The harsh reality

While the case of seven-year-old Zainab, raped and murdered in Kasur early this year and several other cases from other parts of the country made headlines – most recently, the case of Rabia in Karachi – and galvanised the public, the fact is that child sexual abuse is an almost daily occurrence that goes virtually unnoticed in our society. According to the 2017 report on child sexual abuse launched by the NGO Sahil and titled ‘Cruel Numbers 2017’, 3,445 child abuse cases were reported during the year. This brings us to an average of nine cases per day. Of course, there are many other cases which are never reported and which we never hear about. Sixty percent of the victims were girls and 40 percent boys. Abduction was the most common crime committed against children, with 58 percent of girls and 42 percent of boys having been kidnapped and murdered after sexual abuse. Children in the age group of six to 15 years were most vulnerable.

Despite laws which bar them, 143 cases of child marriage were also reported in 2017, with 89 percent of the victims girls. The dependency of the report on patterns of reporting also means that we may not be able to know of many of the cases of abuse taking place in places like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. It is however obvious that children face huge risks in our society with sodomy and rape both common. The reports suggest a nine percent increase in cases of abuse compared to 2016, though again this may be due to more reporting of such incidents both by the victims and by the media. It is quite obvious we need to implement laws which already exist and combine these with an awareness campaign to check child abuse. The kind of monitoring of child molesters that is in place in other nations needs to be enforced at home. The task is not an easy one. It is also true that children who must spend part of their lives on the streets, either while they commute to school and work or because of other activities, are most at risk. The minority able to enjoy the safety of cars, enclosed schools and gated homes are better protected. But all our children are at risk, and despite the intense debate which took place following the hundreds of child abuse cases reported in Kasur in 2015 and the high-profile rape and murder of little Zainab, nothing has changed for the vast majority of children and their families in the country.