During idle blog hopping that I seem to be doing a lot lately, I stumbled upon this site. A group of bloggers created this site to spread awareness on child sexual abuse.
Two years ago, I had written about my brush with sexual harrassment. Thankfully, I have never faced sexual abuse, which is no consolation, but not as serious as the many horror stories that I read in that site. I know that each and every single friend of mine has faced sexual harrassment or abuse - a suggestive remark, a sly look, bottom pinching, eve teasing and so on.
Agreed, I am not emotionally maimed for life by the incidents in the past. I lead a healthy family life and am not trapped in the hell of past horrors. In fact, apart from the temporary feeling of "something is not right" at that time, it has not caused debilitating disturbances.
Or has it ?
I refuse to leave my seven year old daughter with anyone alone. The only three men I trust my daughter with are her father and two grandfathers. I do not send her to school by the school van or an auto by herself. Everytime the cell phone shows an unidentified caller when the kid is at school, I panic. When I give the kid her weekly oil bath, I involuntarily check her body for tell-tale signs. I wonder if she would be traumatized when I give her an oil massage - even if I AM her mother, am I allowed to touch her body ?
I get paranoid when strangers smile at my daughter or even pass an innocent comment and mad at my daughter when she responds to innocent comments. When the kid wants to play outside when I am working, I peep out of the window every minute to see if she is alright. On the rare occasion that I take the public bus somewhere with her, I place her in front of me, and stand so close to her so that not even air touches her. Every week I talk to her about good-touch-bad-touch.
Everytime I read or hear of some form of CSA, my stomach churns and I check up on my daughter, and don't leave her out of my sight for many days after that. When her father and I are walking around the stadium, and she is playing, if I can't see her for one second, I am swept by a wave of desparation. As I see signs of impending tweens in her, and promise of a beautiful teen, one part of me is proud, but the other worried. Would I rather she be a plane jane than the beautiful woman she promises to grow into?
And its not just with my daughter. When I see young tweens standing somewhere by themselves, I want to go and stand with them and deliver them to safety. When I see my daughter's friends S or J riding their bikes by themselves in an otherwise empty alley, I feel very uncomfortable.
Life should not have to be like this. I should not have to be so mistrustful of co-human beings.
But it seems that I am justified. CSA is rampant. FSA (Female sexual abuse) is equally rampant. I recently heard of cases where in our peaceful and apparently safe campus, a friend got flashed by a random stranger, outside her own house. Another friend was pulled into the woods and may have been violated but for passersby. I don't even want to browse the newspaper any more having yet not recovered from the news of the kids in Coimbatore being assaulted and killed by their own school van drivers a few months back. When I hear news like this, I wish I could send my daughter back into my womb where she would be safer. I wonder if I should just lock her up inside the house, home school her and generally release her into the world when she is fifty years old. But then, there would still be GSA - geriatric sexual abuse. Will it ever end?
If I met God, I'd ask Her to redesign the human sex apparatus (including the one in people's head) such that it operates only when both parties willingly consent. It's not too much to ask, is it?
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