Muzaffarpur is emblematic of the large-scale systemic abuse of institutionalized children that we choose not to see.
One fought with her stepmother and ran away from home. Another was sold into prostitution and rescued in a raid. And a third was brought in by her mother who was too poor to feed her.
The girls who end up at shelter homes are, very often, nobody’s children; society’s most vulnerable. They have no one to ask, are you okay?
Not even the State whose job it is to protect them.
While the scale of horror at the state-funded hell house shelter in Muzaffarpur run by the politically connected Brajesh Thakur is staggering — 29 of 42 minor girls reporting rape, torture and being drugged — it is not unprecedented. Continue reading “Hell house ‘shelter’ horror”