Punjab:Child Abuse

Abandoned

Organised child abuse in south Punjab

Report highlights plight of Pakistani children

Report finds nearly 70,000 cases of violence against children in 2014

Homeless children at centre of sex abuse case

Scarred children

Child Protection Bill rotting in parliament

Abandoned
IRFAN ASLAM

Photo by White Star

In Lahore’s Liberty Market, nine-year-old Mujahid and eight-year-old Ali sell boiled eggs from evening until midnight. The sons of a menial labourer, they attend a private school during the day and earn a pittance at night, simply so they can take Rs200 home with them. Faizan, 10, sells children’s books on The Mall, where many families do their shopping from. He left school a year back, to help his elder brother earn a livelihood for his family. In the humdrum of Lahore’s markets, it is easy to lose the whereabouts of these children.
Were it 1999, they could have easily fallen prey to Lahore’s version of Jack the Ripper, a man named Javed Iqbal, who sodomised and murdered innumerable children, leaving behind no trace of their bodies as they were strangulated, cut into pieces and then dissolved in acid drums. His horrendous criminal activities continued until he was arrested the same year; most of his victims were runaway boys or street children, aged six to 16.
“There are three categories of street children; street-living children, street-working children and street children living with families,” explains Nazir Ahmed Ghazi of Grass Root Organisation for Human Development (GODH), which works on the rehabilitation of street children. “These children are vulnerable to many kinds of abuse, including drug and sex abuse — if not by anybody else, then certainly by other street children elder to them.”

Unless rehabilitated, street children’s lives will remain at risk

Indeed, Iqbal’s accomplices included 17-year-old Sajid, 15-year-old Nadeem and 13-year-old Sabir — boys who had turned into abusers after being at the receiving end of abuse. Iqbal was convicted in 2001, and awarded a death sentence along with Sajid. After a few days of being convicted, Iqbal and Sajid were found dead in their cells inside Kot Lakhpat jail. Jail authorities termed the deaths as suicide, but Iqbal’s lawyers and media reports suggested it was murder.

Photo by White StarIqbal’s case should have shaken the conscience of the nation and the powers that be, but despite 13 years having elapsed since the incident, the on-ground situation regarding street children remains abysmal. According to some reports, there are about 1.5million children on the streets of the country, mostly in urban centres.

"But poverty here is so crippling that even parents sometimes approach us to ask if they can leave their children with the Bureau. Sometimes, providing for the entire family becomes almost impossible for these parents.

“In Lahore, the main centres of street-living children are Data Darbar, the railway station, its surrounding markets as well as Thokar Niaz Baig,” explains Ghazi. “A great number of street children are found in posh locality markets too, such as Defence. In fact, children found from Defence are often kept in bondage at the houses of the affluent.”
Despite the high numbers of street children in Lahore and how intractable the situation may seem, incremental efforts to redress the situation have also taken root. Experts and activists ascribe this success to the Child Protection Welfare Bureau (CPWB), an “autonomous body” which was established under the Punjab Destitute and Neglected Children's Amendment Act-2007. The CPWB has its centres in seven cities of Punjab, and provides a number of facilities, including lodging, to children once it adopts them.
Per the law, children are defined as “destitute” or “neglected” if they have “a parent or guardian who is unfit or [too] incapacitated to exercise control over the child.” The Bureau receives calls and complaints through its helpline, 1121. After rescuing any runaway or missing child, the CPWB takes them under its protection and asks a court to provide “clearance”. With these formalities out of the way, a child’s rehabilitation starts in earnest.

"Some children have been living with the Bureau since the past seven or even more years. They are going to turn 18 soon, but there is no policy on how to integrate them into society after that point. There is a need to make a clear-cut policy in this regard.

“In Lahore, we have more than 350 kids at a time; sometimes the figure can go beyond that,” says Rizwan Ahmed, the child protection officer at CPWB-Lahore. “The bureau has taken 27,000 children under its care since it started working in 2005 and facilitated many others. Our issue is more about what to do with these children after they turn into adults.”

Photo by White StarIndeed, 17-year-old Mobeen Ali* is a young man on the cusp of adulthood. He has been with the Bureau for the last five years. “My father went missing, and I came here after the death of my mother.I have a grandmother and an uncle living in the city, but I would not want to live with them,” he says.
Ali is pursuing an FSc degree at a private college; he spends his mornings on campus and goes to an academy for further classes in the evening. He aspires to be an engineer but he does not know where he would go after he turns 18.
“Some children have been living with the Bureau since the past seven or even more years,” narrates Ahmed. “They are going to turn 18 soon, but there is no policy on how to integrate them into society after that point. There is a need to make a clear-cut policy in this regard.”
As it is, the weight of pending requests is already very high at the CPWB. “We get children mostly from police stations, hospitals and the trader’s community whenever they find someone in need of help. But poverty here is so crippling that even parents sometimes approach us to ask if they can leave their children with the Bureau. Sometimes, providing for the entire family becomes almost impossible for these parents.”
In the absence of strict laws for the protection of children, there is always a chance of authority being misused. In 2012, two cases were registered by the then CPWB- Faisalabad district officer against 11 employees of the Bureau for mistreating children and sexually abusing them.
The inquiries conducted by police and commissioner’s office termed the cases as motivated by personal vendetta but there are still an ongoing inquiry into that episode by the provincial home department. The CPWB’s internal inquiry had found some truth in allegations made from both sides.
There is a proposal to turn the CPWB, currently working under the Punjab Home Department, into a subservient part of the Social Welfare Department, but Rizwan Ahmed argues such a step would reduce the Bureau’s effectiveness. He says that to control the number of street children, the government should start a fund to help families keep children with them.
“There should be some fund like Benazir Income Support Fund to help the poor and destitute families raise children and stop them considering the children a burden or using them to increase income,” Ahmed suggests.
Meanwhile, Ghazi argues says that there should be legislation on compulsory schooling of children and punitive action for the parents who don’t send children to schools. “All the out-of-school children naturally turn into street children or become a part of bonded labour, living in conditions where they become vulnerable,” he says.
But there is consensus among all on one fact: saving these children from more Jawed Iqbals needs a lot more from society than is currently seen.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, December 14th, 2014

Organised child abuse in south Punjab

  DERA GHAZI KHAN, Feb 26: Eight years ago, one night when Yasir was wandering on a road as he had nowhere to go, a man offered him shelter. Yasir, then eight-year-old, was homeless and his parents had died. Having no other option, he accepted the offer. The man took him to a house where he was given shelter and food. In return, he had to satisfy the lust of homosexuals who thronged the place every night. The place called Munda Khana or child prostitutes’ den housed such 10 to 15 child sex workers who had to sleep with their customers. The master of the den namely Dushman would charge Rs50 from each customer and give Rs25 to the child as wages.
Times went by and every night left its ghastly traces on Yasir and his colleagues. Four years ago, Yasir was run over by a rickshaw when he was returning to Munda Khana after serving his customers and lost one of his legs. Consequently, he was abandoned by Dushman. After a week, another Munda Khana adopted Yasir. Here sodomites made him a heroin addict. Five months ago, he was thrown out of Munda Khana as he had lost his charm to his clients.
“Every child sex worker has to retire from the occupation after attaining puberty,” says Yasir, now 16-year-old who begs and sleeps on roads.
“I can recognise many people who used to be my clients and now they just pass by without noticing my plight,” said Yasir.
Four months ago, said Yasir, five people gang-raped him and threw him at a deserted place.
“I was crying with pain when Sheikh Waheed heard my cries. He took me to a doctor,” he said.
Waheed, a social worker, said that even though he had got a case registered against the alleged rapists, nothing had happened. Yasir is suffering from cancer and a lot of other diseases. Such fate is awaiting many others who are now serving at brothels in the city.
Presently, over 50 child sex houses are functioning in the city where nearly 500 children are at service. These children are either street boys or orphans and abandoned by their families. Things have much changed now and the masters of sex dens charge Rs100 per customer and a half of the money is given to the child.
Child abuse at a commercial level is not only done in DG Khan but in other nearby towns like Taunsa and Kotaddu.
In Taunsa, it was considered to be a status symbol to accompany a boy, said Waheed. Some hotels in Multan provide child sex workers on demand.
Multan District Police Officer Munir Chishti said sodomy was very rare in his district. A spokesman for the DG Khan DPO said that the DPO had asked all station house officers to cope with the abuse. He said that special warrants were needed to raid child sex houses and police could face problems if it raided such places on its own. He said police had never received any complaint regarding functioning of such brothels in the city.
Multan District Nazim Faisal Mukhtar said that the government had paid attention to the problem and had set up the Labour Department, which held meetings regularly.
“We have asked the people to come out and work against child abuse but the people shy away and seldom take part in such activities. They don’t even pursue such cases wherein their own children are exploited,” he said.
He said poverty should be eradicated by raising education level and producing a skilled lot.
DG Khan District Nazim Sardar Maqsood Leghari called child sex an abominable practice in the area and said he had set up community boards to help such victims.
Multan District Coordination Officer Mukhtar Babar admitted that child abuse had reached an alarming level in southern districts, adding that the Punjab government was also paying attention to the problem.
He said that the chief minister’s adviser, Faiza Asghar, had ordered the setting up of a shelter house for children in Multan. The centre will start functioning in March.
DG Khan DCO Iram Bukhari said that she was aware of the problem and a plan had been hatched to rehabilitate such children. She said social taboos and lack of awareness among the public about child rights had left damaging effects on society. She said that the government would set up a centre for slow learners.
Dera Social Welfare District Officer Ghulam Abbas Dasti said a children’s home was being set up and another centre sheltering children, Nigehbaan, would set up at a cost of Rs198 million.
Curtsey:DAWN.COM, — PUBLISHED FEB 27, 2007

Report highlights plight of Pakistani children
HASAN MANSOOR

File PhotoKARACHI: An annual report released by a non-governmental organisation here on Saturday showed dismal conditions of Pakistani children suffering in every aspect — ranging from education and health to sexual assaults they suffer, particularly girls.

File Photo

The report titled “The State of Pakistan’s Children-2013” prepared by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) was formally launched at a hotel.
In his keynote address at the launch, Javed Jabbar, former federal minister and prominent media analyst, said that Pakistan was the first country that convened a world leaders’ summit 24 years ago for children in which leaders of 74 countries showed up at the venue in the United Nations. Similarly, he added that Pakistan’s first women’s bank was established in 1989 — 24 years ahead of a similar bank established in India.

File Photo

He praised the Sindh Assembly for passing a law against child marriage and said the plight of children, women and other marginalised communities could be alleviated through debate and legislation by lawmakers.

File Photos

Kashif Bajeer and Zahid Thebo of the SPARC, Iqbal Detho of the Save the Children and Mustafa Baloch of the Strengthening Participatory Organisation spoke on various aspects of the report.
The report said that in 2013, some 2,033 cases of abuse of young children (1,365 boys and 668 girls) were reported. They included 1,115 kidnappings along with 294 murder cases, 102 cases of boys’ sexual assault while 97 children were sold into slavery.
It, however, shared another independently conducted report, called Sahil’s Cruel Numbers Report 2013, which said that 3,002 children (2,017 girls and 985 boys) were victims of sexual abuse or harassment.
It said 42.5pc of child sex abuse cases were recorded in urban areas while 57.5pc of the cases were reported from rural areas. Girl children were most affected with 71pc of cases affecting females.
Punjab had the highest incidence of child sexual abuse at a staggering 68pc, followed by Sindh (19pc), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (5pc) and Balochistan (3pc). Islamabad reported 3pc of the cases, however, there was little or no data available from Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) and Gilgit Baltistan (GB).
The most vulnerable age group was 16-18 year olds, which accounted for 22pc of the total victims. A total of 16pc of them were between the ages of 6-10.

File Photo

It referred to the Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF) as saying that there were 142 cases of acid attacks in 2013. Out of the victims, almost 20pc were below the age of 18. Some 47 cases were prosecuted in 2013, of which there were seven successful convictions.
The report said some nine per cent of Pakistani child-brides gave births to children between the ages of 15-19 putting them at high risk of birth complications as well as endangering their health.
It referred to the Sindh Assembly’s recently passed Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Bill 2014 which rules that legal age for marriage to be 18 years (for both boys and girls) with a prison sentence of minimum two years and a fine of Rs50,000 for violators.
It referred to a study by the Rutgers World Population Foundation on 5,000 women that found that 77pc of marriages were made through traditional exchanges. A report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) listed that 913 young girls and women were killed in the name of honour in 2012, out of which 99 were girl children.
At least 91 children were killed and 137 maimed in 2012 due to bombings and suicide attacks in public areas. Around 900 girl schools had been affected by militancy, denying 120,000 girls access to education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata.
Curtsey:DAWN.COM, MAY 25, 2014 

Report finds nearly 70,000 cases of violence against children in 2014
By Hasan Mansoor

Curtsey:DAWN.COM, 4/29/2015

Homeless children at centre of sex abuse case • 40 youngsters

shifted to Lahore • FIR against Protection Bureau staff

FAISALABAD, Oct 3: As many as 40 homeless children living under the care of the Child Protection Bureau (CPB) were shifted to Lahore following registration of an FIR carrying serious charges of child abuse against some junior staffers at a local CPB facility, Dawn learnt on Wednesday.
According to sources, bureau’s local head Umer Daraz Bhatti got the FIR registered against nine CPB employees, alleging they had been subjecting these children to various sorts of abuse. The accused denied the charge and counter-alleged that it was an act of revenge by the complainants.
Mr Bhatti stated in the FIR registered with Madina Town police on Oct 1 that the children told him that attendants Tahir, Nasrullah, Shehbaz, Iftikhar, Shahid , cooks Ashraf and Shahbaz, laundryman Javed and security guard Riast had been subjecting them to rape, physical torture, harassment and forced labour.
Besides, Mr Bhatti quoted the children as telling him the accused had been showing them objectionable movies and pictures and had threatened them with dire consequences in case they revealed these cruel acts to anyone.
All the accused were booked under sections 294, 374, 377, 378 and 511 of the Pakistan Penal Code. However, no arrests had been made till the filing of this report on Wednesday evening.
The sources said, after being informed of the situation, CPB Punjab Director General Amina Imam paid a visit to the local CPB facility some three days ago and after a personal meeting with the abused children ordered their shifting to Lahore.
Denying the charges, the accused CPB workers claimed they were being victimised by Mr Bhatti because they had been raising objections to his misbehaviour and pointing out his corruption.
They said they were ready to face any impartial inquiry and demanded the Punjab government should conduct a probe into bureau’s affairs in the light of complaints they had been filing against Mr Bhatti from time to time.
They alleged the children gave statements against them under duress and were chained and locked in a room before their meeting with Ms Imam was arranged. One of the accused said she had taken 40 out of 51 children living in the bureau along with her to Lahore without getting the mandatory permission for the court.
He said also mandatory was a preliminary departmental inquiry before registration of a criminal case against a government employee. However, no inquiry was conducted, and this, according to him, was against the law.
Another man nominated in the FIR said the bureau employees had sent applications to the Punjab Home Department and the CPB provincial head against Mr Bhatti which needed to be probed. He maintained the entire junior staff of the bureau was on a token-strike for the last two months and their salaries were stopped by the provincial head without any justification.
About allegations of rape and sexual harassment, he said all the accused were ready for any kind of medical examination, including DNA test to prove their innocence.
The CPB head told Dawn children were shifted to Lahore for their safety.
He said the CPB director general did not need court’s permission to transfer children to any centre across Punjab and insisted the allegations against him were baseless.
Curtsey:DAWN.COM,  OCT 04, 2012 

Scarred children

It seems that children in rural areas are more prone to being subjected to violence as compared to the urban areas.—AFP/File
Even the most casual of observers would conclude that Pakistan is hard on its young. This is borne out by the report released on Tuesday by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child.
The State of Pakistan’s Children (2014) finds that some 70,000 incidents of violence against children were reported across the country last year, an appalling figure given that the majority of such episodes would go unreported and only those involving egregious force would make it to the police books or the media.
Quoting from an independent report, Sparc said that 3,508 cases of sexual assault against children — girls, boys and in a few cases, even babies and toddlers — were reported last year, up by 17pc from 2013.
It seems that children in rural areas are more prone to being subjected to violence as compared to the urban areas, and that of all the provinces, Punjab has the highest number of child abuse cases.
Added to this is the profoundly grim statistic of some 25 million children aged between five and nine years being out of school, giving Pakistan the dubious distinction of coming in second in the world’s out-of-school rankings.
The list prepared by Sparc of excesses against the country’s young is a long and shameful one. It is possible here to argue for more legislation, stricter enforcement and greater vigilance, all of which are without doubt needed.
But there is an equally great need to address a societal mindset that sees vulnerability, whether due to age or any other factor, as reason enough to exploit.
There needs to be greater understanding of the fact that children scarred by trauma and fear will grow into damaged adults and, as a collective generation, they may well find themselves even less able to push back against this country’s numerous travails than those in charge today.
Creating a viable future has to begin with protecting our children, and Pakistan seems to be failing abysmally on this count.
Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2015

Child Protection Bill rotting in parliament

THIS is with reference to the news about child sexual abuse (Oct 31).
The news highlighted an incident of a 15-year-old boy who has been sexually abused by three of his classmates in the hostel. The media declared it a first registered case in the capital.
Child abuse is a global phenomenon and occurs in different parts of the world. The developed nations adopted strict measures to protect their children from such incidents but in Pakistan the rate is increasing day by day due to absence of proper legislation.
In February 2009 a cleric sexually abused his student in the school and sprayed acid on his face. According to Pakistan criminal records, two policemen allegedly sexually abused a 14-year-old boy in Peshawar on Sept 29, 2009. In July 21, 2009 a seven-year-old boy was sexually abused and killed in Gilgit Baltistan.
According to a national newspaper report (April 3), 237 cases of sexual abuse of male child were recorded and registered in different police stations of southern Punjab.
Child sexual abuse cases are often hidden for various reasons. Lawyers and campaigners against sexual abuse of children say that it is not uncommon in Pakistan and that male child prostitution is more common than any other form of commercial sexual exploitation in Pakistan.
An NGO in its report narrates that 15,000 to 20,000 estimated child sex workers present in Lahore live in areas such as bus stations and railway stations, and the increasing number also threatens the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country.
Azad Foundation's annual report says that out of 12,000 to 14,000 street children in Karachi half of them fall victim to commercial sexual exploitation — a majority of them being male children between seven to 11 years old.
According to the federal ministry of social welfare and special education's report, published on Dec 17, 2008, approximately 35,000 children are estimated to be living on the street in four major cities of Pakistan without any family links and vulnerable to all types of torture and abuse.
Looking at the seriousness and rising issue, child rights protection agencies and NGOs are concerned that the government is not addressing the issue sincerely and the absence of legislation is giving birth to such humiliating incidents.
It is also the prime responsibility of parliamentarians to consider this issue in the parliament and pass the 'Child Protection Bill', tabled over two years ago, as soon as possible.
SAJJAD AHMED BARI
Gilgit Baltistan,
Curtsey:DAWN.COM,NOV 09, 2010 

Of street children
BY XARI JALIL

Aslam* is a 12-year-old boy, who is found often on a street’s corner on main Garden Town road. He is dressed in dirty, stained clothes, sometimes laughing gleefully at jokes his older friends crack, sometimes smoking. But now, Aslam* has found something much more fulfilling. He has taken to sniffing glue. “I don’t do it that often,” he says. “But its fun to do it with friends.”
Meanwhile in Shalimar area, Arif* has been trying to fit into others who live on sidewalks. He has just run away from home and does not have any place to go. Despite his desperate attempts to fit in, he has faced much bullying from his other counterparts. Yet Arif denies that he is disturbed even an iota by covering it up. “They dare not touch me,” he says, with the simple ferocity only a young boy of 10 can bring to his face. “I can dodge even the police!”
Aslam* and Arif* are mere symbols of what is a much deeper issue haunting the streets of Lahore. In fact, like all other major cities and urban centers in the country, Lahore too hardly stands out regarding this problem. According to statistics, an estimated 1.2 million children live on the streets of Pakistan’s major cities and urban centers. Many manage to brave through ending up in hardening themselves, several others become the victim of drug abuse, sexual abuse and even murder.
Many a times, they are arrested for involvement in criminal activities. But all of them undoubtedly face violence, threat, abuse, manipulation, exploitation and bullying by others on the roads. Perhaps the most unfortunate part is that many of these children are not born to parents who are homeless themselves. In fact they opt to become ‘homeless’ after they run away from home, escaping abusive parents or guardians.
In countering so many kinds of threats and violent behaviour, these children are most obviously adversely affected. Dr Ejaz Warraich, consultant Psychiatrist of Jinnah Hospital, says that he has encountered many such children and that in general they can be divided into three categories. One type is those who come from lower socio-economic backgrounds. They stay on the streets playing and later go back home. These children, he says, have no real aims in life.
The other two types of children who roam around on streets are either runaways or homeless, or maybe belong to families who are reckless about them. These, he says, are used in beggary and become part of that sphere or else become serious victims of drug and sexual abuse among many other things. “One can imagine what input these children can give to the society when they grow up,” says Dr Warraich.
“They have no insight, no moral or ethical values developed in them, and of course no education. They learn everything in incorrect ways and do not have general knowledge about things. Therefore they are hardly expected to work either once they grow up.” In short, these children grow up to be associated with criminal activities, and in the dark irony of life, victims of opportunism become opportunists themselves.
“They can be used by adults very easily because they are vulnerable, impressionable, and weak,” says Dr Warraich. “Some are trafficked and used for begging purposes. They used to be sold abroad as camel jockeys until the government began to regulate visas of certain age groups and this slowed down a bit. They were even used as child militants in suicide bombings.”
Dr Warraich says that this was a phenomenon of urbanization and the concept of street children was limited to cities not rural areas where children lived in a supportive and collective system. Urbanised and even more dangerous areas of semi-urbanization result in a highly challenging, highly demanding life, which resulted in several inner conflicts especially guilt and revenge. “One cannot think of this happening in welfare countries,” he says. “But in Pakistan, let’s not even begin to discuss of the Social Welfare Department.”
Unfortunately poverty is the key cause that leads to such conditions of children. In many cases parents themselves sell the children away for money, and there is a concept of giving them away on rent too. For this, the children are either rented out for sexual services, or for other laborious and dangerous work.
Meanwhile as the plight of these children continues, when it comes to protecting them, contrary to the tall claims by the federal ministries and even the provincial departments, the government has so far introduced no proper legislation to safeguard street children’s rights. The number of street children is increasing with every passing day and they are susceptible to all kinds of violence and abuse.
SPARC, an NGO working on child issue, Executive Director Arshad Mahmood told Pakistan Today that the number of street children had increased manifold after the floods that hit most parts of Pakistan last year. “Only Punjab and KPK have a legal system to address street children’s issue but unfortunately, this sensitive matter is badly neglected in Balochistan, Sindh and Islamabad,” he said.
He even went on to blame the police as being the leading enemies of street children as rampant violations against the rights of these children were committed with impunity. “The police have no fear of reprisal from the law and the society,” said Arshad. According to a recent global report on administrative detention of children in Pakistan, despite Pakistani laws requiring that children should be brought to a magistrate within twenty-four hours of their arrest, many children were kept in police lockups for considerably longer periods, often for two weeks, and in one case, for three months.
The report claimed that the arrest and detention of children living and working on the streets by police officers on the charges of vagrancy, indecent behavior or prostitution, being a public nuisance, incorrigible or exposed to moral danger is reported to occur in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Meanwhile the government has not bothered to conduct any surveys on this data. No revised figures regarding street children are available and according to a survey conducted by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), at least 10 percent of these children have no knowledge of their families.
Pakistan Today: JUNE 2, 2011 

Child abuse cases on the rise in Pakistan: Report

WASEEM SHAMSI

SUKKUR Incidents of child abuse were on constant rise in Pakistan and 992 children including 304 boys and 688 girls were subjected to sexual abuse from January 2008 to June 2008 and according to the figure 5 children were facing sexual abuse every day in the country.
Khadim Hussain Dahot coordinator referral unit SAHIL disclosed this, while addressing a press conference in Sukkur press club, on Wednesday evening. Legal advisor of SAHIL advocate Hadi Bux Bhat was also present on the occasion.
Presenting the report of SAHIL about sex abuse of children in Pakistan during January to June 2008, he said that, reported cases of child abuse about girl victims were more as compared to those of boys. He said that, during the period 79 boys and 339 girls were abducted, and 24 boys and 77 girls were subjected to sexual abuse. Besides this, 32 boys were killed during sexual assault, while 107 boys and 147 girls were raped out of which, 11 girls and 11 boys were killed after sexual abuse. 69 boys and 108 girls were subjected to gang rape, out of which, 11 boys and 6 girls were killed after gang rape, he added.
Dahot said that, according to the figures, 2114 persons, involved in sexual abuse belonged to different sections of the society, out of which, 1431 were known to the children, 337 were strangers, while the others included, neighbors, close relatives, landlords, professional women, police, teachers, friends, chowkidars, guard, shopkeepers, traders, drivers and brick kiln owners.
According to him, the children, who were subjected to sexual abuse were of different age groups, which include, 22 boys and 22 girls aged between one to 5 years, 77 boys and 80 girls aged between 6 to 10 years, 94 boys and 155 girls aged between 11 to 15 years and 19 boys and 80 girls aged between 16 to 18 years.
According to the report of SAHIL, more cases of child abuse had taken place in Punjab and Sindh provinces and during the period under review, cases of child abuse including, 147 boys and 518 girls were reported in Punjab, and in Sindh 130 cases of boys and 128 cases of girls were reported. In federal capital Islamabad, 11 cases of boys and 27 cases of girls were reported, besides, 9 cases of boys and 10 cases of girls were reported in NWFP and in Balochistan 6 cases of boys and one case of girl were reported, while in Azad Kashmir one case of boy and 4 cases of girls were reported. Report said that, 69% cases of child abuse were reported in the rural areas and 31% were reported in urban areas.
Report further said that, place of sexual abuse incidents regarding 353 cases was not known, 129 cases took place at the homes of victims, in absence of their parents and 296 cases took place at the house or other place of the culprits, while many cases took place in deserted streets, forest, markets, under construction houses, hospitals, madrassas, factories, mosques, farms, guest houses, jail and others.
Curtsey:DAWN.COM, NOV 06, 2008