INDIA
The Week
Namita Kohli
April 23, 2018
“How many times must a three-and-a-half-year-old recount the trauma she went through? Our system is such that a child who barely knows what she ate yesterday is asked what she went through six months ago… after all those months, defense lawyers ask her ‘where did the uncle touch’, ‘where did it hurt’,” an emotional father, a daily wager in Delhi, said, while recounting his ordeal in getting justice for his minor daughter, a victim of child sexual abuse.
“Death penalty is not a solution. That would be too easy an end,” the father said at a presser organised by civil society members who are opposing the ordinance allowing death penalty for those convicted of raping children under 12 years of age.
The ordinance has come in the backdrop of the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua.
In cases of child sexual abuse, the victim’s father implored, convicts must be given “life imprisonment, and made to suffer”.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.