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2-Year-Old And 5-Year-Old Gang Raped In Delhi, Rape Epidemic Continues, Global Problem Highlighted

By Denzel Hammett
Published on: 03:27 PST, Oct 17, 2015

The unthinkable has again happened in Delhi. The Times of India reports that there were two incidences of rape of minors in the Indian capital on Friday 16 October, 2015. Two men are alleged to have kidnapped and taken away on a motorbike the 2-year-old and then left her in a nearby park. The infant was left there bleeding profusely and was taken to hospital immediately.

The 5-year-old girl was allegedly raped by three neighbors who have been identified as Prakash, Rewati, and Sitaram.

The Delhi police are under pressure to do more to prevent these atrocities against children, which are becoming commonplace in what has been deemed the “rape capital” of the world. The Time of India reported early on the incident.

“Police say one of the victim in the two separate attacks, a two-and-a-half year old girl, was abducted in west Delhi on Friday night by two men. She was sexually assaulted before being dumped in a park near her home.”

It is reported that both girls are recovering in hospital following the attacks. It was also reported that on 13 October that a 4-Year-Old was brutally raped and left in a communal toilet area. This makes three child rapes of infants in the last four days in Delhi.

Although Delhi is singled out in the media, all major cities across the world have high numbers of rapes. Particularly, the rape of children is a worldwide epidemic, as cities come to grips with the scale of child sexual abuse. According to Victims of Crime, as many as 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse.

  • Self-report studies show that 20 percent of adult females and 5-10 percent of adult males recall a childhood sexual assault or sexual abuse incident.
  • During a one-year period in the U.S., 16 percent of youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized.
  • Over the course of their lifetime, 28 percent of U.S. youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized.
  • Children are most vulnerable to CSA between the ages of 7 and 13. Delhi residents, however, are growing tired of the epidemic of rape against children in the city and have been actively protesting for more power to be transferred to police as well as greater punishment for the perpetrators.

It is important to note that India does have a high conviction rate for rape. According to Time Magazine, India has a conviction rate of 24.2 percent as of 2012, as compared to just 7 percent in the United Kingdom. This means that due to this high conviction rate, outsiders might see India as particularly prone to rape compared with other countries, when in fact, the country is convicting rapists more. This should be taken into consideration, as Nilanjana Bhowmick reports, before coming to conclusion about India as a nation of rapists.

“No country in the world can claim to have witnessed protests against rape on the scale of India’s, where people turned out in the tens of thousands to voice their shock and sadness. It was people power that forced the government to change existing rape laws and drew the world’s attention to the problem.”

Indian children are often homeless
Homeless children in Delhi, India are a common site and it is these children who are often targeted for sex abuse by rape gangs. (Photo by Kevin Frayer – Pool/Getty Images)
Povert is blamed for leaving children vulnerable to sexual exploitation
India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, but also one of the greatest countries of abject poverty. This leaves children open to abuse, rapists prey on children from poorer families who are seen as the lowest caste of society. (Photo by Daniel Berehulak – Pool/Getty Images)
The Prince Of Wales And Duchess Of Cornwall Visit India
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Charles, Prince of Wales meet children at Katha Community School during day 3 of an official visit to India on November 8, 2013 in Delhi, India. (Photo by Chris Jackson – Pool/Getty Images)

International Business Times reports that South Africa is the world capital of rapes against children with the rape of a child taking place every three minutes. However, India ranks second in the world. There were 48,000 child rape cases recorded from 2001 to 2011, a 336 percent increase.

On a Tehelka blog, correspondents Nishita Jha and Revati Laul put the matter into perspective.

“Imagine 48,838 children raped in just 10 years and you have a small measure of how deep the inhuman phenomenon of child rapes runs in India.”

The Indian Parliament has acted by passing the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act which facilitates the process of investigating child rape cases.

As many as 53 percent of all children in India are estimated to have been victims of sexual abuse.

Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom and the United States are also world capitals of child rape. In the United States, as many as 16 percent of young people aged 14-17 were reported as having been sexually abused in 2010.

“Adult retrospective studies show that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men were sexually abused before the age of 18. This means there are more than 42 million adult survivors of child sexual abuse in the US.”

What is clear is that child rape is a worldwide problem and these latest cases in India and the sheer brutality of the crimes highlight the problem not just in India, but across the globe in developing and developed nations alike.

[Image by Dan Istitene / Getty Images]

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