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Breaking the silence
By Nadeem Iqbal
March 2, 2000
Islamabad - "I do not look upon myself as a savior or an outstanding person. I
feel I do what I can do, for a society and country that have given me so much
by making me a privileged person," says Dr Ambreen Ahmad, child psychiatrist.
Ahmad has done much to break the oppressive silence around rampant child sexual
abuse in Pakistan. Her work in "Rozan" (light) which she helped set up as part
of "Angan" (courtyard), a non-governmental organization, has won her wide
acclaim. She is helping train some 600 new recruits in the police to
investigate and handle victims of child abuse.
"We are working actively on child sexual abuse and focusing on improving the
emotional health of the children or those children/adults who were sexually
abused," the mild-mannered doctor explains.
Abused adults and children can access the counseling services over the phone,
through letters or in face-to-face meetings as they desire since Pakistani
society is not yet willing to discuss child molestation and incest openly.
Ahmad says this refusal to acknowledge what is a heinous crime is only making
it worse. "Some studies suggest that in Pakistan one out of every three girls
and one out of every four boys have fallen victim to this criminal activity."
She shudders at the thought of what happens with streetchildren, mainly boys
who leave home because of poverty. Pakistan was rocked late last year by the
arrest of an alleged serial killer, Javed Iqbal of Lahore, who claimed to have
raped and murdered 100 children.
Parents must teach children to be able to discern an older person's embrace
from sexual advances, she says with feeling. It is a myth that children are
abused only by strangers or that only an attractive child could be a victim. In
two of the cases for which her help was sought, the sexual abuse continued for
12 years, and it involved more than one person, she says. Families will not own
up to incest which is a common problem, and its victims are mostly girls, she
points out.
Angan receives dozens of pleas for help in letters mainly from adults who were
sexually violated in childhood. A study conducted of a random 100 letters
revealed 66 percent were survivors, 24 percent were still being abused and 10
percent were abusers, some of whom identified themselves as women.
Child abuse is not a poverty problem, Ahmad points out. It is a social illness.
She says in the homes of the very rich, children are often abused by domestic
help who are entrusted with their upbringing.
Children should be "taught which parts of the body are special, not dirty, and
that they have the right not to allow people to touch these parts," she
counsels. Parents would do well to watch out for signs of sexual activity
including "infections, itching, bleeding, urinary tract infections, bruises,
cuts in the genital area or delinquent behavior," she never tires of repeating.
Unfortunately most Pakistani parents shy away from discussing sex with their
children, she says. "Forget child abuse, they are reluctant to talk of
reproductive health. They either do not have the information or think it dirty
and shameful."
"When parents don't tell them about these natural things, it complicates the
situation. Children pick up the information from friends, and are burdened with
misinformation," she says.
One 40-year-old woman patient whose identity the doctor rightly does not
reveal, suffered years of sexual abuse as a child but she made it a point to
tell her "three daughters what life is like and how children can sometimes be
sexually abused". In a letter to the doctor, the woman had confided that the
man who abused her was her father's servant. "He was respected by everybody and
considered pious. The abuse started when I was 12. Why did I put up with it? He
threatened me with a knife, saying he would kill my father."
It was only after her father's death many years later, that she was able to
talk to her mother, who was shocked and did not want to hear the entire story.
Her childhood experience of sex caused her to refuse her husband for three
months after marriage. "Thank God he was a kind person and thought I was too
young for such kind of relationship," the woman wrote. According to Ahmad, few
women are as lucky to have supportive husbands. Marital rape is rarely talked
about.
What worries her is the "silence in society, the impression that children will
not speak up, and the absence of words in Urdu to express sexual abuse".
Her hectic work schedule has been at the expense of her children, the doctor
rues. Ahmad and her doctor husband left well-paid jobs in the United States to
return home at the end of the 1980s (when Pakistan got out of long years of
military rule) to give their children a sense of their roots, she says.
"I often feel guilty (for neglecting her son and daughter). But at the same
time I feel I've given them a role model of a confident woman who can stand up
for what she believes in, which is very important."
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