Teach your kids, siblings to stay safe and stand up for themselves
KARACHI: This is a letter to all those who have gone through sexual abuse at some point in their lives. First, you are not alone. Many among us are helpless to fight back for the wrongdoing that happened to them. Although abuse and harassment has been here the whole time, but since unfortunate incidents like the Zainab case and the US gymnastics sex abuse scandal took place, all of this has started coming to the surface.
We often mistakenly think that how can a religious cleric harass or abuse? Or perhaps, how can that a cousin attack his own cousin sister? Well dear, they do on occasion. But why does the victim have to suffer for all this? Well because we are told to keep it under the rug and not talk about it. As a result, the victim has to be his or her own warrior. The focus of our upbringing is mainly steered to teaching us to be the best wives, chefs, mothers and what not? But what goes missing is the guidance on how to deal with situations where one feels uncomfortable. We should be more alert about the environment we live in, where our kids, siblings, wives, are going, with whom, and what should they do if they ever face an abuser.
Teach your kids, siblings to stay safe, stand up for themselves, check on who are they going out with, buy a Taser gun for members who go out alone, join a self-defence class and most important of all, trust your loved ones if something like this happens and face it, fight it because if you don’t, it will consume you. And if something like this has happened to someone you know, don’t leave them isolated, talk to them, take them for proper help or counselling because if you don’t, you may never know and they may take the guilt and the shame upon themselves.
Insiyah Hussain
Published in The Express Tribune, February 16th, 2018.
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