Exploiting tragedy

By now, most of us have heard or read about the horrific Kasur tragedy, about how hundreds of children were sexually abused and blackmailed. Everywhere you look, pictures and videos of the victims and their families keep popping up. And everyone is going on and on about how terrible the whole incident is. No doubt it is. But what is actually being done about it?

Please understand that I’m not trying to brush this tragedy aside or to sweep it under the rug. What happened in Kasur was incredibly horrible. The people who abused those children deserve to be punished. The officials who helped this tragedy last as long as it did also need to be punished. But that is not all.

Every time the Kasur tragedy is discussed on television, you either see people weeping or screaming. But how is this helping the victims and the families? Is this hysterical behaviour actually guaranteeing that children will be any safer or better protected from this kind of vile exploitation?

Let’s take a different crime. A woman gets raped. The incident gets noticed by politicians and the ‘higher-ups’. These people start visiting the victim and her family, of course, followed by throngs of journalists. This improves the profile and image of everyone involved except the poor victim. And let’s be very honest: all of these things are done for the purpose of point-scoring and higher ratings — whether in the media or in the political arena.

What happens then is that there are two crimes: first the girl gets assaulted by a criminal; and then she gets assaulted by the nation, at large. Is it any surprise that many of these cases end with either the girl or one of her family members committing suicide out of the humiliation of being pranced around like a prize horse.

The point I’m trying to raise is that we need to highlight the issue, not the individuals. There is no need to publish the pictures of a rape victim or of a child who has been abused. There is no need to interview their parents. Those children and their parents deserve some privacy, not 15 minutes of fame.

More importantly, those children and their parents don’t need our pity. They need our help.

Unfortunately, for the victims of Kasur, their wounds are not just physical. Had they been injured in an explosion or a terrorist attack, the government would have flown in doctors to treat their wounds and citizens would have lined up to donate blood. If they were hungry, people would have supplied food. If they were homeless, people would have given tents and mattresses. But how do you help children whose trust in humanity has been destroyed?

The short answer is that you treat them with respect and you make sure they get help from experts. Just like doctors can help people with physical wounds, psychologists can help people with scarred psyches. This is not something new or untested. It is something basic that other countries have understood.

Many years ago, soldiers in Western countries would get help only for their physical problems, but not for psychological ones. If you were shot, you would get patched up. But if you couldn’t function because of what is now termed post-traumatic stress disorder, then you were supposed to be a real He-man and suck it up. Of course, what happened was that many soldiers would either crack under the stress and either commit terrible atrocities or kill themselves. That is why even institutions like the US Army have realised that mental health is just as important as physical health.

Sticking a microphone in someone’s face and asking them how they felt about getting blackmailed over their child’s rape is not helpful. Yes, it will be good if the monsters who committed these crimes are punished. But that will not be enough.

We have already failed the children of Kasur by not protecting them. If we don’t help them heal properly, we will be failing them all over again.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 17^th,  2015.

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