Every day we hear horrifying stories of rape and sexual assault that make our blood curdle. The sheer number of incidents is enough to make one realise that the rape culture in India is as prevalent as it gets. One particular story, however, goes beyond horrifying and terrible: a 16-year-old boy from Mumbai's Andheri was allegedly raped by 15 boys over the past year.

An Indian Express report says that according to the police, the boy was first raped in 2016 by a friend and next-door neighbour. The rapist allegedly shot a video of the act on his cellphone and showed it to his other friends. The neighbour then started blackmailing the survivor and forced him to have sex with others, threatening to make the video public if he did not comply.

Things would only get worse from then on. He was not only raped on four more occasions by no less than 15 boys, all between 15 and 17 years, but also beaten up and blackmailed for money.

"Whenever I tried to resist, they would hit me,” the survivor said in his complaint.

One of the accused had been demanding money from the survivor and when he refused to pay up, the accused boys took him to an isolated corner on June 26 and raped him once more.

Photo: Reuters

After being raped on June 26, the survivor felt “unbearable pain”, after which he confided in his friend about what had happened. The friend then alerted an acquaintance, a 31-year-old man working as a construction site supervisor, who registered a complaint with the police.

The police have booked all the 15 accused and detained seven of them – charging them with unnatural sex and common intention under the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. Seven of the accused have been detained and were produced before the Juvenile Justice Board that has remanded them in custody at Dongri Children’s Home.

“The victim was very scared and did not tell his family about the abuse,” said the officer. A medical examination of the boy was conducted at the Cooper Hospital and the police said it confirmed the sexual assault.

An NCBI report from 2013 says that traditionally, sexual abuse is under-reported and under-recognised when the victims are boys. According to a study carried out by the Government of India in 2007, every second child/adolescent in the country faces some form of sexual abuse and it is nearly equally prevalent in both sexes. The study – a sample survey of 12,447 children across 13 states of India – finds that 53.22 per cent of children reported having faced sexual abuse. Among them, 52.94 per cent were boys.

The issue of adolescent male peer sexual abuse in a sexually-conservative country like India is often neglected. Young male adults are often less willing to report a crime as well, when compared to sexually abused girls. There is fear of being labelled a homosexual. There may also be shame and self-blame regarding the inability to prevent what happened.

Another study in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry found that, “Unlike females who often get abused in a heterosexual context, males tend to be abused by men leading to confusion in the sexual orientation of the victims, many of them doubting if they are homosexuals. Patriarchy further condemns homosexuals as less of men, delaying disclosure further. Homophobia can lead to over sexualised behaviour in the male survivors and boys tend to blame themselves more than girls for not being able to stop the abuse.”

To protect young boys from rape and sexual assault we must change our mindsets. The reason this particular survivor did not report the rapes and suffered the assault for a year is shame. And this shame is bred from the patriarchal hegemony in the society we live in.

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