Sunil (name changed), 14, accuses his teacher of sexually abusing him over the past six months. But now, Sunil and his family have suddenly gone tight-lipped on the matter. After the press went to town on the case, life has become difficult for this family in a south Goan village. The boy has become the butt of jokes in class and the neighbours cast queer looks at their house.

Sunil and his kin had no idea that the press, which they thought was on their side, had also been violating their right to privacy — which the law ensures. The Juvenile Justice Act (Care and Protection of Children), 2006, prohibits the print and electronic media from publishing or broadcasting the name, picture, address, school or any details about the juvenile “in conflict with the law” or a child “in need of care and protection”, involved in any proceeding under the JJ Act.

“But we see newspapers publishing with impunity the names of minor victims,” says K. Narayanan, ombudsman or Reader’s Editor of The Hindu, in Chennai. In April this year, Justice K. Hema of the Kerala High Court, criticising the press’s disclosure of the identity of five minor victims of abuse (Jose Maveli vs State of Kerala), said: “I find from records that certain newspapers have published the photographs of the children with their names and other details...”

Three weeks ago, a tabloid in Mumbai published the names of two minor victims of alleged sexual abuse by two British former naval officers, Duncan Grant and Allan Waters, who were cleared of paedophilia charges by the Bombay High Court.

In his column last April, Narayanan had discussed a letter from a non governmental organisation, protesting the publication of the names of Grant and Waters’ alleged victims, in the March 19, 2006, edition of The Hindu. The names, though divulged at a press conference, “do not justify the publication of their names in the report in any way,” wrote Narayanan.

But not every media house will acknowledge error as graciously. “When I objected to a newspaper publishing the name of a 16-year-old victim, disclosed at a press conference, by her mother and lawyer, I was told that she was fair game for everyone,” says Vidya Reddy of Tulir, a Bangalore-based support group for incest survivors.

The Juvenile Justice Act does allow the media to use real names and details if the court permits it “in the interest of the child.” “But while granting permission, the authority has to record the reasons in writing,” observes Justice K. Hema.

Section 327(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) also allows the reporting of the proceedings in a rape case only with the court’s permission. Under Section 228 (A), the IPC too permits details of a rape victim to be published if the officer in charge of the police station or the police officer investigating the case issues a written authorisation.

But this clause may not necessarily be in the best interest of the victim, activists point out. Sangeeta Punekar, a child rights activist in Mumbai who has accompanied the police on trafficking-related raids, says, “The police are capable of misusing and abusing the Act, especially when they think the accused is innocent and framed.” In one such recent case, the police divulged the name and other details of a pregnant 15-year-old rescued sex worker to a news channel.

The police should also stop giving a copy of the first information report (FIR) to the press, says Poonam Bharne, public prosecutor at the Children’s Court in Goa — the only state to have an exclusive court to try offences against minors. Bharne points out that recently, the reporting of molestation charges levelled by a 14-year-old girl at a 50-year-old tennis coach led to the girl refusing to talk about it anymore.

Section 228(A) of the IPC allows for the publication of the details of a rape victim if the victim gives her consent in writing. But “child victims are not in a position to give such consent,” says Punekar. Section 32(1)(m) of the Goa Children’s Act, 2003, insists that a child, whose case is being heard in the children’s court, be shielded from the accused. So the child stays behind a curtain, visible only to the judge, public prosecutor and lawyers. “If suspects in the case have to be identified by the child, he or she is called from behind the curtain and then sent back,” says Bharne.

Of course, it is not as if the police or the press are completely insensitive to the right to privacy of children in sex abuse cases. “The police are getting more judicious about revealing the identities of minor victims,” says Indrani Sinha, director, Sanlap, an NGO addressing human trafficking in West Bengal and Bihar.

IPS officer P.M. Nair, who was on deputation to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), says that his training programmes for 11,000 police officers across five states in the last two years has seen the force deciding not to divulge the names of victims of sexual abuse.

Of late, the press too is beginning to show some restraint in this matter. “Of the 800-plus trafficking victims in five states over the last two years, not a single name was published,” says Nair.

But clearly, more needs to be done. Punekar talks of the difficulties she faced while trying to shield young sex workers rescued on a nocturnal raid. Television journalists actually climbed up to the ventilator of a room of the Nagpada police station in south central Mumbai to try and get the victims on camera.

“The press must respect the right to privacy of these children,” says Preeti Patkar, director, Prerna, which works with the children of sex workers in Mumbai’s red light district, Kamathipura.

The law does have a provision for imposing penalties on an errant press. While Section 228(A) stipulates a fine and a jail term for up to two years, the JJ Act, after being revised in 2006, raised the penalty from Rs 1,000 to Rs 25,000. Under the Goa Children’s Act, journalists violating child rights during proceedings in the Children’s Court could be fined between Rs 100 and Rs 50,000.

Moreover, Section 13(12) of the Goa Children’s Act states, “Appropriate guidelines for the protection of children from information and material injuries to their well being, as well as harmful exposure in the mass media shall be prepared and implemented.”

The answer lies in self-regulation and not laws, says Arnab Goswami, editor-in- chief, Times Now. “The media cannot be fettered by laws, which cannot set the lakshman rekha of journalism...,” he says. Moreover, each case having its own nuances, it is very difficult to impose a blanket rule, he adds.

Narayanan suggests a model like the Press Complaints Commission in the UK, which works to resolve grievances against the press. If resolved, the publication could carry a correction, an apology, or a letter from the complainant or a private letter of apology from the editor. If unresolved, the publication has to publish the commission’s findings in toto.

But the press is not the only culprit in this regard. In 2000, Prem Sagar, a home for child victims of sexual abuse in Mumbai, was ordered shut by the Bombay High Court, when the Forum Against Child Sexual Exploitation (FACSE) complained against the pastor in charge. Besides abusing the inmates sexually, the pastor had published their photographs and their stories of sexual abuse in the home’s in-house magazine to raise funds.

The bottomline is that children who are victims of sexual abuse must be protected at all cost. As Justice K. Hema said, “Let no harm be done to them in any manner, whether it be by a person, organisation or the media.”