Child Sexual Abuse by Fathers in India: Exploring the Layers of ‘Honour’ in Trials

Abstract

ABSTRACT Feminist scholarship has devoted significant time and space to critiquing court judgments that make patriarchal-normative assumptions about consent, resistance to sex, ‘provocation’ of dress, habituation to sex, etc. in rape cases. Hence, this paper asks whether rape and sexual abuse trials would be devoid of patriarchy were it not for these routinely repeated patriarchal-normative scripts. It does this by looking at cases where allegations of consent to sex, blame for initiating sex, previous sexual encounter, clothing, and so on are not raised. To that end, this paper looks at Indian trial court judgments of child sexual abuse in which the child is a female and the accused is her father/step-father (CSAF). Judgments on CSAF, nevertheless, raise questions about sexual history, what establishes credibility, character, hostility, easy acquittal, etc. However, it would be reductive to view these questions as a simple reiteration of what emerges in most other rape cases. This is because what most significantly unfolds in CSAF cases are points of divergence from other cases of child sexual abuse and sexual abuse generally. These divergences lead to new questions: Whose sexual history is raked up? Whose character is assessed? How is rape disbelieved when consent becomes immaterial? What peculiarities lead to an acquittal? These divergences appear because the survivor of sexual abuse in all these cases was not simply a female, but a daughter. Interpreting these divergences, this paper articulates that concerns of ‘honour’ run through the process of legal adjudication in CSAF cases. The honour concerned is not only of the child who suffers abuse, but also her mother’s; the honour concerned is not only a person’s, but also the nation’s.