Reports of Child Abuse in India from Scientific Journals and Newspapers - An Exploratory Study

Background: Child abuse is a state of emotional, physical, economic and sexual maltreatment meted out to a person below the age of eighteen and is a globally prevalent phenomenon. A total of 33,098 cases of crimes against children were reported in India during 2011 as compared to 26,694 cases during 2010, suggesting a recent increase of 24 percent. Objectives: To explore the contents of the published articles/reports on child abuse in India from scientific journals and newspapers identifying areas and gaps for further research and program development. Material and Methods: Published articles in scientific journals during the years 2007-2012 with free access and online versions of English newspapers (2007-2012) in India were searched using the search engines such as ‘PubMed’ and ‘Google’. The key words used were ‘child abuse in (on, about) India. First two researchers independently reviewed the content of articles/newspaper reports and decided the categories emerging from the articles and reports. Later on, the quantification of these categories was done by identifying the number of times it was reported in the reports. Results: The nature and extent of reporting child abuse in scientific journal is different from that of newspapers. In Journals, our search provided us with 9 articles, of which prevalence studies were predominant (4) followed by case reports (3) and Knowledge, Attitude, Practice studies (2). The studies were mostly conducted in the hospital setting. We obtained 38 reports from newspapers. Child abuse was found more among girls. Among type of abuse, sexual abuse was more common (84.2%). About 52.6% of the abusers were members known to the victim. The maximum cases were reported from West India especially in Goa, followed by South region. Most reports reported legal action on accused. Little was reported on what happened to a victim, indicators of abuse and settings of the abuse. The motives and consequences of the abuses were not mentioned explicitly. Conclusions: The articles were more focused on prevalence of child abuse in hospital settings. As per newspaper reports, female child abuse (sexual abuse) by a known person to family was reported more. It was found more in West part of India. Recommendations: More research/reporting is required to study the extent of problem in different settings of India, settings of abuse, quality of life of victims, parental/community education on indicators of abuse and development of support program to victim