Recently CBI claimed to have busted an international child abuse pornography racket operating on a WhatsApp group and arrested its administrator who is an unemployed youth from Uttar Pradesh. CBI carried out searches at multiple locations in Delhi, Mumbai, Noida and Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh and some other states; though such cases are hardly reported or investigated but porn addiction in youth is on rise and some of the children are found to be very vocal in accepting it.
During this particular investigation, the agency has been able to find that there are 119 members of the group who were getting these alarming pictures and videos to satisfy their aberrant lust. The members of the group spread globally including the US, China, New Zealand, Mexico, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Brazil, Kenya, Nigeria and Sri Lanka among others. They are connected to each other on social network and moreover, the porn is available on various websites and from there these youngsters used to outsource the material. The circulation ramped up, and few of the members were also posting their personal porn clip and that is how the matter reached to investigations. During the searches, the CBI recovered mobile phones, laptops, and hard discs and other digital devices. Accessing, producing, recording, uploading or circulating child abuse videos or picture are serious offences under Information Technology Act and attract a punishment up to seven years and a fine of Rs 10 lakh.
Well, seven years jail and 10 lakh fines are not going to create any deter because seeing or circulating porn is a common practice; unless and until case reaches to investigations, no one knows who is a part of it. The children in your own house or on the neighbourhood or any one can be addicted and subjected to porn. One cannot control such acts, unless one finds out why this sensation is growing.
Internet addiction among kids is a major problem. To help their child get rid of this problem, parents in the city are also taking professional help —psychiatrists and counsellors. Kids remain hooked to social networking sites like Facebook, WhatsApp along with porn websites because they have no one to look forward, especially in nuclear families and with working parents, children face many other emotional traumas, and to overcome the boredom or insecurities they find solace in virtual world.
In Mumbai you will find children below 12 years old who are hooked to the internet for long hours and in fact, are addicted to porn. Five years ago we hardly used to get such cases. This is an alarming trend as children waste long hours on internet using social networking sites, pornographic sites etc. Apart from insomnia, depression and social withdrawal, such children do get impulsive and become short-tempered. Even the parents, too should be blamed for the rise in trend, as they don’t spend much time with their kids. Instead of spending time with their children, parents remain busy in their own lives. As the child in today’s time gets a smartphone at a very young age and since his brain is tender, he fills his hard disk (brain) with the virtual world. This is a dangerous trend and needs to be reversed. Small apartments are another reason — parents living in their private zone leaving young minds to their conclusions. Parents can check this growing problem by monitoring the internet usage of their children and also their personal needs. They can also break the addiction by keeping the computer in the family room. They should also encourage outdoor activities for their children. They should befriend their children, speak and welcome them to open discussions.
There was an old case in Mumbai, a teenage girl was gang raped by her friend and three other boys; one fine day her aunt came across the video of the incident that they had circulated on WhatsApp. Look at the guts of these youngsters, they not only raped the girl but also video graphed the entire event and posted it on social sites. They received good response because child porn is most sellable and searched on internet; may be government has banned many such sites promoting child sex but still the virtual world is vast and banning anything 100 per cent is not possible. In this particular case, the four boys were studying in classes IX and X, and the victim was a 15-year-old girl. They then threatened the girl not to reveal the incident or else they would post the video online. She remained silent but video went viral. One of the accused is a close friend of the girl. She had gone for studies at his home in suburban Malad, where he and three of his accomplices gangraped her. Working class parents leave their homes trusting children. But no one is there to monitor what happens at their back. Mumbai is a busy city; all are running for bread here.
The involvement of juveniles in cases of rape in the capital shot up by 158 per cent in 2013 (163 cases) as against 2012 (63). And there was a 30 per cent increase in overall crimes committed by juveniles during the same period. One hundred and sixty three juveniles were apprehended on rape charges and 76 in murder cases in 2013. That the law is not proving to be a deterrent is quite evident. The involvement of juveniles in the trademark crime of burglary and snatching also went up. There were 928 cases in 2013 as against 523 the year before.
Recently, three boys-aged nine, 12 and 14, took a seven-year-old girl to a park on the pretext of plucking mangoes and took turns to rape and sodomised her in west Delhi’s Paschim Vihar. Sexual offending behaviours are extremely complex — the theory most widely accepted today is known as the “learning theory,” which holds that sexually abusive behaviour in children is linked to many factors, including exposure to sexuality and/or violence, early childhood experiences (e.g., sexual victimisation), exposure to child pornography and advertising, substance abuse, heightened arousal to children, and exposure to aggressive role models/family violence.
Children who sexually abuse others proposed that these individuals move through a predictable progression. In this cycle, an event causes a negative emotional response in the youth. The youth attempts to gain control of this response but fails. He then feels anger and rage, which in turn lead to thoughts of retaliation and fantasies of overpowering another, which lead to an assault. In spite of all logics and studies, government or social organisations were never able to focus on issues, any ways right now India needs strong attention towards these growing juvenile crimes and we as society need to save these young minds from porn addiction.
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