Nandana up against child abuse

As Cause Ambassador for NGO RAHI (Recovery and Healing from Incest), Nandana Sen is deeply committed to raising awareness of the widespread trauma of child abuse, and working with its survivors.

“Healing is often harder for men than it is for women," she observed. “For males the biggest obstacle is their reluctance to talk about it. In our society men have been conditioned to believe by definition they must always be aggressive rather than helpless. Since a 'real" man is expected to never accept he could be a 'victim," men fear that acknowledging their trauma would threaten their masculinity."

Nandana also revealed that hiding the pain of their abuse often leads to male survivors experiencing great confusion over their sexual identities and orientation.

“Some survivors become intolerably homophobic and some unhealthily aggressive," Nandana said. “Disastrously, masculinity and power often get confused with abusiveness. For both men and women, the first step toward healing is breaking the silence about their abuse." It forms the subject of Chuppee, a short feature against CSA Nandana recently completed, sponsored by UNIFEM.