Sexual violence and the misfortune of our children

Sexual violence against women, unfortunately, has always been a pressing concern for our society. From putting up with indecent proposals and threats by lechers, both online and offline, and enduring sexual abuse in the safety of one's bedroom at the hands of intimate partners, to rapes and gang rapes by people known and unknown—females undergo sexual violence in many forms and in many contexts. And while increasing sexual violence against women has reached sinister levels of permeation throughout society, the most at risk are little girls.

Girls as young as a few months old are subjected to sexual violence—at times by their own family members. For instance, there was the rape case of a nine-month old baby by her own maternal uncle in Chattogram's Fatickchhari upazila last year. When word of what had occurred got out, instead of showing support for the victim—who was too young to even realise what had happened to her, except the sharp pain—the community treated her and her family as outcasts. Instead of seeking justice for the infant girl, the locals decided to shun them.

Then there was the case of a four-year-old girl in Jashore Sadar upazila who had been raped by her own father in March this year. Her mother had been sleeping at that time. It was the victim's painful screams that alerted the family members. And in Singra upazila of Natore, a 16 year old girl was raped and then killed by her own paternal uncle last year. The family had gone to attend a funeral when the uncle decided it was time to act. He later hanged the body of the girl from the ceiling to give it the look of suicide.

Instances of young girls being subjected to social violence by cousins, extended family members, distant relatives, neighbours, and even school and madrasa teachers have become a very common phenomena. There are times when young girls are not just raped but gang raped by heinous monsters, and then killed. Their battered, bruised, lifeless little bodies—often naked—are dumped into bins, bushes, jungles, or at times, even out in the open by the road side, perhaps for predators to further mutilate. The ones who are lucky are left alive to spend the rest of their lives bearing the scars on their souls and bodies. And this happens all over the country: you name it, and the place has a Pandora's Box ready to unleash tales of horror.

Unfortunately, Bangladesh has recently seen a sharp rise in incidents of rape of children. According to a Bangladesh Shishu Adhikar Forum (BSAF) report, 1,005 children were raped in the country in 2019. In 2018, the figure stood at 571. In the first half of 2020, BSAF recorded 365 cases of rape and sexual harassment of children. There were 227 cases of rapes, 60 instances of attempted rapes and 66 incidents of sexual harassment. There were also nine victims of child pornography. According to the same report, five of the rape victims committed suicide. Of course, the actual number would be higher than the figures presented in the report, as many families do not report such incidents due to the fear of social backlash.

Even when families try to report such cases, they are faced with manifold difficulties. Political affiliation of the perpetrators, their muscle power and the corrupt nature of unscrupulous administration and law enforcement personnel, deny victims the justice that is their right. There have been multiple instance when the police refused to take cases or even threatened the victims' families to remain quiet.

And even if the police records the case, chances of timely and exemplary justice being served remain slim. Remember the seven-year-old girl Saima who was, in July last year, lured to a vacant flat by Harun—the relative of one of her neighbours—who raped her and then killed her so that she could not disclose his identity?

A Dhaka court on March 9 finally served the culprit with the death penalty. While I personally still remember the smug look on the face of the perpetrator when he was being taken into custody by the police on the same day—the photo, along with that of the victim, was on the front and back pages of most newspapers the next day—I don't know if the death penalty has been executed. It seems the fate of the culprit, along with the memory of the little girl, has become victim to the chronic amnesia the people of this nation suffer from.

And rape is just one of the many forms of sexual violence our children endure. The Interagency Working Group on Sexual Exploitation of Children, Terminology Guidelines for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, ECPAT International and ECPAT Luxembourg, Rachathewi, Bangkok, suggests that "Sexual violence against children encompasses both sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children and can be used as an umbrella term to refer jointly to these phenomena, both with regard to acts of commission and omission and associated to physical and psychological violence."

Going by this definition, how many of our children, especially girls, fall victim to sexual violence every day, and at the hands of how many perpetrators, we know not. And while the government needs to tighten the noose around sexual offenders—"Enforcing laws that protect children send a strong message to society that violence, exploitation and overall child neglect are unacceptable", says the Unicef website—, there is need for mass awareness about this social ill.

Families, caregivers, guardians, neighbours, schools, the society and the government, must work together to raise awareness about the need to protect the rights of our girls. Unless we take holistic and multidimensional awareness measures—from the grassroots to the upper echelons of society—to end sexual violence against children, they will keep being subjected to pain and torture.

At the directive of the Prime Minister, the Law Ministry is proposing the death penalty as the highest punishment for rape, instead of the current highest sentence of life term imprisonment. This will be part of an amendment to the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act 2000 that will be tabled at the next Cabinet meeting.

But even if this proposed amendment is enshrined into law, how effective it is going to be in preventing this heinous crime remains a question. The slow pace of resolving rape cases will be a major challenge for the government to overcome in addressing the problem of sexual violence against children. At least 3,136 children had been raped between 2015 and 2019; a meagre 164 of the cases had been disposed of till December last year.

And to eliminate this problem at its roots, we—as a society, as a nation—have to work towards creating an environment where a person learns to understand and respect another person's consent and rights.

The national media and the communities, especially schools, have a key role to play in this. But an initiative like this will not be possible without the strong political will of the government and concerned authorities: in fact, it is they who will have to take the lead in this. To end violence against children, we all need to come forward and eliminate the political, administrative and social elements that enable such practices.

As the world yesterday observed International Day of the Girl Child with the theme: "My voice, our equal future", to "reimagine a better world inspired by adolescent girls—energised and recognised, counted and invested in", I think of all the little girls who could not reach adolescence, all those little souls whose dreams were smothered by perpetrators of sexual violence.

As I come across so many news of violence against children every day, I am haunted by this one question: how many of our young girls will have to endure pain, torture and even death, before the nation is jolted out of its inertia and is forced to finally act?

Tasneem Tayeb is a columnist for The Daily Star. Her Twitter handle is: @TayebTasneem