Zubair Afridi

The culture of pedophilia in Pakistan is one of the most deplorable tragedies which was spreading across the country rapidly

Children makeup 44 percent of the population of Pakistan and yet they fell prey to all kinds of danger and sexual abuse.

From street children to kids playing in the streets, and from school’s students to students studying in seminaries, children were falling prey to predators across the country every day. It has become shockingly common practice.

It is estimated that 90 percent of street children have been victims of sexual abuse at some point in their life in Pakistan.

Sahil, an NGO that works for children’s rights in Pakistan, revealed in its report that at least 3,852 children including 2,068 girls and 1,784 boys were sexually abused last year across the country. Sahil’s report has been compiled after monitoring 88 national and regional newspapers daily which mean these are only reported cases.

On another hand, it is difficult to accurately estimate how rampant sexual abuse is in the thousands of schools and seminaries spread across the country because most of the cases are never reported as victims and their families are too scared to come forward.

Recently, a leaked video was also gone viral on social media platforms wherein a cleric could be seen sexually assaulting a minor boy inside a mosque.

This video shows us that these child molesters were not the ones you might fear because they were highly placed people in the society like this mosque.

The viral video has again exposed a practice of child abuse at some religious schools which is the dark side of Pakistani madrassah.

Similarly, some days back Peshawar police arrested a suspect who allegedly raped three minor girls and killed two of them. One the minor was sexually assaulted in Railway Colony area of city on July 2, another in Gulberg on July 10 and third on July 17 in Kali Bari area of the cantt.

The pedophilia has a number of far-reaching detrimental consequences; majority   of our children bears the deep psychological scars of sexual abuse.

Despite all the efforts including establishment of committees, commissions and legislation by government to protect children from sexual predators, child molestation was on on the rise and has jumped up by 93 per cent last year.

We must be very conscious regarding our children because the predators prey on children who are neglected. So we should pay attention to our children in a bid to avoid the molestation of our children.

Hits: 172