Connecting Communities to Promote Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse—The RACSHA Initiative

Abstract

Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is dishearteningly common in all societies and India is not an exception. Several methodologically robust epidemiological surveys have repeatedly affirmed the fact. Prevention of abuse is a societal prerogative, but it is an exceedingly complex task. Prevention of CSA needs synergistic, affirmative action by multiple stakeholders and cannot be addressed if individuals and organizations do not attempt to work in unison. A cursory review of the processes involved in protecting children from abuse in India paints a dismal picture of fractured services and absent coordination between health workers, teachers, social services, judiciary, and NGO’s. In India, the task of collaborative work to prevent CSA is made even more difficult by the fact that there is a culture of silence around the issues, which stifles conversation by invisibilizing the phenomena.

In India, the state-led effort to combat CSA had a watershed moment with a new piece of legislation in 2012. POCSO (Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences Act) was enacted in India with Presidential assent on June 19, 2012. The initial euphoria amongst stakeholders after the enactment of the act soon withered away as those working on the agenda of child protection realized that awareness about the law and the knowledge about the processes to implement the law, was abysmally poor in the community.

A community-based organization, Mental Health Foundation, Kolkata has been working at the interface of mental health, social care, and education for the past 12 years. The multi-disciplinary team of 15 professionals, which includes Clinical Psychologists, Special Educators, Social Worker, Speech and Language Therapist, and Psychiatrists caters to the needs of approximately 1000 patients per month, 60% of whom are children (under 18).

The frequency of children reporting sexual abuse to different team members would range from 4 to 8/month. Collectively, the number of calls different team members would receive from physicians, teachers, and community workers from NGO’s regarding how to deal with children who have survived CSA, would range from 10 to 15/month. The collective experiences of the team members pointed to a gaping hole. There was widespread anxiety, which stemmed from knowledge gaps about the legal and therapeutic processes around working with young people who have experienced sexual abuse.

The awareness about uncertainty amongst key social care and healthcare workers and teachers was the initial trigger to start an initiative to raise awareness about CSA in the community. The first author started discussions with her own team members on how an ethical, humane, and pragmatic response to disclosures could be formulated and actioned upon. An important part of this process was each member of the team had to be equally well-versed in the nuances of CSA. This required group discussions on CSA focusing on the theoretical and legal frameworks of CSA.

The second part of the initiative was how the team in Mental Health Foundation (MHF) could co-opt other stakeholders and form a collective, to spread the expertise and shared understanding around CSA. The first author, a social worker by training and having worked in Child Care organizations for more than 30 years, started reaching out to other NGO’s and experts in the field. The agenda was to explore the possibility of forming a network.

The response to form such a network was overwhelmingly positive. Several key people in the social care domain in Kolkata unequivocally came forward and shared their thoughts and expertize about the logistics.

The initial goal was to form a network, which will then be empowered through more domain knowledge about CSA, with the view that it could function as a nodal organization locally in West Bengal to address the gaps in practice at all levels.

What soon became very apparent, through these deliberations, were the obstacles in the community in implementing a humane, rights-based, and psychologically informed responses for the families and children who were experiencing the trauma of sexual abuse.

The following aspects emerged through the multi-stakeholder discussions:

A significant gap in awareness at all levels about CSA, including schools’, community workers, and mental health professionals.

Virtual absence of any framework within schools/NGO’s/professional bodies regarding how to work with disclosures.

Absence of supervision/peer support for professionals working with CSA.

Absence of collaboration and networking amongst NGO’s working for children and child protection.

Absence of a collective to lobby on behalf of stakeholders to the Government on issues pertaining to CSA.

The idea to form such a network like Rise Against Child Sexual Harm and Abuse (RACSHA) initially appeared hazy and too complicated. However, with continuous dialoging and brainstorming with multiple professionals, a concrete shape to the idea could be given. It was understood right from the inception, that the participants in the network would be volunteer activists, as it was not possible to raise funds initially. The name RACSHA was selected after the core group members were requested to brainstorm for a suitable name. The name was given by an IT Professional, who volunteered his time to help the group with IT logistics and accounts.

His participation typifies the goodwill amongst varied community members to contribute in a socially meaningful work. RACSHA formally started its journey in August 2016.

Gradually, rules and regulations around joining the network were drafted. Many initial applicants were keen to promote their own agendas through the network. A vetting system needed to be developed, which could weed out such participants.

As the network grew, members reached out to other organizations and individuals from every section of society to encourage participation. Efforts to include survivors, gender minority, and representatives for specially-abled children/young people were successful. To increase awareness, social media presence was built. During the initial years, the thrust was on knowledge sharing within and outside the network on CSA.

The attempt to increase awareness about the existence of RACSHA and knowledge about CSA got a huge fillip, when a very successful half a day event was organized in a city auditorium for teachers in 2018. The auditorium was packed to capacity, with many potential attendees denied entry because the hall was full. The other landmark program that gave a boost to the work of the network was a talk show involving a member of RACSHA by a very popular RJ on November 9 of 2018. The recording was shared more than 1000 times from his social media page.

As the word about RACSHA’s presence spread, there was an increase in the numbers of queries from different parts of West Bengal. The queries were around how RACSHA could help survivors of CSA. The paucity of services in the community was stark. This compelled a need to map the available community resources in Kolkata and other districts of West Bengal. A list of community organizations that were working with children and young people in West Bengal was circulated amongst the members, which could enhance liaison. With increasing queries about CSA, leaflets on how to handle disclosures and the role of RACSHA in English, Bengali, and Hindi were printed and made available online. Posters in Bengali were prepared. Posters on how to say no were made in a form that was easy to decipher and child-friendly. Those too were disseminated through social media and WhatsApp. The network made its social media presence soon after it was officially launched in 2016.

Gradually, more targeted approach on sensitization was developed. Separate campaigns and awareness programs have been held over the years for civil society members, teachers, pediatricians, and mental health professionals including psychiatrists. Resource materials have been developed with the needs of targeted audience in mind, which can be used by any member of the network. This has led to wider dissemination as the training initiatives are no longer required to be done by select few members of RACSHA.

The other important part of RACSHA’s skill-building initiative has been to train young trainee Psychologists and Counsellors on the complexities of sexuality and abuse. Successive batches of postgraduate students from 2 premier University of Kolkata have been sensitized through didactic lectures on the topic.

Slowly, the movement has gathered steam. Right at the outset, it became obvious that to make the network’s voice heard two key stakeholders must be co-opted. First and foremost, the young people need to feel a part of the network and secondly the statutory bodies in the state (of West Bengal).

The journey and experimentation of making young people part of the network probably has been the most rewarding part of RACHSA’s progress. At present, there is an ever-increasing volunteer group of young people, calling themselves Way To Sunshine. This volunteer group campaign innovatively on the prevention of CSA in vastly diverse forums and community gatherings ranging from village fairs in remote Sundarbans to busy thoroughfare in Kolkata. To reach a wider community of young students, plays scripted and acted by members of the youth, under tutelage from theater professionals have been held in prominent Kolkata auditoriums. The youth group has been a leading force in spreading awareness through social media campaigns and helping in creating youth friendly infographics and illustrated leaflets.

The attempts to engage stakeholders at the Government level, that is, the West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights have been gratifying, with frequent collaborative work on policy issues and awareness campaigns.

One of the dominant themes, which always emerged in many seminars/awareness camps was how to balance the legal requirement of mandatory reporting in POCSO, with sensitive trauma-informed care. How do professionals engage in situations when the young person/family do not consent for reporting? How do professionals negotiate situations where two consenting adolescents are engaged in sexual activity? (which is illegal as per POCSO). There is significant uncertainty amongst various stakeholders on these questions. To find answers a 2-day skill-building workshop “Balancing Care and Legalities—an interface with the Judiciary” was organized in 2019. This was a training program for RACSHA members/partners and other NGO representatives dealing with children in conflict with the law. Prof. Shekhar Seshadri & Ms. Sheila Ramaswamy of SAMVAAD, NIMHANS, Bangalore were the resource persons.

A network like this needs to have a sharp learning curve. We realized that the challenges of working in the community need a significant amount of out of the box thinking to arrive at solutions that mental health professionals may not be adept at. How do you address grooming of young people in severely deprived communities, where children are mostly out of school and parents are daily wage earners? How do you sensitize communities which live in extreme poverty? How do you talk about privacy in communities that have communal washrooms and large families share 1 room? How do you talk about relationships, sexual exploration, and boundary settings in children of commercial sex workers? We realized that answers did not lie in textbooks and academic journals. Co-creating solutions, generating incremental awareness, and sharing information about other ways of living and being, often were the only pathways available.

Running a network, which involves different organizations and individuals has its own challenges regarding funding, active participation of all members, and decision-making processes.

None of the above challenges have been insurmountable. Maintaining the momentum of activities needs key drivers within the network and we found it helpful to review the work of RACSHA through an external facilitator, who is an expert in development communication and organizational development consultant. Addressing the bottlenecks in running a network can often arise because of a lack of shared vision, faltering commitment to the cause, and bruized personal egos. All these aspects needs to be delicately and sensitively handled. This too has been part of our learning.

For those reading this article, the inevitable question of funding will come to their mind. RACSHA collects a token amount as yearly subscription. For large events donations are collected from potential benefactors. One organization, the Mental Health Foundation, provided the seed funding to meet the operational costs during the initial phase of operations.

Lack of funding actually has not been an issue in running the network because all members work pro bono.

In summary, our experience of running a network for 7 years now has shown it is possible for different organizations and individuals to come together and collectively work for prevention of CSA. In reality, the impact of a collective is far greater than what the individual organizations would have been able to achieve on their own. A platform such as RACSHA provides greater opportunity of opening up public conversation about CSA, which is the only way to facilitate prevention. In our opinion, forming a network in various cities and towns is practical and pragmatic. One individual has to take the lead.