the movies or shopping.

The Telangana Crime Investigation Department (CID) has launched an awareness campaign against 'child sex abuse' in the city a few days ago. Around 300 cops from both Hyderabad and Cyberabad commissionerates were assigned to go to about 3,000 schools to create awareness about CSA.

Even though we don't know the efficacy of the initiative, in a noble bid to prevent child abuse the Hyderabad police launched a campaign, christened 'We Can', in September 2021 to reach out to schools, hospitals and orphanages to create awareness against child sex abuse across all sections of the society. It also proposed to come up with a strong action plan to make children aware of their safety.

Such a key exercise should be expanded to all parts of the State and efforts must be made to keep the issue of children's safety alive. Children's safety is not solely in the hands of the government or its agencies. Unless and until every citizen- family members, relatives, friends, neighbours, teachers, NGOs and concerned citizens-gets involved in this exercise, it is impossible to ensure safety and security for children.

(The author, a PhD in Communication and Journalism, is a senior journalist,

journalism educator and

communication consultant)