At a press conference organised by Rahul Bose‘s NGO, The Foundation, towards the prevention of Child Sexual Abuse, Kalki Koechlin opened up about having faced sexual abuse as a child herself.
In an interview to a news channel, she said:
For me it’s an important issue and I wanted to talk about it. It is not about giving you my history as a person who has gone through sexual abuse but to put forward the idea. So many of us have gone through it and most of the people that I know especially close friends of mine who are women have gone through some form of CSA (child sexual abuse). Right now 53% of the nation is going through CSA that’s more than half the country and that’s only the official statistic. I think there’s a lot more happening because we know in a lot of families we brush it under the carpet and because of social, cultural pressure we don’t talk about these things.
She also talked about moving on from the horrific incident:
It took me many, many years to even come and talk about it. It’s also how you choose to go ahead with it and what you choose to do with it. For me my writing and my art, my acting is therapeutic, it’s my way of releasing things out. I think everybody has different outlets as long as there are places where you can do that. Not everybody has the privilege to talk about it openly.
Humans Of Bombay also featured the actress, where she further spoke about it:
Kalki has always been an advocate for important issues and has often used her position to voice things not many celebrities like to talk about. Just recently, she wrote a fierce piece about disability and sexuality and not too long ago, she’d participated in the epic satirical video about rape called It’s Your Fault by the AIB boys.
Check it out!
Good on you, Kalki! Thank you for opening up about such a pertinent issue and encouraging women everywhere to come out and talk about it. You’ve always been a rockstar!