In a departure from previous years, the annual crime statistics for the National Crime Records Bureau for 2017 explicitly acknowledged for the first time that boys can be victims of child sexual abuse as well. In the cases recorded under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the NCRB document has demarcated how many cases had male victims.
Overall in India, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh had the greatest number of POCSO cases with 5,248 and 4,895 incidents respectively. The other states among the top ten were West Bengal (2,131), Karnataka (1,956), Gujarat (1,697), Chhattisgarh (1,676), Telangana (1,632), Tamil Nadu (1,587), Madhya Pradesh (1,569) and Bihar (1,356).
Further in 93.6% of the cases of aggravated penetrative sexual assault on children, the perpetrator was known to the child victim. This is in line with 2016’s NCRB figures, where the number was at 94.6%.
The total number of POCSO cases registered in 2017 stood at 32,608. When it comes to male child sexual abuse, there hasn’t been a comprehensive study in India save one in 2007 by the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, supported by United Nations Children's Fund, Save The Children and Prayas, which found that out of the 53.22% of children who were found to have been sexually abused, 52.94% were boys.
Kushi Kushalappa of Enfold, an organisation that supports survivors of child sexual abuse and their families, told TNM that NCRB acknowledging boys as victims of sexual abuse as well is a step in the right direction. “This also allows us to look at the level of underreporting of male child sexual abuse,” she said.
The difference between the numbers of girl and boy victims is quite vast indeed. 2017’s NCRB numbers further break down POCSO statistics based on which sections the crimes were registered under, which reveals the following.
While there were 17,597 girl victims of penetrative sexual assault (sections 4 and 6), for boys, the number was 183. While 117 cases registered for aggravated penetrative sexual (section 8 and 10) assault had male child victims, there were 11,899 cases reported were girls were victims. As compared to 1,322 girls, 37 boys were reported to be sexually harassed (section 12) in 2017. Child sexual abuse material (under sections 14 and 15; also referred to as child pornography) had 339 girl victims, compared to 43 boys. The only place where there were more male victims (512) were girls (152) was in cases where section 377 of the IPC was read with POCSO Act.
Compared to other Indian states, many of which reported no cases of male child sexual abuse in 2017, Kerala stood out, reporting more cases of child sexual abuse against boys, as in the following table.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that other states – even those reported none in 2017 - do not have male child sexual abuse. It simply means that reporting in Kerala is higher.
Vidya Reddy of Tulir - Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse, based in Chennai, said that the explicit acknowledgement towards male victims now shows that the system has evolved.
"However, these are police statistics," she adds, warning that the POCSO statistics in the NCRB data must be seen while keeping a margin of error. "Many times, the sections in the FIR and the chargesheet at different because the police find out details about the sexual assault during the investigation post-FIR, and it is then amended in the chargesheet. That is one place where discrepancies happen which does not reflect in the NCRB statistics,” Vidya says.
She explains with an example: “In Tamil Nadu, between Novemeber 2012 -- when POCSO came into effect -- and March 2018, the statistics from the District Child Protection Unit showed 85 boys had been abused and sought assistance. But we filed an RTI with the courts for the same period. And even though four districts did not respond, the court data, which is much more reliable, revealed that only 28 boys had been abused. This shows how much the numbers can vary.”