The Madurai city police team and Sivaganga Additional Deputy Superintendent of Police Dr R Stalin recently reposted an “educational” video on their official handles on X (formerly Twitter), purportedly demonstrating ‘good touch’ and ‘bad touch’. The video is concerning as it perpetuates sexual abuse of a child. Ironically it comes at a time when the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin, in a Law and Order review meeting earlier this week, stressed the importance of addressing crime against women and children, especially cases under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, on high priority.
The video features a woman “teaching” a classroom full of children “good and bad touch” by actually demonstrating the types of touches on a child. This child then says, “good touch!” with her thumbs up in response to what she has been taught are “good touches” or says, “No!” pushing the woman’s hands off as a response to what are taught as “bad touches”.
This sexualised groping of a child in the name of Personal Safety Education (PSE) is unacceptable. It is the antithesis of one of the basic concepts of PSE for children, that their body belongs only to them and nobody has the right to touch them in a way they don’t like or understand. The video is superficial and limiting because it does not take the child’s own bodily integrity into consideration, and an isolated set of touches, devoid of context, is labelled as “bad”.
Has it occurred to stakeholders, whether they are families, teachers, police, doctors or just concerned citizens, who are paramount to ensuring the safety of children from sexual violence, that a very common grooming tactic used by abusers is to normalise sexualised and inappropriate touching under the guise of teaching children about personal safety?
The video and its endorsement by many is a reflection of the condescending and simplistic view of children that people harbour: anyone who thinks they know children becomes a personal safety educator!
PSE is actually the product of years of rigorous scientific review and is guided by a pedagogy that has arrived at the most nuanced and attuned ways to implement it with children without encumbering children from experiencing childhood. This requires training and intense self-reflection.
It needs to be recognised that educating children about personal safety is just one element in promoting a culture of safety and cannot be a substitute for ensuring safeguards around a child, which is the sole responsibility of adults.
Endorsements of such a video lays bare the lack of understanding of the dynamics of sexual violence against children and gives credence to shoddy police investigation, which translates into a paltry 5.48% conviction rate of POCSO cases in TN.
As for propagating the usage of good/right touch and bad/wrong touch, semantics matter! While these terms are often used to help children understand these concepts, it is actually counterproductive to the goal of teaching children personal safety. Usage of these particular terms has been discontinued in prevention material for many years now, worldwide.
‘Good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are absolute words that do not fully describe the subtle forms in which sexual and personal safety of a child is breached. In the unfortunate event of them receiving a ‘bad’ touch, they may associate it with the literal sense of the word, that they themselves are bad, impure, defiled or dirty as they attracted it.
However, the words ‘safe’, ‘unsafe’ and ‘confusing’ are relatively neutral and contextual. They are less likely to lead to such self-negating/blaming feelings in children when encountered with an experience of this sort. These terms put the onus on the person who made the touch (“s/he/they made me feel unsafe”). The likelihood of children reporting an “unsafe touch” rather than a “bad” or “wrong” touch is considerably higher for these reasons as well.
Moreover, children may confuse the word ‘good’ with pleasurable. However, a pleasurable touch may not always and necessarily be a ‘good touch’. In order to address these concerns, the usage of ‘safe’, ‘unsafe’ and ‘confusing’ are favoured over other terms, even if in principle they refer to the same concept.
(Vidya Reddy is the executive director of Tulir - Centre for Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse and Sannuthi Suresh is its programme coordinator)