World | India
Awareness key to ending rampant marital abuse
Sexual abuse of women by their husbands is rampant across India where only awareness and education to respect women as equals can have a positive impact in the status of women, experts have said.
- By Pamela Raghunath, Correspondent
- Published: 23:00 July 6, 2009
Mumbai: Sexual abuse of women by their husbands is rampant across India where only awareness and education to respect women as equals can have a positive impact in the status of women, experts have said.
For social workers, the situation is a genuine one requiring attention from everyone, more particularly men. "Sexual abuse is a part of the physical violence that women endure through their years of marriage," Pouruchisti Wadia from the Lawyers' Collective told Gulf News.
"It takes time for a woman to come out and speak of the harassment she undergoes. The abuse includes a gamut of other violent acts on her, such as accusations, emotional insults and constant threats."
The National Family Health Survey-III in 2005-2006 had revealed some unpleasant truths about Indian society of how 62 per cent of married women faced some kind of physical or sexual violence whilst 32 per cent experienced violence in the first five years of marriage.
The first assault by husbands occurred in less than two years of marriage with one in six wives experiencing emotional abuse.
Slapping, hair being pulled, arms twisted or things thrown at them were also a part of the indignities that women endured silently.
"As for sexual violence, it need not necessarily be physical as instances like a woman being forced to look at a porn magazine and behave in the same manner is an abuse itself," says Wadia.
"At times, matters reach a point where a husband compels his wife to watch a porn film in the presence of his children, who are asked to cover their eyes. Forcing a women to have sex when she has no desire is also an abuse."
A banker and wife Beena Kumar, says: "Marital rape is destructive on the wife because it betrays the very trust, understanding and love reposed in a marriage."
Veena K, an executive, describes it as a crime and wonders whether there is any difference between marital rape and rape. "It is just that the perpetrator in one is the husband himself."
The Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act 2005 brings under its purview every kind of violence - physical, mental, emotional and sexual - committed against women by their husbands, in-laws or other family members.
Social workers engaged in helping victims of domestic violence take recourse to legal action against their abusers say the crime cuts across all classes of society.
A survey by the Lawyers Collective to study the impact of the Act showed that 10,000 cases were filed in the first year the Act was enacted.
A maximum number of cases were filed in Rajasthan - 3,440, Kerala - 1,028, Andhra Pradesh - 731 and Delhi - 607 whilst the least number of cases were filed in Bihar-64, West Bengal-54, Jharkhand-13 and Orissa - 12.
At 59 per cent, Bihar has the highest prevalence of physical or sexual violence followed by Rajasthan - 46 per cent, Madhya Pradesh - 46 per cent, Tripura and Manipur at 40 per cent.
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