Standing By Both of Ours

Every Indian family knows how to close ranks. A boy fails his exams, and an uncle quietly finds him a college seat somewhere. A marriage goes bad, and by the weekend the daughter’s old room is ready again, with the bed made. We stand by our own. Most of us have been carried by that at least once.

One summer a family went to the grandparents’ house for the holidays, the way they did every year. Nani’s house, or Ammamma’s, or Aaji’s: six cousins, the ceiling fan going, mattresses pulled into one big room at night and whispering long after the lights went off. Back home, the eight-year-old began to get stomach aches whenever the next visit came up. They would not say why. A week before a cousin’s wedding in December, at bedtime, they said they did not want to sleep in the big room again. The older one plays a game at night that I don’t like. I’m not supposed to tell.

The older one was fifteen. He was the cousin everyone adored, the one who helped the small ones with homework and was always put in charge of them.

What happened next happens in a great many homes. The parent who heard it told a sister, and the sister told their mother. Within a week the boy’s parents knew. The family had decided, without anyone quite saying so, what would be done. He was only playing. Children don’t understand these things. Think of his board exams. Don’t tell Papa. The eight-year-old was moved to another room for the wedding and told to put it out of their mind.

If you have sat in a room like that, or said one of those lines yourself, you did what frightened families have long done. Shock and disbelief are what parents most often describe in that first week, along with a terrible pull between two children they love. Researchers who study these families find that parents often play down what happened, or doubt the child who told. Hardly anyone had ever shown them another way.

But in that week, the family stood by only one of its children. The younger one learned that telling makes the grown-ups uncomfortable and changes nothing. The older one learned that it cost him nothing. Nobody got him any help.

When it is another child

Most of us picture sexual harm as something an adult does to a child, and often it is. A large share, though, is done by other children. Much of it happens inside families.

A national survey in Australia of more than 8,500 people asked about this directly. Among those aged 16 to 24, more had been sexually abused in childhood by other young people than by adults. Researchers in the UK estimate that between a quarter and a half of harmful sexual behaviour by children involves a brother or sister, or a close relative such as a cousin. A 2025 review of 39 studies called abuse between siblings the most common kind of sexual abuse within families. Many people harmed by a sibling, it found, did not tell anyone until they were adults. Nobody has measured any of this in India, so there is no Indian figure to give.

Most children who sexually harm another child are boys, often in their early teens, and the children they harm tend to be younger. In the United States, 93 per cent of young people known to police for sex offences against minors were boys. Indian police records lean the same way: all but five of the 2,572 children apprehended under POCSO in 2022 were boys. Some are girls, and what follows applies to them in the same way.

This is a different thing from the ordinary curiosity small children have about bodies. It becomes harm when there is a clear gap between the two children in age, size or power. It is harm when there is pressure, a bribe, a threat or a demand for secrecy. Often there is no force at all, and the harm is just as real.

Most of these children do not do it again. A review of 158 studies, covering more than 30,000 young people, found that about 8 in 100 were later known to have sexually offended again. Those figures count only what was reported, so the true number is higher, and nobody should read them as a promise. They still describe children who can change. The researchers concluded that handling them the way the system handles adult offenders seems misguided.

What seems to help most is help that brings the family in. In a trial in the United States, teenagers given a therapy built around their parents and their home did better than those given the usual services. They showed less problem sexual behaviour, and most of those gains still held two years later. The evidence for any single therapy is still thin, but it keeps pointing to the family taking part. Researchers in the UK have also found that responses built mainly on punishment make children less likely to tell. A family that hides what happened cannot take part in that help.

Both of them are ours

Standing by our own is right. The mistake in that holiday house was in the counting. Apna, aapla, namma, amader: whatever your family says for our own, it has always meant more than one child. The eight-year-old is ours too.

The two children do not stand in the same place. One was harmed and one did the harm, so standing by the younger child comes first. It means believing them the first time, without asking for proof, and keeping them safe from that night on. Everything else waits, the wedding and the family’s name included.

Standing by the older child means getting him help now, while help works best, and that help only comes through the proper route. A child who has sexually harmed another child needs to hear two things from the adults who love him. What he did was wrong, and they are not leaving. Guidance for parents written by specialists in the UK says nearly the same.

If the older child is your own son, this may be the hardest week of your life as a parent. The shame will tell you to protect him by keeping quiet. Keeping quiet protects nobody. It leaves the younger child to carry it alone, often for years, and it leaves your son with a problem nobody is treating, in a house where it can happen again. When the two children are brother and sister, or two brothers, both of them are yours in the plainest sense, and all of this applies twice.

The older child is still a child, and Indian law says so too. There is no need for words like monster. Some children who harm have been hurt themselves. That is a reason to get them help. It is never a reason to doubt the younger child or to look away.

And if you were once the younger child in a house like that, none of it was your fault. It is not too late to tell someone.

The first days

You do not have to understand the law or find a therapist tonight. Start with the younger child. Listen, believe them, and do not ask for details, because questions belong to people trained to ask them. Words like these are enough:

Thank you for telling me. I believe you, and it was not your fault. You did the right thing, and I am going to keep you safe.

Do not promise to keep it secret. Tell them honestly that you will need to tell a few people whose job is to help, and that you will tell them who.

Then keep the two children apart, starting that night. In an Indian home that takes some planning, because so much of family life is shared:

• they do not sleep in the same room or bed, at home, at the grandparents’ house, at weddings or on holidays;
• the older child is not asked to mind, bathe, feed or drop off any younger child;
• when the older child is with younger children, an adult is in the room;
• phones and laptops are used in shared rooms, never behind closed doors.

Separating them keeps the younger child safe for now. It is not a way of dealing with it at home. The same day, call 1098, the national child helpline, free at any hour.

Tell the adults who need to know, so the plan holds in every house. That means the other parent, grandparents who live with you, and the cousin’s parents. It does not mean the whole extended family, and never a family group chat. Keep the rules to what safety needs. The older child should still go to school, see friends and have a life.

Once the call has been made, his own parents should speak to him calmly, once. Do not ask what happened, and do not let him talk to the younger child about it:

What you did was wrong, and it hurt someone younger than you. I still love you, and I am going to get you help.

What the law asks of us

The law has already decided this cannot stay inside the family. Under POCSO, the law against sexual offences on children, anyone who knows a child has been sexually harmed, or fears a child will be, must tell the police. That holds when the person who did it is a relative, and when it is a child. Call 1098, which will connect you to the police, and if a child is in danger right now, call 112. No child is ever punished for having stayed silent. If you are the younger child’s parent, make the report in your own name. The law protects anyone who reports in good faith.

When a child under 18 has caused the harm, the case goes to the Juvenile Justice Board. India’s Juvenile Justice Act calls him a child in conflict with the law, and it presumes that a child has no criminal intent. He cannot be kept in a police lock-up or a jail, and bail is the usual course. Nobody may publish his name, photograph, address or school. A probation officer meets the family. If the Board finds that he did it, its order must include a care plan for him. Ask for counselling to be written into it.

For a 16 or 17 year old accused of the most serious offences, such as rape, the law is harder. The Board first assesses his maturity. It can then send the case to a Children’s Court, which can decide to try him as an adult. Even then, he cannot be sent to an adult jail before he turns 21. If your family is anywhere near that, speak to a lawyer early. Children are entitled to free legal aid through the District Legal Services Authority.

The younger child’s statement is usually taken at home or a place the child chooses. It is taken by an officer out of uniform, a woman officer where possible, and the child never meets the older child there. The police must also tell the Child Welfare Committee, which can give the child a support person. If the older child lives in the same home, the younger child is brought before the committee within a day, and within three days it decides whether the child is safe at home. A family that has already separated the children and stood by the younger one makes that question easier to answer.

India has very few services built for children who sexually harm, and you may have to ask more than once. Ask for a child psychiatrist or psychologist at a district hospital or a government medical college. For your own distress, Tele-MANAS, the government’s mental health helpline, is on 14416.

None of this ends in a month. The younger child may seem fine for a year and then struggle at twelve or fifteen, when they understand more. Keep asking how they are, and keep the plan going. Within what the law requires, give them a say: who else is told, whether they go to the next family wedding, whether they ever want to see the cousin again. Nobody should push them to forgive, or to sit beside him for the family photo. Standing by both children does not mean keeping both under one roof at any cost. For a while, some families need the older child to live with another relative.

In a family that has faced it, a Saturday looks something like this. The eight-year-old is at home choosing what everyone eats for dinner, with a parent who asks every so often how they are, and waits for the answer. Across town, the fifteen-year-old has an appointment at the district hospital. An aunt drives him there and waits outside until he comes out.

If a child is in danger right now, call 112. If a child has been harmed, or you are worried about one, call 1098, the national child helpline, free, any time of day. For emotional support, iCALL offers free and confidential counselling on 9152987821. This is a hard subject. If it is close to you, you do not have to carry it alone.