The many Sahar Batools of Pakistan

Child sexual abuse is attributed to shame and like a Pandora’s box, it is not yet ready to be opened by Pakistan

No day for Sahar Batool’s family will ever be the same again following the outrageous incident, which took place on the morning of October 28.

The seven-year-old Batool went missing from in front of her house on Zarghoon Road in Quetta and was later found by her father near the garbage dump not far from their home.

Torture marks on a daughter’s face and body are the last thing any father wants to see. Sakhi, a gardener, saw red marks on his daughter’s face and neck when he found her dumped in a garbage bin the same day she went missing.

Batool’s case is just one out of thousands of incidents, which contribute to the escalating child abuse and sexual violence statistics in Pakistan.

This brings me to question why millions of children are falling prey to this menace. The streets of Pakistan are home to over 1.5 million children. More dreadful is the fact that of these children, 90 per cent are sexually abused on their first night of being on the street.

Charities working for the protection of these children have said that children on the streets are often beaten, tortured, subjected to sexual abuse and even killed.

Evidently, Pakistan’s streets are no place for children, especially when the police — who should be there for the protection of people — is itself the perpetrator in these horrendous offences.

You’d think a child would be safe at home. Perhaps not. A blind eye is often turned on sexual abuse and violence within the home, which is not uncommon in Pakistan. Many children suffer the trauma of incest, sexual violence, harassment, torture and rape for years by brothers, father, uncles and other male relatives in the family.

For some, such violence does not exist as a blind eye is turned on the suffering faced by these children. A taboo subject, the state has also been completely negligent in its response to this deepening social crisis.

It is visible that there is a lack of interest by the government in this regard as no evidence points to a decline in the number of child sexual abuse cases across the nation.

These children are left vulnerable and are offered little or no protection by the state. Like Sahar Batool’s family, several others are facing numerous impediments in their pursuit of justice. It saddens me to conclude that child sexual abuse is a topic which is attributed to shame and like a Pandora’s box, it is not yet ready to be opened by Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 10^th, 2014.