Types of Child Sexual Abuse

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Trigger Warning: The following content contains information on sexual and physical violence which some readers may find disturbing.

The law has created different offences of child sexual abuse based on two criteria:

1. Based on the different types of actions and ways of sexually abusing a child.

Non-Physical

• Any non-physical sexual behaviour through gestures, speech and visuals.¹
• Any action in relation to creation, distribution, transmission, publication or any other activity relating to child pornography.²

Physical

• Any action to touch a child in an sexually inappropriate way.³
• Any action to penetrate a child either with a penis or any other object.⁴

2. Based on who is committing the offence.

• Any sexual action done by a person in a position of trust/authority to the child.⁵

If a person tries to commit ⁶ any sexual crime under this law, this is also a crime. It does not matter that the crime was not actually committed because the offender failed, the attempt itself will hold them liable.

The above list of symptoms has been taken from the User Handbook by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

1. Section 11, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.[↩]
2. Section 13, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.[↩]
3. Section 7, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012; Section 9, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.[↩]
4. Section 3, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012; Section 5, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.[↩]
5. Section 5, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012; Section 9, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.[↩]
6. Section 18, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.[↩]