Tackling abuse: When will we report what we know?

I was having a coffee catch-up with a friend in Bengaluru recently, the kind of conversation that begins casually and ends somewhere much heavier. We found ourselves talking about the Epstein files, the renewed attention they have drawn, and about Gisèle Pelicot in France, a survivor of sexual violence who chose to speak publicly about what was done to her. She refused anonymity, saying that shame belongs to the perpetrator, not the victim.

We wondered whether this was finally the moment of reckoning survivors across the world have waited for or just another cycle of outrage that would flare briefly, trend loudly, and then fade.

My friend then said something that shifted the conversation entirely. She told me she had finally opened up about how her uncle had repeatedly assaulted her when she was a child. It was known in the family. It had always been known. And it had always been managed. Yet, even now, years later, people were still sitting on the fence. Advising restraint. Suggesting silence. Saying it was complicated.

That, in many ways, is the heart of the problem in India: not the absence of law, but the presence of a culture that protects perpetrators and isolates victims.

India has strong laws to address child sexual abuse. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, or POCSO, recognises that abuse most often happens within trusted spaces and allows survivors to come forward even years later, as adults. There is no limitation period. The Juvenile Justice Act establishes Child Welfare Committees in every district to receive complaints and act in the best interests of the child. Special courts exist to hear these cases, and child helplines such as 1098 are meant to provide immediate support.

On paper, the framework is robust. In practice, reporting remains low, trials drag on, and justice arrives late, if at all. National Crime Records Bureau data shows that thousands of cases of child sexual abuse are reported every year, with tens of thousands remaining pending in courts, trapped in procedural delay. In 2022 alone, more than 64,000 cases of sexual offences against children were reported, including over 38,000 cases of rape of minors under the POCSO Act.

And yet these disturbing numbers are not the full picture. They are only the visible surface. Most survivors never report abuse at all. Fear, shame, family pressure, social stigma, and mistrust of institutions ensure that what reaches police records is only a fraction of what actually occurs.

Those who do report are most often children harmed by people they know. These are not strangers. They are uncles, teachers, neighbours, religious figures, coaches, and community leaders – people with familiarity, authority, and access.

What fails is not legislation. What fails is the social and cultural resolve to hold perpetrators accountable.

The renewed attention on Jeffrey Epstein exposes this failure on a global scale. Despite years of allegations, numerous survivors, and well-documented links to power, accountability has been limited. Files are released. Names circulate. Arrests remain few.

This is not coincidence. Research in criminology and child protection has long shown that sexual predators rely on credibility, respectability, and social acceptance to operate. They cultivate trust deliberately, building outwardly respectable lives that are not incidental but strategic, becoming shields that allow abuse to continue unchecked.

Access, too, is deliberate. Studies show that sexual predators actively seek environments where children are available and oversight is weak. In India, this reality is compounded by poverty, inequality, overcrowding and chronic institutional neglect. Millions of children are marginalised, unattended, under-supervised, or dependent on adults outside their families for care, education, food, or opportunity. This makes them highly accessible and deeply vulnerable.

Education, religion, sport, charity work, and social service repeatedly emerge as spaces of abuse due to the combination of trust, authority, and access they involve. In India, this pattern is painfully familiar: the benevolent uncle, the revered religious figure, the committed teacher, and the so-called social reformer working with marginalised children are all granted unquestioned access in the name of care or change.

When abuse is named, another pattern follows swiftly. Victims are discredited. Their motives are questioned. Property disputes are invented. Jealousy is implied. Families are urged to stay quiet. Communities rally around the accused. Survivors are pressured and intimidated into silence.

Patriarchy makes this easier, and it is upheld not only by men but also often by women acting in defence of family honour and social stability. Speaking out about abuse is deliberately distorted into disruption instead of being recognised as the naming of harm.

When my friend and I finished our coffee, the Epstein files were still on our phones, and Pelicot’s words lingered between us. The distance between a global scandal and an Indian family living room suddenly felt very small.

We already know what abuse looks like and how it hides. The question is no longer whether we know. Until reporting abuse is seen not as disruption but as duty, and until silence is recognised as complicity rather than restraint, justice and healing will remain something promised but not delivered.

(The writer is the executive director of the Centre for Law and Transformative Change)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.