These are real stories from Indian newspapers, about children hurt by people they trusted. We add new ones as they happen.
Each little figure below is one of them. This is one ordinary day. Almost none of them make the news.
Every story is from a published news report, and links to it. We never show a child’s face or say a child’s name.
For eight months, police say, a teacher at their village school touched the girls wrongly and showed them dirty videos.
One girl told the school cook.
Police say her teacher at a government school sexually harassed her. By the next day, he had been arrested.
A complaint reached the local police.
They said a teacher, close to retiring, touched them in a wrong way. Police arrested him under the child protection law.
The children spoke up.
Students of a government residential school said their teacher hurt them, physically and sexually. He was arrested.
A group of students walked to the police station.
A schoolgirl told the child helpline that her principal and a teacher were harassing her. Both were arrested.
The helpline called the police.
Police say his teacher made him drink alcohol at the teacher's home and sexually harassed him.
He kept it inside for almost three weeks. Then he told a friend.
His father says older boys in the school hostel beat him with an iron rod and cut his hand, because he saw them drinking.
The school only warned the older boys. His father went to the police.
Two little girls were sexually abused in their school washroom, allegedly by a man who cleaned there.
One girl told her parents it hurt. Then the whole town came out.
His father dropped him at the school gate. Thirteen minutes later, he was found badly hurt near a washroom. He did not survive.
Other children raised the alarm.
Send us the news link. We check every story before it goes up, and we never show a child’s face.
A teacher. A principal. A man who worked at the school. Older boys in the hostel. People the children saw every day.
A school cook. A friend. A helpline. Their parents. Almost every time, it came out because a child spoke first.
Weeks, sometimes months, before any adult knew. In one village school, it was eight months.
And make one promise. If a child ever tells you something is wrong, you will stop, you will listen, and you will believe them.
9 candles lit for them so far
Curio X is a watch-like band we are building to notice when a child is scared or in distress, so the adults who care for them can know sooner. It will not replace a teacher who listens or a parent who asks. It is there so fewer children carry it alone.
Still being built, at IIT Madras Research Park, Chennai. No price or date yet.
Say what you saw or heard. Trained people will take it from there.