I. Child Sex Abuse in India 
 
 India is home to 430 million children, roughly one in five of all children (individuals under age 18) in the world. From the moment they are born, the challenges many of them face are staggering. [4] 
 
 At least 1.7 million children die before the age of five every year in India.[5] Malnutrition means that almost half of those that survive are stunted, and 43 percent are underweight.[6] The right to education is enshrined in the Indian constitution,[7] but, though the situation is improving, there were still 8.1 million out-of-school children in mid-2009.[8] The government estimates that 40 percent of India's children are vulnerable to threats such as trafficking, homelessness, forced labor, drug abuse, and crime, and are in need of protection.[9]More than half of the country's married women were wed before the legal age of 18.[10] Currently, only about 60 percent of births in India are even registered.[11] 
 
 In 2007 the government published its first ever survey to address what the then minister of women and child development, Renuka Chowdhury, described as the “conspiracy of silence” surrounding child sexual abuse. [12] The report uncovered some alarming statistics, though, as explained below, the report methodology was limited and the numbers should be taken more as an indication of the seriousness of the problem than a reflection of the actual incidence of abuse.[13] Of the children interviewed, more than half (53 percent) said that they had been subjected to one or more forms of sexual abuse. Over 20 percent of those interviewed said they were subjected to severe forms of abuse, defined in the report as “sexual assault, making the child fondle private parts, making the child exhibit private body parts and being photographed in the nude.” Of those who said they were sexually abused, 57 percent were boys.[14] 
 
 The survey also found that very few cases are ever reported. The vast majority of victims (72 percent) said that they did not report the matter to anyone and only 3 percent of them or their families told the police. In most cases the perpetrator was known to the child. For example, 31 percent of sexual assaults were committed by the victim's uncle or neighbor . Among those interviewed, children living on the street, in institutions, or already working were more likely to be the victims of sexual assault than those living with their parents and attending school, but even wealthy families were affected. 
 
 The government survey was based on interviews with 12,500 children in 13 different states and was one of the largest ever conducted in the world. However, many child protection experts have criticized the way it was carried out and even its authors admit that most of the respondents were from especially vulnerable backgrounds . For example, when researchers visited schools, they interviewed pupils who their teachers had already identified as being at risk from abuse.[15]Thus, drawing broader conclusions about the percentages of all Indian children affected, given that no random sample of children was done, would be misleading. However, the survey does show that the problem is very significant and that the government is aware of it . 
 
 Other studies have shown the seriousness of the problem. In 1998 the Indian NGO Recovery and Healing from Incest (RAHI) conducted India's first study of child sexual abuse. It surveyed 600 English-speaking middle and upper-class women, 76 percent of whom said they had been abused in childhood or adolescence, 40 percent by at least one family member, most commonly an uncle or cousin. [16] 
 
 More recently, in 2005, the international organization Save the Children and an Indian NGO, Tulir - Centre for Healing and Prevention of Child Sex Abuse, surveyed 2,211 school-going children, from different backgrounds, in Chennai. [17] At least 48 percent of the boys and 39 percent of the girls interviewed said they had faced sexual abuse of one form or another, mainly from people they knew, while 15 percent of the children complained of severe forms of abuse, defined in this study as “oral sex, sexual intercourse, making the child touch the offender's private parts, or making the children take off their clothes and looking at them or taking their pictures.” 
 
 Official crime records are also indicative of how serious a problem this is. In response to the widely reported rape and murder of a 23-year old student in New Delhi in December 2012, the UN resident coordinator in India and the UNICEF representative issued a joint statement calling for better protection of women and girls against sexual violence. “It is alarming that too many of these cases are children. One in three rape victims is a child. More than 7,200 children, including infants are raped every year. Given the stigma attached to rapes, especially when it comes to children, this most likely is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Louis-Georges Arsenault, UNICEF representative to India.[18] 
 
 Together with nongovernmental organizations, India’s media has played a leading role in increasing awareness of child sexual abuse in the country. As well as highlighting the enormous scale of the problem, journalists have also exposed failings in the system to protect children, putting considerable pressure on the government to act. Public outrage after high-profile cases has forced the government to address the problem. 
 
 In May 2012, in a major step forward, the India's parliament enacted its first law outlawing child sexual abuse. The demand for this law became more urgent after the widely reported case involving Ruchika Girhotra, who was sexually abused in 1990 by a senior police officer when she was 14. Even though there was an eyewitness to the abuse, the alleged perpetrator, SPS Rathore, escaped prosecution for years. Instead he received numerous promotions and eventually retired as Haryana state’s senior-most officer. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Girhotra family said they became the victims of a campaign of harassment. Ruchika was expelled from school, and her brother was arrested several times for theft. Three years after she was abused, Ruchika committed suicide.[19] 
 
 Finally, 19 years later, in December 2009, Rathore was convicted but sentenced to prison for just six months for “molesting” Ruchika, the only existing law under which he could face charges. After widespread outrage, the Central Bureau of Investigation appealed for a tougher punishment, and a court in Haryana increased the term to 18 months. Rathore is presently out on bail while the appeal of his conviction is pending.[20] 
 
 The National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) was established in 2007 and is an autonomous watchdog or ombudsman, whose mandate is to ensure that “all Laws, Policies, Programmes, and Administrative Mechanisms are in consonance with the Child Rights perspective as enshrined in the Constitution of India and also the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.”[21] It has been responsible for some important interventions, such as a campaign against corporal punishment in schools. Despite concerns that it is short staffed, the commission has also been charged with monitoring the implementation of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, as well as India’s ambitious Right to Education Act of 2009, which compels state governments to provide free education in neighborhood schools to all 6 to 14-year-olds and contains important provisions on child protection.[22] 
 
 The NCPCR was set up after the discovery in December 2006 of one of the grisliest crimes in Indian history, when at least 19 children and young women were apparently raped and then killed. The murders came to light when workmen came across body parts while unblocking a sewer in front of a home in Noida, a wealthy suburb outside New Delhi. For months the parents of missing young women and children in the nearby slum of Nithari had complained to the police that their girls and boys had disappeared and named the man responsible.[23] However, the police refused to help them. The NCPCR was established to intervene in cases such as this, where the police failed to accept complaints or properly investigate a crime. 
 
 However, the Indian government has yet to create an effective social services network to protect children and prevent crimes against them. This shortfall became news in 2012 when Falak, a two-year-old girl, was brought to the hospital with serious injuries, including cuts to her head and bite marks on her cheeks and leg. She died two months later. [24] 
 
 Falak had been left in the care of a 14-year-old, who herself had had a violent upbringing. Her father used to beat her, as did a warden in a children’s residential care facility where she lived for three years. [25] After being coerced into sex work, she was left taking care of Falak, an illegally adopted baby. She told investigators that she had slapped and bitten the infant to stop her from crying. [26] At no time had the state social service system stepped in to assist the 14-year-old despite her history of domestic violence, abuse in a residential care facility, and sexual abuse. 
 
 According to Raj Mangal Prasad, chairman of the Child Welfare Committee of South Delhi, which was responsible for looking after both girls once their plight became known, “the story is a grim reminder of failure of the government ... There are lakhs [hundreds of thousands] of Falaks in our country who are waiting for immediate help.” [27] ||||| Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sexual abuse against children is rampant in India 
 
 A panel of doctors has accepted a 10-year-old rape victim's plea for an abortion in the northern Indian state of Haryana. 
 
 Dr Ashok Chauhan told the BBC the termination would be carried out "anytime now". 
 
 The girl became pregnant about five months ago. She alleges rape by her stepfather, who has been arrested. 
 
 Indian law does not allow terminations after 20 weeks unless doctors confirm the woman's life is in danger. 
 
 The decision to allow the child to abort was taken after a local court told doctors at the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) in the town of Rohtak that it would accept their recommendation. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption Campaigners say child safety is of utmost importance 
 
 Analysis: Geeta Pandey, BBC News, Delhi 
 
 India is home to the largest number of sexually abused children globally. But there's a general reluctance to talk about the problem and it's rarely discussed in public. 
 
 Studies have shown that in large numbers of cases, like in the case of the 10-year-old rape victim in Rohtak, the abusers are known to the children and include care-givers like parents, relatives and teachers. 
 
 Contrary to the popular belief that only girls are abused, boys are equally at risk; and children from affluent families are just as much at risk as those from poor backgrounds. 
 
 Campaigners say sexual abuse of children goes unchecked because the victims are often afraid to report it to their parents or teachers, and also because parents themselves often hush it up, fearing family dishonour. 
 
 But in recent years India has been waking up to the problem and on Tuesday, child rights charity World Vision India launched a new campaign to end child sexual abuse by 2021. 
 
 The campaign aims to impact five million children across 200 districts and calls on every Indian citizen to work to break the silence that surrounds child abuse. 
 
 Campaigners say India's culture at present stands on the side of the offender, and that must change. 
 
 The tough law against abortion was introduced to fight India's skewed gender ratio. A deep-seated cultural preference for sons has led to millions of female foetuses being aborted over the years by pregnant women after undergoing foetal gender testing. 
 
 In recent months India's Supreme Court has received several petitions, some from women who were raped, wanting to terminate pregnancies after 20 weeks. The court has always referred the matter to medical experts. 
 
 The scale of abuse in India 
 
 A child under 16 is raped every 155 minutes, a child under 10 every 13 hours 
 
 More than 10,000 children were raped in 2015 
 
 240 million women living in India were married before they turned 18 
 
 53.22% of children who participated in a government study reported some form of sexual abuse 
 
 50% of abusers are known to the child or are "persons in trust and care-givers" 
 
 Sources: Indian government, Unicef 
 
 In the latest case in Rohtak town in Haryana, doctors from the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) accepted the family's request to allow the child to have an abortion after discussing the matter on Monday. 
 
 The pregnancy came to light last week when the 10-year-old's mother, who works as a domestic helper, suspected her child was pregnant and took her to see a doctor. 
 
 Reports said the girl was often left at home when her mother went to work. She told her mother that she had been repeatedly raped by her stepfather, who had warned her not to say anything. 
 
 Image copyright Manoj Dhaka Image caption Doctors at the Rohtak hospital told the BBC the termination would be carried out "anytime now" 
 
 The stepfather was arrested after the mother lodged a police complaint, senior Rohtak police official Pankaj Nain told the BBC. 
 
 Dr Chauhan had said on Monday the case for the termination was "borderline". 
 
 "She is around 20 weeks pregnant, but it could be 19 weeks or it could be 21 weeks. The technology is not so advanced that it can tell you exactly what week she's in." ||||| FILE - In this Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009 file photo, a nun is silhouetted in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. Some nuns are now finding their voices, buoyed by the #MeToo movement and the growing recognition... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009 file photo, a nun is silhouetted in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. Some nuns are now finding their voices, buoyed by the #MeToo movement and the growing recognition that adults can be victims of sexual abuse when there is an imbalance of power in a relationship.... (Associated Press) 
 
 VATICAN CITY (AP) — The nun no longer goes to confession regularly, after an Italian priest forced himself on her while she was at her most vulnerable: recounting her sins to him in a university classroom nearly 20 years ago. 
 
 At the time, the sister only told her provincial superior and her spiritual director, silenced by the Catholic Church's culture of secrecy, her vows of obedience and her own fear, repulsion and shame. 
 
 "It opened a great wound inside of me," she told the Associated Press. "I pretended it didn't happen." 
 
 After decades of silence, the nun is one of a handful worldwide to come forward recently on an issue that the Catholic Church has yet to come to terms with: The sexual abuse of religious sisters by priests and bishops. An AP examination has found that cases have emerged in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia, demonstrating that the problem is global and pervasive, thanks to the universal tradition of sisters' second-class status in the Catholic Church and their ingrained subservience to the men who run it. 
 
 Some nuns are now finding their voices, buoyed by the #MeToo movement and the growing recognition that adults can be victims of sexual abuse when there is an imbalance of power in a relationship. The sisters are going public in part because of years of inaction by church leaders, even after major studies on the problem in Africa were reported to the Vatican in the 1990s. 
 
 The issue has flared in the wake of scandals over the sexual abuse of children, and recently of adults, including revelations that one of the most prominent American cardinals, Theodore McCarrick, sexually abused and harassed his seminarians. 
 
 The extent of the abuse of nuns is unclear, at least outside the Vatican. Victims are reluctant to report the abuse because of well-founded fears they won't be believed, experts told the AP. Church leaders are reluctant to acknowledge that some priests and bishops simply ignore their vows of celibacy, knowing that their secrets will be kept. 
 
 However, this week, about half a dozen sisters in a small religious congregation in Chile went public on national television with their stories of abuse by priests and other nuns — and how their superiors did nothing to stop it. A nun in India recently filed a formal police complaint accusing a bishop of rape, something that would have been unthinkable even a year ago. 
 
 Cases in Africa have come up periodically; in 2013, for example, a well-known priest in Uganda wrote a letter to his superiors that mentioned "priests romantically involved with religious sisters" — for which he was promptly suspended from the church until he apologized in May. And the sister in Europe spoke to the AP to help bring the issue to light. 
 
 "I am so sad that it took so long for this to come into the open, because there were reports long ago," Karlijn Demasure, one of the church's leading experts on clergy sexual abuse and abuse of power, told the AP in an interview. "I hope that now actions will be taken to take care of the victims and put an end to this kind of abuse." 
 
 ___ 
 
 TAKING VICTIMS SERIOUSLY 
 
 The Vatican declined to comment on what measures, if any, it has taken to assess the scope of the problem globally, what it has done to punish offenders and care for the victims. A Vatican official said it is up to local church leaders to sanction priests who sexually abuse sisters, but that often such crimes go unpunished both in civil and canonical courts. 
 
 The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the issue, said only some cases arrive at the Holy See for investigation. It was a reference to the fact that the Catholic Church has no clear measures in place to investigate and punish bishops who themselves abuse or allow abusers to remain in their ranks — a legal loophole that has recently been highlighted by the McCarrick case. 
 
 The official said the church has focused much of its attention recently on protecting children, but that vulnerable adults "deserve the same protection." 
 
 "Consecrated women have to be encouraged to speak up when they are molested," the official told the AP. "Bishops have to be encouraged to take them seriously, and make sure the priests are punished if guilty." 
 
 But being taken seriously is often the toughest obstacle for sisters who are sexually abused, said Demasure, until recently executive director of the church's Center for Child Protection at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the church's leading think tank on the issue. 
 
 "They (the priests) can always say 'she wanted it,'" Demasure said. "It is also difficult to get rid of the opinion that it is always the woman who seduces the man, and not vice versa." 
 
 Demasure said many priests in Africa, for example, struggle with celibacy because of traditional and cultural beliefs in the importance of having children. Novices, who are just entering religious life, are particularly vulnerable because they often need a letter from their parish priest to be accepted into certain religious congregations. "And sometimes they have to pay for that," she said. 
 
 And when these women become pregnant? 
 
 "Mainly she has an abortion. Even more than once. And he pays for that. A religious sister has no money. A priest, yes," she said. 
 
 There can also be a price for blowing the whistle on the problem. 
 
 In 2013, the Rev. Anthony Musaala in Kampala, Uganda wrote what he called an open letter to members of the local Catholic establishment about "numerous cases" of alleged sex liaisons of priests, including with nuns. He charged that it was "an open secret that many Catholic priests and some bishops, in Uganda and elsewhere, no longer live celibate chastity." 
 
 He was sanctioned, even though Ugandan newspapers regularly report cases of priests caught in sex escapades. The topic is even the subject of a popular novel taught in high schools. 
 
 In 2012, a priest sued a bishop in western Uganda who had suspended him and ordered him to stop interacting with at least four nuns. The priest, who denied the allegations, lost the suit, and the sisters later withdrew their own suit against the bishop. 
 
 Archbishop John Baptist Odama, leader of the local Ugandan conference of bishops, told the AP that unverified or verified allegations against individual priests should not be used to smear the whole church. 
 
 "Individual cases may happen, if they are there," he said Thursday. "Individual cases must be treated as individual cases." 
 
 ___ 
 
 PRIESTLY ABUSE OF NUNS IS NOT A NEW PROBLEM 
 
 Long before the most recent incidents, confidential reports into the problem focused on Africa and AIDS were prepared in the 1990s by members of religious orders for top church officials. In 1994, the late Sr. Maura O'Donohue wrote the most comprehensive study about a six-year, 23-nation survey, in which she learned of 29 nuns who had been impregnated in a single congregation. 
 
 Nuns, she reported, were considered "safe" sexual partners for priests who feared they might be infected with HIV if they went to prostitutes or women in the general population. 
 
 Four years later, in a report to top religious superiors and Vatican officials, Sr. Marie McDonald said harassment and rape of African sisters by priests is "allegedly common." Sometimes, when a nun becomes pregnant, the priest insists on an abortion, the report said. 
 
 The problem travelled when the sisters were sent to Rome for studies. They "frequently turn to seminarians and priests for help in writing essays. Sexual favors are sometimes the payment they have to make for such help," the report said. 
 
 The reports were never meant to be made public. The U.S. National Catholic Reporter put them online in 2001, exposing the depths of a scandal the church had long sought to keep under wraps. To date, the Vatican hasn't said what, if anything, it ever did with the information. 
 
 Sister Paola Moggi, a member of the Missionary Combonian Sisters — a religious congregation with a significant presence in 16 African countries — said in her experience the African church "had made great strides" since the 1990s, when she did missionary work in Kenya, but the problem has not been eliminated. 
 
 "I have found in Africa sisters who are absolutely emancipated and who say what they think to a priest they meet who might ask to have sex with them," she told the AP. 
 
 "I have also found sisters who said 'Well, you have to understand their needs, and that while we only have a monthly cycle a man has a continuous cycle of sperm' — verbatim words from the '90s," she said. 
 
 But the fact that in just a few weeks scandals of priests allegedly molesting sisters have erupted publicly on two other continents — Asia and Latin America — suggests that the problem is not confined to Africa, and that some women are now willing to break the taboo to denounce it publicly. 
 
 In India, a sister of the Missionaries of Jesus filed a police report last month alleging a bishop raped her in May 2014 during a visit to the heavily Christian state of Kerala, and that he subsequently sexually abused her around a dozen more times over the following two years, Indian media have reported. The bishop denied the accusation and said the woman was retaliating against him for having taken disciplinary action against her for her own sexual misdeeds. 
 
 In Chile, the scandal of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan, an order dedicated to health care in the diocese of Talca, erupted at the same time the country's entire Catholic hierarchy has been under fire for decades of sex abuse and cover-ups. The scandal got so bad that in May, Francis summoned all Chilean bishops to Rome, where they all offered to resign en masse. 
 
 The case, exposed by the Chilean state broadcaster, involves accusations of priests fondling and kissing nuns, including while naked, and some religious sisters sexually abusing younger ones. The victims said they told their mother superior, but that she did nothing. Talca's new temporary bishop has vowed to find justice. 
 
 The Vatican is well aware that religious sisters have long been particularly vulnerable to abuse. Perhaps the most sensational account was detailed in the 2013 book "The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio," based on the archives of the Vatican's 1860s Inquisition trial of abuse, embezzlement, murder and "false holiness" inside a Roman convent. Once word got out, the Vatican poured the full force of its Inquisition to investigate and punish. 
 
 It remains to be seen what the Vatican will do now that more sisters are speaking out. 
 
 ___ 
 
 ONE SISTER'S STORY — AND YEARS OF HURT 
 
 The sister who spoke to the AP about her assault in 2000 during confession at a Bologna university clasped her rosary as she recounted the details. 
 
 She recalled exactly how she and the priest were seated in two armchairs face-to-face in the university classroom, her eyes cast to the floor. At a certain point, she said, the priest got up from his chair and forced himself on her. Petite but not frail, she was so shocked, she said, that she grabbed him by the shoulders and with all her strength, stood up and pushed him back into his chair. 
 
 The nun continued with her confession that day. But the assault — and a subsequent advance by a different priest a year later — eventually led her to stop going to confession with any priest other than her spiritual father, who lives in a different country. 
 
 "The place of confession should be a place of salvation, freedom and mercy," she said. "Because of this experience, confession became a place of sin and abuse of power." 
 
 She recalled at one point a priest in whom she had confided had apologized "on behalf of the church." But nobody ever took any action against the offender, who was a prominent university professor. 
 
 The woman recounted her story to the AP without knowing that at that very moment, a funeral service was being held for the priest who had assaulted her 18 years earlier. 
 
 She later said the combination of his death and her decision to speak out lifted a great weight. 
 
 "I see it as two freedoms: freedom of the weight for a victim, and freedom of a lie and a violation by the priest," she said. "I hope this helps other sisters free themselves of this weight." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Muhumuza reported from Kampala, Uganda. 
 
 Have a confidential tip? Contact Amy Forliti at The Associated Press at 612-332-2727 or aforliti@ap.org
– December's deadly gang-rape in New Delhi put a spotlight on the country's ugly problem of sexual assault. But India faces another terrible sexual abuse failing—this one involving its children. Human Rights Watch today released an 82-page report on the rampant sexual abuse of Indian children, reports al-Jazeera. Though the report relies on in-depth case studies of 100 abuse victims rather than a "quantitative analysis," it does highlight a 2007 survey of 12,500 at-risk children that found a stunning 53.2% of those questioned had faced one or more forms of sexual abuse; 72% of those victims say they told no one. "Shockingly the very institutions that should protect vulnerable children can place them at risk of horrific child sexual abuse," said HRW's South Asia director. India's poorly trained and poorly paid police often refuse to register complaints; children who do report abuse and are seen by a doctor often undergo traumatic exams. Last year India finally passed its first law banning child sex abuse, but that's not enough, says HRW. "The criminal justice system, from the time police receive a complaint until trials are completed, needs urgent reform." See the full report here.