Child sexual abuse in India: A systematic review

Child sexual abuse in India: A systematic review examines qualitative and quantitative data on child sexual abuse in India. It was published on October 9, 2018, by PLOS ONE – a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science, California. Quoting a 1999 report by the World Health Organization, the paper defines child sexual abuse as “…the involvement of a child in sexual activity that he or she does not fully comprehend, is unable to give informed consent to, or for which the child is not developmentally prepared and cannot give consent, or that violates the laws or social taboos of society.” The paper studies the prevalence, determinants and impact of child sexual abuse across genders and seeks to identify the gaps in current research on the subject. It finds that child sexual abuse is rampant among both girls and boys in India – “grounded in the interplay between individual, family, community, and societal factors.” Men engaging in homosexual acts, sex work professionals and women with psychiatric disorders are more likely to have suffered such abuse as children. The 32-page paper reviews 51 academic articles published in English between 2006 and 2016. The articles were identified through PubMed, POPLINE and PsycINFO – online research databases on health and psychology – using 55 keywords, such as ‘sexual abuse’, ‘perpetrator’ and ‘domestic violence’. As high as 35 of the 51 reports used quantitative analysis, 11 used qualitative analysis and five used both methods. The authors of this paper are researchers Ameeta S...