Theater of the Oppressed Addressing Child Abuse in India
The Karunalaya Social Service Society is a non-profit center that offers support to street and working children in and around the city of Chennai, India. The program’s director, Paul Sundar Singh, noticed that as internet use has spread, there has been a growing trend of young children being sexually exploited and abused. To help protect and empower these children, Karunalaya conducted a forum theater to discuss issues of child abuse with the community.
Describing some of the issues that arose during the participatory theater, Paul Sundar Singh stated “this is such a shocking event, where we witnessed a group activity by the children who engage in sexual activities without even knowing what it was. It was a 27-year-old youth, who was involving an 11-year-old boy in sexual activities by showing him pictures from the Internet, and many other children in that area get involved in it periodically. These cases have to be dealt with sensitively by educating the child about the ill-effects rather than approaching the police, in which case none of the children was ready to come forward as they voluntarily engaged in such activities.”
To help the communities of Chennai begin discussing these issues, Karunalaya held a participatory forum using Theater of the Oppressed. Theater of the Oppressed is a community-based form of theater that gives the audience an opportunity to engage with actors in order to work through difficult problems facing the community. This is the second year Karunalaya has held a forum theater to discuss issues of child sexual abuse. Women and children acted out abuse scenarios and potential reactions to them, then the audience was encouraged to participate by discussing what they saw and offering alternative responses.
“These children who attended the programme are at high risk of …Many of them had experienced such behaviour and were able to relate to it. Even though they were not trained actors, they managed to convey the different emotions the victims…and their families go through” explained Paul Sundar Singh.
Human Rights activists have argued that as internet use has grown, so has access to child abuse content which contributes to occurrences of sexual violence. In response to growing access to child abuse sites, the Supreme Court of India ordered the department of telecommunications to take action in order to block pornographic and abusive websites, especially those concerning children.
The growing poverty conditions in the city also contribute to incidents of child sexual abuse. In recent years, Chennai has experienced a rapid growth in the number of slums. As of 2011, more than 28% of the city’s households lived in slums, under extreme poverty and oppression. Under these conditions, children are highly vulnerable to various forms of child abuse. For example, in the city’s fishing communities, nearly 70% of all families report some form of child abuse taking place.
Creative Commons Love: Hari Prasad Nadig on Flickr.com
Written by Amanda Lubit
