Child Abuse

Yesterday, I watched the critically acclaimed Oscar-nominated movie - Mystic River. Though it becomes tad boring at times, it is a movie that sends a powerful message. I am not going to discuss the plot of the movie here on my blog - I would leave it to you to watch it.
The underlying theme of the movie is child abuse. After watching the movie, I realized how traumatic can child abuse be - scarring the child for his entire life, leaving such a deep imprint that the person cannot wash it away for as long as he lives. Mental instability, anguish, disturbed and collapsing relationships, constant fear, a severe lack of confidence are just some of the things which keep haunting a person who has been sexually abused as a child.
I had read somewhere that many gays have had been abused during their childhood. I don't know whether there is a connection between child abuse and sexual orientation, but my experience tells me there might be. I would not like to go into further detail, as I feel it is too public a blog to pen down things which have been a part of me, and only me, since I was a kid. But someday, I will write about all that.
Sexual abuse is a big problem in India. Sadly, not even a small percentage of the actual number of cases come to light. As much as we deny it, India is a sexually repressed society. Sex, or anything related to it, is still considered taboo in public. As a result, all the pent-up frustration comes out when people are behind closed doors. Most of the cases of incest never see the light of the day because families fear that if these cases are brought out in the open, they would be disgraced socially. The fear of social stigma is so great that many wives and children do not even object to their exploitation by their own family members.
Be it beating your wife or raping her, thrashing your children or sexually molesting them, all these are issues which need to be addressed in our society. The belief that all this takes place in the uneducated, poor classes is completely false and baseless. These problems are as rampant in the affluent upper-class as in the not-so-well-off lower class of the society.
Coming back to the original issue, I feel pedophiles are mentally ill people. No liberty should be shown to people who use children to satisfy their own sick perverted sexual desires and fantasies. They should be taught such a lesson - be it through imprisonment or castration - that they would never ever even look at a child with their monstrous eyes.