NEW DELHI: Over 80 per cent of the 1,150 survivors of sexual violence in 14 states belong to the SC, ST and OBC categories, according to an online survey conducted by an NGO.The break-up of data shows that 28 per cent of the respondents belonged to Scheduled Castes (SC), 22 per cent belonged to Scheduled Tribes (ST), 33 per cent belonged to Other Backward Classes (OBC), and 14 per cent to the general category of population. Of the 1,553 respondents, 74 per cent said they had experienced some form of sexual violence in their life. Of them, 92 per cent were women and eight per cent men.
The survey found that of those who had faced sexual violence, 31 per cent were raped, 4 per cent were gang-raped and 4 per cent faced an attempt to rape. Ninety-five per cent of the sexual violence survivors said they did not file any form of complaint. Two per cent said they had lodged an FIR, and another 3 per cent said they had sent their complaint to the internal committee in their organisation, according to the survey conducted last month over 28 days.
The reasons for not reporting sexual violence varied from social stigma to losing family support and feeling threatened.“Of the 126 male respondents who took the survey, as many as 93 said they faced some form of sexual violence. But they were scared to disclose this information even to their close ones,” said Ashif Shaikh, director, Jan Sahas.
The data showed minors were more at a risk of facing sexual violence, with 78 per cent of the total respondents saying they faced sexual violence when they were minors. The survey results show that private space are often unsafe and the perpetrators are often known to the victims—with 28 per cent of the instances having occurred in the survivors’ homes and 64 per cent of the perpetrators being known to the victims.“We wanted to provide a platform to people who can speak out against sexual violence through the survey. The idea is to remove the stigma that survivors face in society and break the culture of silence,” said Shaikh.
