Background

POCSO Act is the most significant piece of jurisdiction passed in favour of prevention of Child Sexual Abuse. The Act also calls for mandatory reporting of CSA by every citizen of the country. Since the primary benefactors of our work, and of the POCSO Act, are those surviving sexual abuse, we felt it was most important to assess their perception of the mandatory reporting clause. Arpan interviewed adult survivors of Child Sexual Abuse – as people coping/having coped with the trauma of being abused as children, adult survivors are perhaps more able to make sense of the abuse and its impact than children undergoing/ having undergone the same. Additionally, they are also more likely to be capable of cognitively distancing themselves from the abuse and providing feedback.