Sameena Imtiaz
“My childhood trauma still haunts me. Though I am in my late forties, married for nearly 25 years with three grown up kids, this memory is so deeply ingrained in my mind that despite all efforts I cannot erase it”.
This is the story of my friend who experienced repeated sexual abuse as a child. She has been living with this trauma for decades and kept it to herself but has now mustered courage to talk about it. Her objective? She wants to caution parents not to “ always trust” even close relatives when it comes their children. She also wants the parents to listen to what the child is trying to tell you about inappropriate behavior of a family members.
Don’t be dismissive whenever your son or daughters wants to convey something, she says.
Requesting anonymity, she went on to share with me the horrible incident:
“I was only five and my mother was expecting again. Doctors had advised her complete bed rest for a few days so to help her out, my aunt came over and took me to her place for a couple of days. I was very excited that I will have a great time there not knowing that this visit would become a deep scar on my body, mind and soul and will turn into a nightmare for me forever.
With tears in her eyes, she narrated some incidents that took place over a period of time. “The day I arrived was fine. My aunt and her 22 year old son i.e. my cousin took very good care of me. The next day, my aunt had to run some errands outside home and since it was a hot summer day, she decided to leave me home with my cousin for a few hours instructing him to ‘look after me well”, shared my friend.
“After my aunt left, my cousin asked me if I wanted to see his collection of stamps and coins. He took me to his room and after showing me some of his collections, he lay me down in his bed. What happened next has become an agonizing memory that I have to live with for the rest of my life. He sexually assaulted me and as I started to scream, he panicked and let me go. Being very young, I did not understand what had happened but I knew it was something very wrong. When I returned home the next day, I tried telling my mom what had happened, who instantly hushed me up, saying I should never repeat this again since it is bad to talk about such things. To this day, I have never had the courage to say a word about what had happened that day.”
She went on recalling her ordeal as tears rolled down her cheeks. “This cousin of mine visited us a few weeks later and tried abusing me again despite the fact that I was at my own place with my family around but he found an opportunity when my mom and others got busy at work”.
A few years later, when she was in her early teens, another cousin groped her and then touched her in her private areas while she was in the kitchen alone. She got so terrified that she could not even scream. Again, she told her mother about it and the mother once again hushed her up saying “it was an accidental touch and that I should not tell anyone”.
My friend went on and said that there were some other occasions when she was groped, touched inappropriately and harassed by other family members but she could not do much except for avoiding being around those people afterwards.
What happened to my friend decades back, is something that happens globally every day to a number of children inside their own homes, in educational institutions, at friend’s and relatives’ residences and at workplaces.
According to a report by UNICEF most often, abuse occurs at the hands of someone a child knows and trusts. It says that at least 120 million girls under the age of 20 – about 1 in 10 – have been forced to engage in sex or perform other sexual acts, although the actual figure is likely much higher. Roughly 90 per cent of adolescent girls who report forced sex say that their first perpetrator was someone they knew, usually a boyfriend or a husband. But many victims of sexual violence, including millions of boys, never tell anyone.
It is important to understand that while pain and tissue injury from child sexual abuse can completely heal in time, the psychological and emotional consequences can stay through the adulthood, just as in the case of my friend. Psychological consequences, such as depression, most often interfere with quality of life of a child.
The wide range of serious long and short term consequences of sexual abuse, and the need to prevent reactive abuse (abuse of other children by a victim of abuse), is one reason why all children who may have suffered sexual abuse should be referred for psychological assessment and treatment.
Child sexual abuse is a serious issue and there is an urgent need to treat it as an “emergency”. While it is extremely important to educate children and parents on prevention of child sexual abuse, we must also educate and encourage them to report the incident in order to prevent other children in the same setting from being abused by the same abuser.
While strict enforcement of the law and swift punishment to the culprits is automatic, the government agencies and affiliated institutions must also launch programmes on educating the masses to strongly condemn the acts of sexual violence and do away with the culture of silence.
