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‘More victims reporting rape, many assaulted repeatedly’ -Pritha Chatterjee
-The Indian Express

In 2001-05, 50 sexual assault cases were reported at the Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) Hospital - the nodal government hospital that conducts medical examination of such victims from East and North East Delhi. In June 2010-December 2013, the number of cases jumped to 221 - an over fourfold increase.

The number of victims who were assaulted more than once also showed a significant increase - from 14 per cent in 2001-05 to 34 per cent in the latest analysis. Also, 78 per cent of the victims were raped by persons known to them.

These figures form part of a study titled, "Analysis of sexual assault survivors in a tertiary care hospital: a retrospective analysis", published in the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research.

In most cases of repeat sexual assault, the women were "raped over months, mostly by family members or close relatives or some close friend or (person) known to the family," says the study.

"The accused was a relative of the victim in 14 per cent of the cases - usually the father. In other cases, the relative was a brother-in-law, uncle, stepfather, brother or father-in-law. Sixty-four per cent of the accused were friends, colleagues, or landlords among others.

Only in 22 per cent cases, the victim did not know the accused," Sweta Lal, corresponding author and former senior resident of the hospital's gynaecology department, told The Sunday Express.

According to the study, based on retrospective analysis of medico legal records, the number of victims who reported to hospital within 24 hours of their assault increased from 40 per cent to 58 per cent.

"It shows an increased awareness among women and their guardians that such cases need to be reported early despite the social stigma attached to it," says the report, co-authored by Dr Alpana Singh, assistant professor, and Dr Neelam Bala Vaid, head of the gynaecology department at the hospital.

Fifteen per cent of the victims reported gangrape. Over 60 per cent of the victims were unmarried and from the "lower socio-economic strata".

The study found that the percentage of minor rape victims remains largely the same. While the percentage of young adults and teenagers who were raped showed a fall, Dr Lal said the absolute number had actually increased. The incidence of assault among women over 20 years increased by 16 per cent.

"This simply shows that women from this age category who were earlier deterred, possibly by the stigma, are now reporting rape. In the case of minor victims who were abused by relatives, mothers are coming forward," said Dr Lal.

According to the study, 22 per cent of the victims were less than 10 years old, 48 per cent were 10-19 years, 30 per cent were above 20 years. In nine per cent of the cases, the victims were less than five years old.

"We have taken hospital records and studied the details of rape and sexual assault cases to analyse the nature of the assault, and compared the data to a previous study of the same nature to see the trends and injuries of these assaults. Unfortunately we could not access the forensic reports of these cases to compare them with the medical findings," said Dr Lal. Dr Vaid could not be contacted despite repeated efforts.

The percentage of victims with genital injuries showed a decrease - from 56 per cent in the first study to 13 per cent in the latest report. "Only 3 per cent of the victims required any major procedure... These were mostly under the age of 10," says the study.

"We have documented that the incidence of sexual assault has increased majorly in just one year. This may be because of the increased reporting of cases because of public awareness.

Rape still remains the most under reported crime due to social stigma. We also saw that assault victims are relatively of young age. In addition, we found that most victims mostly knew the perpetrator. We also found that most of the victims were assaulted by a single person and were victims of single incident of assault," concludes the study.