‘Be a Survivor, not a victim’

By Maryam Mansoor

Poster by Maryam Mansoor

“Alina is a six years old girl who studies in Grade 1. There is a peon in her school who takes her to the store room every day whenever he sees her alone. He used to make her sit on his lap and make her do inappropriate things. He warns Alina that if she will tell anyone, he will make her regret that. Even though she feels uncomfortable but she does not tell anyone about it. At this age Alina does not even know that she has been sexually abused”

Alina isn’t a real girl but her hypothetical story reflects the reality of many people in our society who have been sexually abused in their childhood without even knowing and horrors of these incidents haunt them at every stage of their lives.

When adults use their power and authority over children to engage them in some sexual activity, it is called child sexual abuse. Abuse against children fills our news stream every other day. In the past month alone, there have been at least nine cases of sexual abuse against children reported in local news channels and newspapers. We can be sure that there may be a dozen more that were hidden from the media to avoid the ‘shame’ most family members of the victims dread. It’s a perception that only girls face sexual abuse but it’s totally wrong; if men are capable of abusing girls, they are equally capable of abusing boys. According to reliable sources in the last year, a total of 985 boys have been sexually abused including the horrific kasur incident where 270 children were not only sexually abused for 5 long years but around 400 pornographic videos were being spread like a wildfire in Rupees 50/-

The culture of Silence: Child sexual abuse is one of the biggest issues that are prevailing in Pakistan but what’s even more alarming is the silence on these dreadful cases. People in Pakistan still associate child sexual abuse incidents with ‘shame’. They think that speaking up will be bad for their family’s reputation that’s the reason that majority of the figures different reports present counts only those incidents that get reported and believe me they are very small in number because most of the time when victims share their sufferings with their parents; they are asked to keep quite and in some cases the children do not even reveal the crime to anyone due to fear of rejection.

“I was barely seven or eight years old when it happened. My dad’s friend and his family came to Pakistan and they were staying over at our place. The man was in his mid-forties. One night he came to my room I didn’t really understand what was going on. Through the entirety of it, I pretended I was asleep while my body was numb with fear; my heart was beating so fast in my chest I thought it would burst. After ‘it’ was over I allowed myself to shake and cry, like a wounded animal. That is what I felt like for the next few years. When I told my mom about this, she asked me to keep quiet. It just stayed with me, I lost self-confidence and I couldn’t look people in the eye” A girl anonymously shared her story on one of the social media pages; ‘Baat Karo’.

Children get molested mostly from people of their social circle; their uncles, servants, Quran teachers, friends, school teachers, drivers and some of them are abused by total strangers. Parents think that silence is the best way to deal with these incidents. ‘No, you are fine, nothing happened to you it is just your misunderstanding’ is the response of the adults who don’t want to believe that this sort of thing could happen to their children and that too from those they truly trust. This rejection from a family member, who is a source of emotional or financial support for a child, may feel far more dangerous than the risks of remaining silent and has negative impact on the victims physically, emotionally and psychologically. It’s something that can have a lasting impact on the victim without proper counselling.

Negative impacts of child abuse on victims:

Children who suffer sexual abuse of any kind are mostly unable to spend a normal life either because of the burden of keeping it to themselves or facing rejection of support from their family members. This makes them feel guilty that something should be wrong with them and that it is their mistake if this has happened.

When a child is sexually abused, it breaks bonds of trust. It is a violation of sovereignty of the self and one’s zone of physical intimacy. It is a spiritual act of violence that attacks not only the body but also the mind. It can take decades, or even a lifetime to recover, if recovery is even emotionally possible for the victim. When the children fail to cope with sexual abuse they adopt negative coping styles such as using drugs, smoking and alcohol in later stages of their life.

Childhood abuse also contributes to the likelihood of depression, anxiety disorders, powerlessness, phobias, addictions, personality disorders, poor self-esteem, eating disorders and possibility of suicidal thoughts in the victims.  Victims lose trust on the relationships, they can’t talk with confidence, become forgetful, complain about terrible nightmares, they become aggressive on situations that are not even serious, perform poorly in their exams, they can never share their problems with anyone, self-blame themselves, they start to avoid social gatherings and you as a parent think that your child is misbehaving and just being stubborn where as it is opposite in reality.

Speak up:

It is now time that we speak up against this heinous crime as maintaining a prudish silence on such matters only leaves our children vulnerable to paedophiles those who would perpetrate unspeakable acts of brutality against them. We, as a society, need to stand together against such issues. Parents need to realize that shying away from speaking against these abuses will only worsen the situation and make their children more susceptible to such crimes.

It is the responsibility of parents to engage in open end discussions with their children and to notice when their child enters home upset without any apparent reason, the time they are reluctant to visit a specific person and insist on staying home instead or the time you see fear in their eyes on seeing a specific face, why is that? Talk to them and when they discuss such things with you, ‘trust’ them and make sure they don’t go through the same thing again.

It is also the responsibility of the government to make laws which take strict actions against the paedophiles and that can provide a platform to support people who raise their voice against child abuse. Fortunately such laws do exist in Pakistan which includes punishment for sexual assaults for minors with imprisonment but also includes pornographic video maker’s imprisonment for 7 years with fine of 7 lakhs but talking about child sexual abuse is still considered a ‘taboo’ in Pakistan; so whenever someone raises their voice against these abuses like the drama serial ‘Udaari’ did; government try to shut them down. While it’s encouraging that such law exist in our country but efforts should also be made to implement them.  Also awareness of the issue should be created to make it easier for children to recognise sexual abuse themselves and have the confidence to report it. Besides improving laws and empowering authorities to check the child abuse cases,  government should also work on the capacity building of parents and teachers so that they educate children about abuses and possible defence.

Government should also appreciate the efforts of those NGO’s who are working for the eradication of child abuse from our society. ‘Sahil’ is the only organization in Pakistan which works exclusively against the issue of child sexual abuse and exploitation. Sahil has been working since 1996 on child protection especially against child sexual abuse. Its main objectives include; focusing on protection (betterment) of children, providing free legal aid, counseling for victims, awareness of child sexual abuse among parents, giving sex education to children. According to Sahil’s annual report of 2015, “a total 3,768 cases of child sexual abuse were reported in 2015 bringing the number of abused children to 10 per day.” This figure was almost 7 percent more than the previous year and the number, unfortunately, keeps increasing. This organization is working hard to eradicate the problem of child sexual abuse but it is not enough. We will not be able to get rid of this crime and these figures will keep on increasing unless we all consider it our responsibility to speak against child abuse and make efforts to put the pedophiles behind bars.

It's time we start taking this matter seriously and break this label of taboo. Now we all should stand up as a society and finally put this heinous crime to halt. It’s difficult to read about child sexual abuse, it’s even hard to talk about it but it will be harder not to talk and live through it so speak up before it’s too late. Be a survivor, not a victim.