Changing Paradigm of Criminalizing Adolescent Sexuality in India

Autor: Naveen, Alagarasan, Rath, Biplab
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
ISSN: 0974-1208
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7505176
Popis: Adolescence (between 10 and 19 years) is a crucial phase of life where the transition from childhood to adulthood occurs with significant biological and psycho-social developments (Kar et al., 2015; World Health Organization, 2022). Their sexuality attains new dimensions with increasing sexual desires, curiosity, and experimentation with the opposite gender due to the surge in hormones, especially after puberty. Further, present-day adolescents have easier and instant online access to vast content than their previous generations. Not surprisingly, the influence of cinemas and social media contributed to increasingly prevalent romantic relationships during adolescence which may result in unwanted pregnancies, physical, psychological, and social complications and legal consequences. Also, the ignorance of existing stringent legislation seems to be one of the most common reasons for indulging in such relationships. Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO act) in India was enacted with the main objectives of protecting children from certain offenses such as sexual assault, sexual harassment, and child pornography and ensuring child-friendly procedures for trial in special courts (Ministry of Women and Child Development, 2012). Although the objectives are clear that children should be prevented from sexual offenses, the provisions may do more harm than good in a country like India, where illiteracy is still at large among the majority of the rural population. It invariably aims to punish the offenders though they are adolescents when involved in consensual sexual intercourse with or without marriage. Adolescent boys are often punished rigorously under the POCSO act on par with criminals who prey on children. However, sexual intercourse by the former mainly results from romantic relationships and is often due to the ignorance of existing stringent legislation. The rigid interpretation of section 3 of the POCSO act considers consensual, participatory sexual intercourse among adolescents as penetrative sexual assault, punished with a minimum of 10 years to life imprisonment. Hence, the future of both the adolescents is devastated in such circumstances though such relationships and sexual intercourse were innocuous.
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Databáze: OpenAIRE
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