Safeguarding from sexual abuse is fundamental to any facility which provides services to children. With increasing school enrollment at the core of all child-related policies and schemes, schools need to be at the frontline of child protection. Not only is it the one social institution outside the family with which most children have consistent contact, but it is also where a large part of a child’s truly "awake" time is spent.
In June 2021, the Tamil Nadu School Education Department issued GO No. 83 which laid out a school’s responsibility in addressing sexual violence in school-based settings in the state. It was a rare instance when an issue of child protection was recognised as integral to children’s engagement with school. The order outlines the framework for prevention and redress of sexual violence. It also created compliances to ensure a school environment is safe. It validates the reality that a child with a roof over their head, three square meals, whose health needs are met, could still be a child vulnerable to sexual abuse. Since its passing, unfortunately, much of these compliances are yet to be fully implemented and the order seems to have sunk into such oblivion that there was not even a mention of it in the Chief Secretary's Guidelines for the District Education Review issued last month. The only allusion to safety compliance in the Guidelines was adherence to standards for school buildings and facilities.
Further, the fact that District Child Protection Officers were not included in the District Level Monitoring Committee envisaged in the Guidelines, is by itself a telling comment. In the context of the police, a reference is only made to substance abuse, while for social welfare (the only time child protection is mentioned), mention is limited to three sentences on child marriage.
Yet not a week goes by without the media reporting on at least two allegations of school-based child sexual abuse. Like all reporting to authorities, this is but the tip of the iceberg. The instances reported include educator misconduct and peer-to-peer abuse. For many children, school and teachers are their safe spaces, and as a result they make disclosures of abuse happening in other locales.
TN is no different from the rest of the world with regard to school-based sexual violence - there are over 100 cases reported to the police against school personnel pending. This does not even take into account cases of peer-to-peer abuse which are dismissed as insignificant. Most often, inquiries by the school education department are completed but no final action is taken until the court case is over. As a result, in the intervening period, alleged abusers are merely transferred to another school despite the grave consequence of them being given access to a fresh set of children to abuse.
It is well established that professional perpetrators dot youth-serving organisations including school campuses. These are people who consciously choose professions which act as a cover and give them credibility, access and proximity to children.
Schools have an ethical responsibility to be forestalling and responsive. Nonetheless, studied silence and cover ups seem to be the norm. Fully cognizant of this, various sections in the POCSO Act lay additional responsibility and liability on school personnel and management for failure to report. However, it is still a rarity, as in Coimbatore recently, that a school is held responsible for not reporting sexual abuse.
Improvised short interactions with children on self-defence and talking about safe and unsafe touch, without including adults are knee-jerk and tokenistic. Educating children about personal safety, no doubt, is one of the elements towards promoting a culture of safety but short-term engagements only soothe the anxieties of adults without really bolstering safety for the children. The first step, instead, needs to be built around a call to action by everyone in the school with regard to their responsibility towards children.
A school’s integrity and worth are not based on whether cases of sexual violence happen to children on its rolls. Rather, they are based on a school accepting the possibilities of sexual violence and taking preemptive steps to safeguard children and respond in a timely and appropriate manner to ensure that its students are safe all the time, everywhere.
(Footnote is a weekly column that discusses issues relating to Tamil Nadu)
Vidya Reddy is executive director of Tulir - Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse and Sannuthi Suresh is its programme coordinator
The first step
Educating kids about personal safety is one of the elements towards promoting a culture of safety but short-term engagements only soothe the anxieties of adults. The first step, instead, needs to be built around a call for action by everyone in the school with regard to their responsibility