Molestation – Rarely Acknowledged

As the math tuition end­ed and the teacher made his way out of the house, Haider took a deep breath of relief. It was Fri­day – for­tu­nate­ly he wouldn’t see Mr. Abrar for two days now. It was impos­si­ble for Haider to keep the secret inside him for anoth­er sec­ond. He could no longer endure the uncer­tain­ty, the pain and the guilt. He prayed beg­ging for some­one he could request for help and secu­ri­ty. Although Haider knew that his par­ents loved him a lot, he was afraid of the con­se­quences his rev­e­la­tion might cause. He was scared that he would be blamed as his par­ents were always prais­ing Mr. Abrar, espe­cial­ly for his con­duct.

Often Haider thought that there may be some­thing wrong with him – some­thing for which he had to suf­fer like this. While the days were pass­ing, a hole of despair and dark­ness appeared which was about to swal­low him. Espe­cial­ly dur­ing the end of a day, twelve year old Haider could ful­ly see the hole inside him, eras­ing the hope of free­dom and escape piece by piece.

What Haider had to endure in child­hood is molesta­tion – one of the most ignored crimes in our soci­ety. A crime a lot of peo­ple do not even both­er to acknowl­edge despite the fact that chil­dren are most­ly the vic­tims. As young­sters nei­ther under­stand the con­cept nor the mean­ing of sex­u­al inti­ma­cy child moles­ters have only a few dif­fi­cul­ties in access­ing them. How­ev­er, in case of a sex­u­al abuse, chil­dren are the ones left in a state of phys­i­cal and men­tal help­less­ness. If they want to move for­ward their scars and night­mares pre­vent them from doing so. Their self-esteem becomes shat­tered like old glass while their souls are left naked. More­over, they might blame them­selves for the cru­el­ty done to them by oth­ers.

In my per­son­al view, par­ents who do not tell their chil­dren about sex and how a total stranger or a rel­a­tive should treat them are equal­ly respon­si­ble for the dam­age done by the moles­ter. The so-called shame – the fear of putting inap­pro­pri­ate ideas in the mind of their chil­dren – or using reli­gious teach­ings to imply that this top­ic is only rel­e­vant after mar­riage are no excus­es.

We have to be aware of the fact that we are liv­ing in a world in which fathers rape their own daugh­ters. How can one expect that a stranger can­not harm our lit­tle boys and girls just because he teach­es the Holy Quran? How can one say that he will not have sex­u­al fan­tasies with my child because he is a Mus­lim? If that would have proven we would not have heard about any rape cas­es in Pak­istan.

How­ev­er, appar­ent­ly this is not the case. Par­ents should be aware of the fact that molesta­tion takes place in our coun­try as well as in for­eign coun­tries. Just by look­ing at the numer­ous media sto­ries in Pak­istan report­ing about cas­es in which moles­ters were beat­en by angry mobs for treat­ing chil­dren in an objec­tion­able man­ner, par­ents should be alarmed. Only if adults start to rec­og­nize the dan­gers of molesta­tion, they will be able to teach their kids how to iden­ti­fy poten­tial moles­ters and explain the dam­ages sex­u­al abuse could cause them.

We need to explain our lit­tle ones how they should behave in case some­one pinch­es their arms or legs, sug­gests talk­ing to them alone in their rooms, sits very close­ly to them or touch­es them in their pri­vate parts. Par­ents need to clar­i­fy that in such a case their chil­dren should imme­di­ate­ly get away from that per­son no mat­ter if it is a teacher, a fam­i­ly mem­ber, a friend or a neigh­bor. More­over, chil­dren should be encour­aged to com­mu­ni­cate their expe­ri­ences with some­one they trust and share a close bond with.

More­over, our soci­ety has to lis­ten to chil­dren who report about advances made by any per­son instead of turn­ing the back towards them and blame their imag­i­na­tion or Indi­an tele­vi­sion and movies for it. There­fore, sex edu­ca­tion should be a manda­to­ry sub­ject in schools.

Regard­ing the fact that it is dif­fi­cult to reveal moles­ters in our soci­ety we should at least pre­pare our chil­dren to ward off the dan­ger that they might have to deal with. Numer­ous house­holds have already buried inci­dents of sex­u­al abuse deep with­in their mem­o­ries due to the fear about their hon­or. Let us all not cre­ate anoth­er Haider.