When a society plagued by rampant abuse meets the negligence of the authorities guarding it, a never-ending cycle of horror is set into motion. The victims produced run across the spectrum, sometimes taking the form of a raped and murdered 6-year-old Zainab and sometimes manifesting in hundreds of 10-14-year-olds who are sexually abused and videotaped, the recordings later to be sold at a mere Rs50. Occasionally victims are looked at from an outside perspective, a foreign narrative- ‘Pakistan’s Hidden Shame’ depicting the reality of sexual abuse inflicted on young males in the Northern areas of Pakistan.
Those interested can search online to find thousands of other results pertaining to the incidents of sexual abuse in the region, both in urban and rural breeding grounds of Pakistan. And the results keep on expanding with every single refresh click.
Unnerved and apprehensive, our country is shaken in the light of these recent tragedies. The news of these young victims have seemingly done little to awaken the conscientiousness of our nation, however. Sahil an NGO working to unearth the grim tales of abuse victims, reports dismal numbers:
“The most alarming statistic for the year 2017 is that 109 children were murdered after sexual abuse and this number has increased by 9% compared to the year 2016. For 2018, a total of 2,322 cases of child sexual abuse were reported between January and June from all over Pakistan which is 32% increase in the cases as compared to 2017 for the same period which means that about 12 children are sexually abused in Pakistan every day”.
The 32% increase in 6 months comes after the hanging of Zainab’s murderer– a hanging intended to serve as a wanton act-to instill fear in the hearts of all killers in the making. So much for serving as a warning.
2015 produced the largest-ever child abuse scandal in Kasur Punjab. “The busted child-pornography ring was allegedly said to have been supported by the PML-N MPA Malik Ahmad and protected by the local police”. That being said, it is a mystery how a nation like ours is a signatory to the United Nation Conventions on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and related protocols and conventions.
The solution it seems is not in hanging perpetrators and enforcing justice after the crime is committed. One needs to dig deeper. One needs to look at the makings of these offenders to understand how to stop them in their tracks. An understanding of their minds and intentions might be the only way to rid ourselves of this misery once and for all.
According to WHO, “sexual abuse includes all forms of physical and emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect, and exploitation that results in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, development or dignity”.
Keeping this definition in mind, how many of us can say it with absolute certainty that we have not, on one or more instances, willingly subjected our children, to any of the above-mentioned forms of child abuse 2. The cultural norms that govern most of our households are conducive in themselves to allow for such abuse. These etiquettes demand children and young adults to assume submissiveness to any violence by their adults or elders. This norm perpetuates in schools, madrassas and the different social spheres of our lives. Relationship are hence forged in the spirit of suppressive and forceful obedience rather than mutual trust and respect.
In an environment of abuse and neglect in its early, developing years, a child is predisposed to a high risk of mental as well as physical challenges in later years. These physically functioning but mentally challenged children may grow up to be normal, but some of them are not so lucky. The anatomy of these unlucky brains strike an astonishing contrast to those of a healthy, normal population. More precisely, the part of their brains that regulates emotions is severely compromised. They have an alarmingly low EQ which makes it harder for them to regulate their own emotions as well as emotions in others. Other consequences include a lack of cause-effect thinking, and incoherent sense of self and a lack of conscience.
These individuals, victims at one stage of their own lives, may go on to inflict on others all the pain that was once inflicted on them. These forgotten victims might also internalize problems of depression and anxiety and perhaps externalize aggressive and anti-social behavior. Some of their symptoms reveal as behavioral disorders such as ADHD. Most symptoms are however far more heinous and violent.
Genetic makeup plays a part in creating such monsters but there are also genes residing in all of us, that can get triggered by severe environmental factors such as physical or emotional abuse. This explains why not all but some children with an abusive past go on to develop psychopathic tendencies. These tendencies, as proved by scientific consensus, have invariably been accounted by the developmental and biological disturbances that occur in early years of life.
It is important to note how child abuse constitutes a critical as well as a preventable risk factor for developing a mental illness at any age. AKU reports that in 2016, 1 in 4 Pakistanis were suffering from a common mental disorder. This number can be brought down by identifying the problem for what it really is and playing our part in resolving it in a collective manner.
Penalizing domestic violence, educating women on their rights and freedoms, spreading awareness by training parents, teachers, clinicians, healthcare workers on how to better help victims, having mandatory sex education as part of school curriculum, extending child protection services, restricting access to violent content on mass and internet media, implementing formalized screening for abuse, and enforcing an accountability system that extends to the police and government officials constitute some steps that can curb a problem of this magnitude. Other exacerbating factors related to child protection that warrants the state attention include poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, terrorism, growing corrupt judicial and political system and lack of access to health and education.
Despite the different provincial assemblies passing bills and laws to deal with the subject of child protection, a uniform legislative effort still needs to be made to implement practical frameworks and systems. In addition to this, adequate funds are ought to be allotted to child specific ventures, both in federal and provincial budgets.
So many victims that came before Zainab and befell the same fate as her have never been reported or discovered. The weaker and restrictive media set-up in the pre internet days along with the lack of accurate reporting and resources back in the day makes it hard to verify old numbers. There is however no shadow of doubt that child abuse is a reality that has persisted in Pakistan for a very long time. We only need to look around us, in our own homes and schools, in our own madrassas and markets to see it breathing and thriving everyday.
Child abuse is an international problem, and one that holds great national significance as well. It is not a problem spun by a single villain in just one part of the land, but it is one that defines and destroys entire nations. It unravels our darkest inclinations and our most menacing desires. It seeks to eat away our humanity, one victim at a time. As humans we owe it to ourselves to vanquish this epidemic. We owe ourselves to save and help the millions of Zainabs out there who are fighting this plague every single day. More so, we owe it to the generations that come after us to live in a world free of this evil, to feel safe in a space we have created for them:
“Time entails for a child-protection emergency so that no child in Naya Pakistan is robbed of his dignity, no child becomes a news headline, no child has to be found in a heap of trash to be noticed and no child’s parents have to come out on roads to beg for justice.”
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