Shout, Yell or silent 'No' : Understanding and challenging child sexual abuse

“If someone tries to do something bad with me, but then they put the blame on me saying that I agreed before but I said no after. If people don’t believe in my No stating that I agreed before; then what will happen? What do I do?”

We conducted our last and final workshop ‘Prevention of child sexual abuse’ with adolescents to build understanding on what is child sexual abuse beyond the regular conversation on good touch and bad touch along with making sure that the participants understand that any form of sexual abuse is wrong, they can say No to it even if the abuser is someone they trust and comes in their own family. The session began with screening of film ‘Komal’ by Child line followed by brief discussion. Gathering the thoughts and learnings from the film, we explained child sexual abuse in elaborate manner including everything that comes under the umbrella of sexual abuse.

It was also crucial to mention why there is strong need to talk about CSA, because every child is at risk – the available data, rampant increases in cases of violence and deafening silence around the issue proves it. Feeling of shame, guilt, blame, sadness, anger, betrayal, self-blame and loneliness that comes with the experience of CSA was also shared. We have been talking about body, sexual organs, changes in body as part of puberty along with consent for over a month now preparing them to be comfortable with their body, understanding it and then gaining that capacity to know what touch is good or bad to be them more than just 4 parts of the body as instructed during good touch and bad touch sessions.

This was lot of information for the participants to process and we knew that from start that’s how the sequence of the workshops are decided so that by the time we come to child sexual abuse workshop they are prepared to take this information.

The next part of the workshop dealt ‘how to challenge CSA’. This is core of our work at Sahas – to build the capacity to say NO to violence so we yelled NO over and over again as a practice thereby paving the way to say No to any or whatever touch of things that makes you uneasy, uncomfortable or not happy. The conversation on trusted adult took an interesting turn when one of the participants shared that she trust her friend and would share anything with her. However on asking if she could help her out when encountered with CSA, she refused stating that both of them are of same age. With this point, the definition of trusted adult was established. It was also important to point out that if you go to trusted adult, and they don’t believe you or listen to you then don’t lose hope – try and keep saying it, if they still don’t believe you go to other trusted adult! It’s not your fault that this happened to you, it’s not – the person doing that is wrong and you must seek help.  

It was at this point we talked about POCSO act and helpline number for children in distress. With this information, we took a pause to give participants some time to take in the information and process it also opening the circle for questions or sharing.

As this was our last workshop, we invited participants to ask questions or raise doubts:

“Is it important that we get periods after every 28 days?”

“What is the reason behind irregular periods? What do we do if we have irregular periods?”

“What is nightfall? Does it cause any harm?”

“What is the role of sperm and bone marrow?”

“Does our height stop increasing once our periods start?”

Because of the questions around wet dreams, we also took opportunity to engage on masturbation.

In the last part of the workshop, we invited the participants to share their feedback and topics that we should have included or given information on –

“What I learnt here was openness! Openness to talk about issues that are related to me, my body. I travel in bus, auto a lot so if someone touches me inappropriately then I won’t hesitate to say No and say that no one can touch me without my wish. Also if someone do something wrong – it’s their fault and they are wrong – it’s definitely not my fault or any child’s fault”

“I learnt about maintaining hygiene and cleanliness during periods and in general; to protect oneself, and also to raise voice if I see something wrong happening and not be silent”

“The one thing that I will always remember from the session is to be able to talk freely, without hesitation or shame because this is important to us”

“The best part was I can ask any question openly. I could ask you anything about my body, share things that I could normally never share even with my parents”

 “I loved the conversation on condom; the movie was brilliant – it was interesting to see how father explain his 10 year old boy about sex and condoms. Here it seems as if it is a crime, it is something that we should be ashamed of. I feel so relieved and confident now”

“The best part of the workshops was we can ask any questions, you would always smile and answer any and every question with so much ease that all the discomfort went away with the question”

When an adolescent says that they can ask any question around their body freely, without any shame or they will say No to any unsafe touch – it’s like our work here is done! That’s what Sahas aims at. I am so happy and overjoyed that we could implement our gender, sexuality and reproductive health program online for the first time. It seemed so ambitious at first, we didn’t know we could pull it because creating safe and inclusive space on ground while sitting face to face with participants takes so much effort, how in the world we could pull this online with all this technology and mobilization hassles. But I am extremely proud to say that Yes we did it !!

This program won’t have been possible without our collaboration with My Perch. Raj, Nupur and Happy were driving force for our sessions, their level of commitment, dedication and responsibility amazes me – they did extensive mobilization, they participate, inform participants and are also engaged in tons of activities along with this. I am so glad to have them as our team members for this intervention and many more things in the future.