‘Juvenile homes don’t reform, they punish’

NEWDELHI: One of the newest entrants to a Delhi observation home, where undertrial juveniles are housed, is the son of an e-rickshaw driver and a homemaker, accused of raping a five-year-old neighbour. The resident of Northeast Delhi claims that he is 10 years old, but the system records him as a 13-year-old.

“I don’t remember,” he said, when asked about the offence he allegedly committed last week.

According to the First Information Report, which HT read, the survivor opened up about what happened after her mother saw the child bleeding.

The juvenile was booked under Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act for alleged rape and taken into custody.

He now awaits trial and stays at one of the four observation homes set up by the city’s department of women and child development.

Data from the National Crime Records Bureau shows that rape was the thirdmost prevalent crime amongst children in 2016 after theft and trespassing or burglary. A total of 44,171 juveniles were apprehended across the country that year, of which, a little over 2,000 were apprehended on rape-related charges.

Experts agree that socially-prescribed unequal gender roles have a deep impact on the way adolescent boys treat girls and women. This, coupled with a lack of scientific and stigma-free sexuality education, means that there is little or no direction that adolescents receive about understanding sexuality.

Though each observation home has a mental health unit, there is a shortage of counsellors. All juveniles are required to meet with the counsellor when they first come in. Thereafter, the sessions are scheduled as per requirement. The house, which the alleged juvenile abuser of the five-year-old is in, has 40 other children. This translates to only weekly half-hour counselling sessions.

On an average, the maximum sanctioned capacity of the Delhi homes is 75, which means even lesser counselling time for the juveniles. Enakshi Ganguly, co-founder of HAQ: Centre for Child Rights, a New Delhi-based non-governmental organisation that offers counselling to juveniles in observation homes that house undertrials, said, “We have seen during our counselling that when the kids begin to realise what the victim must have experienced, they weep. Around 80% to 85% of the children we have counselled, never committed an offence again,” she said.