Innocence is the essence of childhood. This is perhaps the only reason why a child sees the world from a different view, specially a girl child, who is highly vulnerable. She wants to beloved and appreciated by everybody, whether he is an uncle or a chowkidar bhaiya (watchman) of her colony. The little angel knows not that her uncles and bhaiyas can rob her of childhood and innocence. That will leave a traumatic effect on her.

Paedophilia is a term most of the people are not familiar with. It is one of the sexual deviations in which the sex object is a child. In most cases, the victim is a girl child. It is a problem that persists in every class of society. At some point of time in one’s life he/she might have been a victim of this kind of sexual exploitation.

A person who finds a child an easy way of fulfilling his sexual urges is a paedophiliac. In this deviation, the intimacy usually involves manipulation of the child’s genitals, or in the cases of female victims, partial or complete penetration of the vagina. Occasionally, the child is induced to manipulate the sex organs of the paedophiliac or to engage in oral sex.

A paedophiliac could be a regular visitor of your house, whose intentions can never be suspected by the parents of the child. An offender is usually married and has children of his own; this is one of the reasons that his intentions can never be suspected. He shows normal affection in front of others but when the child is alone this sexually perverted man gets the chance to fulfil his design. A child does not complain because the offender is known to the victim and to her family. A paedophiliac can often be a relative or a servant of your house.

Mira Nair’s film Monsoon Wedding has tried to focus on this problem. She has shown an aged relative whose victim is an eight-year-old girl child. This man has a normal relationship with the girl in the presence of others but when he finds her alone he tries to feel her sexually.

Paedophilia is a sexual behaviour that may continue over a period of time and usually there is no sudden physical coercion. It is seldom found that offenders may be encouraged or even seduced by their victim as, after a point of time, the victim starts to enjoy the act. A famous psychologist, Suransen, found provocation or active participation by the victim in only three of the 25 cases he studied. This was found in the early ‘Seventies but now the ratio has increased.

These offenders are not pardonable as they subject children to highly traumatic and disturbed emotional experience as well as physical injury. Parents do not observe the behaviour of the offender as they interpret it as simple expressions of affection for a child.

Paedophiles are diverse in terms of the act committed and the intentionality of the general circumstances surrounding the act, the age, education and developmental history. Their age generally varies from 40 to 50 years. People who have never been able to establish or maintain satisfactory inter-personal relationships with their peers of the opposite sex during their adolescence, young adulthood and adult life, are sexually comfortable with the child who is known to them. They do not indulge impulsively but begin with a type of dis-alarming courtship which eventually leads to sexual by-play. Male and female children may become the victims. This is one type of offender.

There are various reasons behind paedophiliac behaviour. One of them is having a feeling of revenge against an unfaithful wife or girlfriend. The other offenders are those who had been punished by law for rape or indulgence in other sexual offences in the past. They find the child an easy way to meet their urge for sex. And then there are psychopathic personalities who prey in search of new sexual thrills. Paedophiles lurk in every society. And the number of such offenders has been increasing at an alarming rate. More and more children are becoming victims.