Engaging with the adolescent boys on "Child sexual abuse'

The workshop on ‘child sexual abuse’ has been very carefully and cautiously designed keeping in mind that the twin objective here: engaging on what is child sexual abuse and building their capacity to say “NO” to it along with informing them of POCSO law.  

The session with the first group of adolescent participants of Government school, Dwarka began with the reiteration of the agreements that we have been following for past 5 workshops as of now. This was followed by the game of ‘Wolf and sheep’ which hints towards the vicious cycle of violence and the struggle of the victim to challenge and break that cycle.

We then screened video ‘Komal’ by Childline which talks about good touch and bad touch; we then opened the circle and invited them to share their thoughts on the video or if they have ever being touched inappropriately. This is one of the make or break part of the session because lot of things can happen- it checks if we have been able to create a safe space, do students trust enough to be vulnerable in this circle, what to do if someone shares his experience of abuse and finally keeping the confidentiality agreement intact while abiding POCSO guidelines. 

The students share as to how they have seen people getting intimate in park, someone saw a girl being groped in  train in night, seen a girl being molestation on road though he confronted and saved the girl and others. But what scared me and had to be intervened immediately when a boy indicated that he had seen 2-3 classmates doing inappropriate things to each other, he was about to take their names. This is not a surprise that boys talk about their private organs, their length and deciding who is better man based on it however a 12 years old saying it loud was triggering enough. 

Through a pictorial presentation, we talked about what is child sexual abuse, how bad touch is not restricted to touching the private organs it could be as simple as touching the shoulder, face or head in a way to make you feel uncomfortable, feeling and thoughts associated with the abuse, constantly repeating that it’s the fault of the abuser and not the child, how to fight it out and finally why it is important to talk about child sexual abuse.

The last and most important part of the session is building their capacity to challenge child sexual abuse, this we do by engaging them through safety action workbook. It talks about feelings: good, sad, angry or ‘don’t know’; touch, rules of being safe, what do we do when safety rules are broken and most importantly they have stories indicating abuse and participants are invited to define the touch, feelings and the next course of action. 

Yet another crucial aspect of the workbook is that after each section, they emphasize that it’s not your fault that someone has touched you inappropriately, and the action to take when someone touches or tries to touch you inappropriately. 

This session brought many aspects of the participants out in open which led us to have an intense post session reflection process and dwelled on how to process the findings for the current set of students and for the future workshops.