Abuse begins at Home: The sanctity of our revered place ‘home’ needs to be re-examined and the dubious role of the authority figures within the family units cannot be swept under the carpet anymore. We need to challenge the cultural conditioning of never ever questioning the family elders. The halo that we have created around the elders steals away not just the humanness of these elders, but many a times even the sanity of the younger members of the family. The central position of the parents, especially the father in most of the Indian families, gives him absolute authority over the lives of the children. The power that the society gives the parents can be compared with any authoritarian power. And in many cases, this absolute power invariably leads to absolute abuse. Abuse doesn’t necessarily have to be sexual; it is to a great extent psychological and at times even physical. Children as young as toddlers have faced abuse for reasons ranging from gender to family disputes. The trauma that these incidents leave on the psyche of the children is unfathomable. The children are vulnerable, they are powerless against the might of the adult. This trauma plays out in the adult relationships that these kids enter into once they grow up. The society rarely intervenes in the matters of the family. It is because no one wants to take the responsibility for the individuals’ actions nor does the society care for its individuals. Unless and until the crime is heinous enough to be reported or even acknowledged, the law enforcement agencies avoid getting involved. Parents are not held accountable for causing the trauma, as they are believed to always have the “good” of their children at heart. The children are almost an invisible mass, who have no rights nor an identity of their own. But the abuse that they face is real. The happy family picture that we are so often fed through mass media prevents this real and wide-spread abuse from coming to the fore and being addressed. Our traditional and highly cultured society gives its silent yet pronounced approval of this parental abuse. The children are considered to be the property of their parents and thus the ownership justifies all that is done to them. The children commit suicides- I’ve been a witness to one such horror story. The girl died and the adult responsible for the death lived a full life without any remorse or guilt. The trauma that the other character of the story suffered infuses pain in most of his relationships. The sad thing is that this is not an exception. There are multiple stories where children are killed by their own families in the name of honor. The families have tacit sanction from the society. And with the growing need to establish the sanctity of the family system- to counter the western influence; it becomes very difficult for children to call out their abusers who are supposed to protect them but don’t. Neither the family nor the society offers conducive environment to these traumatized children to vent their frustration. When these children grow up with unresolved trauma, they end up transferring the repressed emotions onto the relationships that they might develop as adults. Because they could not expose the ‘real’ abusers, the new relationships act as a safety valve. It becomes very easy to call out a partner than one’s own parents and that is what many of them do. There is no reason to judge all these exposures as a mere transfer of traumatic experiences of the past, but there is a real danger of missing out on identifying the true culprits. These exposes may ruin lives of unsuspecting partners, who I’m not saying are always completely innocent, but turn out to be people walking onto a land mine. Some innocent souls might fall in the cross fire. There are real people who become collateral damage. Therapy is one solution to this kind of life-long abuse. However, consulting a therapist is to a great extent an urban elitist idea. Childhood trauma is not class, caste or region specific. Anyone can be a victim and the social status of the individual changes the entire dynamics of the issue. Therapists themselves are predominantly the so-called ‘upper’ caste privileged individuals. The caste agnostic society of ours makes the caste-based discrimination an exclusive one. These therapists are ill-equipped to understand the kaleidoscope of traumas faced by individuals intersecting more than one social order. Furthermore, therapy is still a taboo in our country and only accessible to a select few. Interestingly, the victims who find the courage to call out an anonymous abuser belong to the privileged class and caste. The ones who name the abuser and stay anonymous themselves, too, appear to have access to the privileges that are not available to everyone especially the traditionally persecuted populace. In many instances of such ‘revelations’ the despondent acknowledges the role of their therapists for the impetus to call out their immediate “abusers”- their partners, and that sure is quite a commendable job; but one wonders why these very therapists rarely encourage the troubled souls to slay their own familial demons? Many of these adults have faced abuse as children and strangely they are deprived of the consolation of therapy to resolve their issues because our society has normalized parental abuse. Rather we justify this scathing behavior in the name of character building. A society that allows abuse to traumatize its’ children will produce adults who rationalize political and social tyranny. But where does the blame-game end? Should the child victims be allowed to be abused further by anyone and everyone even after they grow up? Their vulnerability needs to be conceded and the perpetrators be named and shamed. All adults including parents need to be called out and the victims be healed through a combined effort. The society is the individual and the individual makes the society, so none of us can shrug away from the responsibility that squarely lies on all our collective shoulders. Families need to be sensitized about this common place abuse and be made accountable. If children are truly considered the future citizens and given their due in our rich culture this abuse would be reported, investigated and prevented.