Unless it’s your own daughter, mother or sister, no one even bats an eye over it
KARACHI: News of a three-year-old girl allegedly being raped by her 15-year-old neighbour in Faisalabad is a shocking reminder of the gruesome reality of the society we live in. The kind where we can’t leave a minor unattended outside our homes and where a teenager will resort to sexual assault to satisfy his own desires.
The story that was published on August 24th mentions that the girl’s body was severely damaged which could lead to complications in the future. The three-year-old who doesn’t even understand what happened to her let alone be able to term it rape will not only live with the trauma mentally but also physically all her life.
Whether the boy — who is most likely to face a short jail term owing to him being treated as a juvenile — will be caught or not is a lesser problem in the face of the effects this incident would have caused on the girl and the many more, who would now be unable to play outside their homes alone and live their childhood, and instead be imprisoned in the four walls of their houses out of fear.
Considering the patriarchal milieu we live that perpetuates the rape culture, it isn’t hard to comprehend what would have led to a 15-year-old committing such a brutal crime. But the real question is how can we undo this? Or rather, are we even willing to? Sexual assault isn’t new. It happens in our country, in our cities and in our own homes in the form of marital rape. Seventy years down the line we still haven’t only found a way to combat it but we also refrain from having an open discourse about it. And that seems sketchy, almost deliberate.
Unless it’s your own daughter, mother or sister, no one even bats an eye over it. A female body needs to be someone’s possession to be eligible for discussion. And unless that is changed, there will be more minors who will be assaulted by minors in ‘the land of the pure’.
Rima Khalid
Published in The Express Tribune, August 27th, 2017.
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