How can we be blind to these children?

This is what a kind commenter left in my comment box the other day.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/city/mumbai/TV-actress-beats-burns-little-maid-for-eating/articleshow/4922001.cms
Thank you, Chitra. I needed that kick in the seat of my pants to get me to write on this. I dont know about the high readership you have mentioned, but whatever little can be done must be done. I can be quite ostrich like when it comes to incidents like these involving little children. I skip over the article. I shut my eyes, and pretend I dont see my son's face in those hurt, bruised faces. I pretend this does not happen. I dont read about it. I cant bear to stomach it, because I am equally guilty for letting it happen. Urvashi Dhanorkar is out on bail. Huma Khan who had kidnapped, sexually abused and assaulted her minor maid, with the connivance of a male accomplice, was arrested and then let out on bail, and google doesnt tell me what finally came of that case. Tiny Sonu, whose only crime was a curiousity about make up, didnt deserve chilli powder and steel rods pushed up her privates and being left to bleed to death, by her employer, a woman and a mother of three herself.
What horrifies me is that all these crimes have not been perpetrated by men, but by women. And so sadistically has the torture been done, that my stomach turns as I google the links to find out more about each case. My once upon a time boss, Bachi Karkaria, has this to write about these. I agree. Not every house tortures their domestic help. But almost every second home employs an underage maid. Prey to abuse ranging from verbal to emotional to physical and sexual, for every Rameshwari and Sonu, there are many cases which just swept under the carpet. Ignored. In my building complex itself, I see the children accompanied to the park by girls who are all clearly minors. They all seem relatively well cared for and happy. But I dont know what the true story is. Sonu was employed by a seemingly decent family living in a plush tower in upscale Lokhandwala in Andheri.
I feel helpless. And ashamed. And wonder what I could possibly do. What we could possibly do. It starts from you and me. We need to stop this employment of underage minors. We need to do what we can to enforce the law. You and I and all of us. It is illegal to employ minors. But yet, why are children working in every second home? Agreed, the poverty and the need to earn a living makes it a difficult problem to tackle, but can we not take a stand to educate one underprivileged child, to fund one underprivileged family to let them not put their kids to work, rather to let the children be free to have a childhood. Can we not counsel families employing underage children as domestic help not to do so? It is an effort to be made by each and every one of us. How can we even look our children in our eye, when other children in their vicinity are being subject to such abuse.
And Urvashi Dhanorkar is out on bail. She is allowed to shield her face, but her young victims black ringed and bloodshot eyes are on every newschannel, and in every newspaper, puzzled, pained and perpetually scarred. Is Dhanorkar going to get more work thanks to her notoriety, I would presume so, given the current penchant for the most controversial figures becoming instantly popular, it would seem that all it takes to become a popular TV celebrity at the moment is to be found ODing on drugs half dead in a jacuzzi, with another coke head dead next to you, and the young boys brought in for a 'party' spirited away. Are the production houses who hire her taking a call to take her off their rosters? I wonder. She will make for great TRPs.
Would kind mommy bloggers like to take this up as a tag? Write about how we need to stop employing underage minors in our homes. Regardless of circumstances and how some homes might actually be kind to these minors? And how as a society, we must watch out for our children? Regardless of which strata of society they come from. The law will take its own course on this case, like it did in Sonu's case. I trust Urvashi Dhanorkar will get the sentence due to her too. At the most, we can try and influence public opinion on the employment of minors in homes as domestic help.

Here's what Subhashree had to say.

This is what Maid in Malaysia has to say.