On a mission to make child safety a nat’l priority

Thiruvananthapuram: Muktha Foundation, a Bengaluru-based organization committed to promote mental health, conducted an awareness session at Kerala University campus here on Monday on prevention of sexual abuse of minors.
The session was held as part of its ongoing national campaign focused on the prevention of sexual abuse of children. The 75-day programme titled ‘Bhayamukth Bharath: Child Safety National Priority’ aims to make make child safety, a national priority and educate adults on how to stay vigilant and handle issues of child sexual abuse.

The campaign includes visits to all state capitals and three union territories on consecutive days where awareness sessions will be organized at schools, colleges, NGOs, community radios, religious congregations and shelter homes.

According to founding director of the foundation Aswini N V, the campaign hopes to create awareness and a better understanding of the issues related to child sexual abuse which could thereby help in prevention of future cases.

“We began the campaign on January 1 at Pondicherry after which we moved towards Chennai before arriving here. We conducted sessions at Sree Chithra Home and Chilla Annania in the capital. The programme organized at Kariavattom campus, University of Kerala, was aimed at providing training for psychology students on child sexual abuse and thereby turn them into ambassadors of child safety. With over 150 programmes scheduled in three months, we can hopefully reach around 1 lakh people and educate them on the issue,” Aswini said.

Apart from basic awareness, the sessions also focus on warning signs, myths, identifying abusers and introduce a safety module which is made to educate children about these warning signs.

“Basically there are two types of abuse cases; contact and non-contact sexual abuses. While contact sexual abuses are reported, non-contact sexual abuses, which are often warning signs that lead to contact sexual abuses, are neglected. Also there are a lot of predefined myths that only male child abusers exist or men with rough looks and moles on their faces are child sexual abusers. All this needs to change as in most cases of child sexual abuses, there is a mental health issue which often acts as a trigger for such cases. Every child should have three trusted friends of their choice whom they can contact to share their problems with,” Aswini said.