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We live in a country where talking about social issues is considered a sin. Issues like honor killing, forced marriages, rape, acid attacks etc. are very much neglected being labeled as sensitive issues and hence no one talks much about them. Amongst these, one of the issues prevalent and increasing in our society is “Child Abuse” and raising a voice against is considered immoral.
Child abuse in its literal meaning is referred as any sort of mishandling of a child be it physical, sexual, or psychological. People molesting children can be anyone, parents, family members, caretakers, home servants or anyone around. We live in a society where if a child is abused, it is considered a shame of the family. We point fingers towards the victim & the person doing such horrible act gets no notice. We have become so afraid and egoistic, that we are okay with getting our children abused and ruin their rest of the lives but not raise our voice against it.
Our negligence and silence are what multiplies the after effects that a victim has to face and on the same hand gives encouragement to the abusers to continue what they are doing. Abusing a child may sound like an incident that happened and the victim should get fine with time but it’s not just an incident, it’s a lifelong trauma that haunts the child forever and destroys his/her confidence, their self-esteem and their future as a whole.
According to the numbers that are compiled and published in 2016 by Sahil (an NGO that works against child sexual abuse), 11 children are abused every day in Pakistan which is a horrifying number itself. The cases have increased 10% from 2015. Moreover, there are 4139 registered cases. However, God knows how many would be the unregistered ones. Be it female child or male, both are equally under threat. Data reveals that 2410 girls and 1729 boys are victims of sexual exploitation.
Our children are the future of our country. They are the oner who will lead the country and are the asset of our society. We really need to generate more awareness regarding the issue of child abuse for which not just the parents, but our society as a whole is responsible. There should be awareness sessions in schools and the parents should be trained to talk to their kids about such issues.
Children should be taught to not let anyone touch them in a wrong way and parents should create a friendly enough environment for their child to share if anything wrong happens. They should monitor their child’s activities and should also keep a close eye on the caretakers that deal with the children. There should be various campaigns, ads and awareness sessions by different NGO’s.
Moreover, for the victims, proper counseling should be provided and they should be taught how to become survivors. On the government level, there should be strict laws against the peoples who commit such odious acts.
Staying quiet about child abuse is no solution to this problem, instead, proper actions for the individual, societal and national level can for sure help to reduce the horrifyingly increasing numbers and protect our children against such abuse.
