<B>By Deepa BHOOKHUN</B>

What would you do if you came to learn that your seventeen year old son has had sexual intercourse with his younger sister? What would you do if you learnt that your son had viewed a pornographic video with his friend and couldn?t contain his vile impulse and raped his friend?s mother? What would you do if the police informed you that your son had raped an unknown person on a beach or in a school or wherever?

I don?t dare ask what you would do if you find out that a stranger has raped your child. You would probably say you?d kill the rapist and that you can?t do ? however tempting such a thought might be.

Feelings of revenge are normal, I suppose, if your child has been hurt but this doesn?t solve anything.

If we all decided to take the law into our hands, it would be chaos. That?s why there are rules in any society and that?s why, when those rules are broken, there must be some kind of punishment for the person who has broken the rules.

I?m sorry if this sounds rather patronizing; I suspect you all know this.

But until very recently I also thought that a brother was supposed to know that he is meant to protect his sister, not rape her. I thought a man was supposed to know he was supposed to respect his friend?s mother ? and anybody?s mother for that matter ? and not rape her.

I now know we shouldn?t take those things for granted.

So where did we go wrong? When did parents stop knowing how to be good parents, when did they stop teaching their kids the most basic of values?

Is it because they themselves weren?t taught those values? Is it because they came from broken families?

I don?t know what it is but I know we need to do something about it and soon.

The Prime minister rightly says, when confronted with questions about law and order, that a lot of it has to do with criminality and does not, strictly speaking, have to do with law and order as such.

Unfortunately there end his comments on the matter. The fact that this problem has to do with an erosion of values doesn?t make it less worrying.

Has any of those 22 people sitting in the cabinet bothered to sit down and think hard about the causes of this problem? If the family unit isn?t functioning the way it should be, then why is that? Is it poverty? Is it childhood abuse? After all, we know that most abusers have themselves been abused in the past. And how do we reach those people to educate them, to treat them? Do we do it at school, in community centers, in the prisons?

Have you asked yourself those questions? Are you willing to do your bit? Because if you think this has nothing to do with you, then you better think again.

Next time, it could be you. Or worse still, your child...