Viqarunnisa incident: Child sexual abuse needs desperate attention

Afsan Chowdhury
Published : 10 July 2011, 05:20 PM
Updated : 10 July 2011, 05:20 PM

A girl of class X was sexually abused by a Viqarunnisa Noon School teacher. Parimal Joydhar has been taken in remand under the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act after the incident was reported by the father of the victim.

"Parimal sexually abused the student several times," the police told the media.

This is a story which never stops happening. Within the day today, another girl somewhere in Bangladesh will also be sexually assaulted or humiliated but little will be done. This incidence, coming as it does in the wake of Rumana Manzur matter, it is a terrifying reminder that our children particularly the girl children are never safe.

Bangladeshi people live partly in denial and the rest in ignorance about their capacity for sexual violence. Would we have noticed the horror of Rumana Manzur incident if there was no horrible disfigurement of the victim? What begins in their childhood chases women all throughout their life.

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Two other teachers of the same school — Barun Chandra Barman and Abdul Kalam Azad have also been suspended for their indecent behaviour with students. But the school, one of the most renowned ones in the country, was not the pro-active initiator in this and acted only after students and parents demonstrated in the campus for several days.

The victim's father in the complaint said that Parimal, who runs a coaching centre at his Badda residence, first molested his daughter on May 28. Media reports an unconfirmed source saying that on May 28, Parimal took a nude photograph of the girl and threatened her with posting the snapshot on the Internet if she refused to meet him again. He again abused her on June 17.

"How come a culprit like Parimal escaped whereas the students submitted a written allegation against him in the last week of June?" questioned a parent. The guardians alleged the authorities initially tried to cover up the incident as Parimal was once involved with a student organisation backed by the Awami League. The allegation shows how the passion of the event can lead to many unexpected doors.

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In our research work on sexual abuse of children and subsequent work on sex abuse prevention with the organisation "Breaking the Silence", we found that in most cases the abuser is socially protected. In urban areas, this maybe slightly less but in the rural areas, this is overwhelming. It is said that, a child is abused twice, first by the perpetrator, and then by their own families and society through the practice of silence by refusing to complain against the abuser.

The great weapon of the abuser is silence of the victim who doesn't speak out in fear of reprisal by the powerful and the privileged. In our over hundred documentations of child sex abuse, we found the same narrative. Sexual abuse of children and our attitude towards it often determines what happens to the abused and the abuser after the terrible incident is over.

In urban areas, where relatives play a bigger role in sexual abuse they often never get reported or believed.

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There are several types of victims by age and other factors. Most victims are girls because they are more physically vulnerable but boys are also sexually abused. Sexual abuse is more complex than we can think but it is rarely outside a social context. The poor are more vulnerable, those in the villages more so.

In Dhaka, children of the middle-class are more protected and parents better educated but new avenues of abuse also open up as was in the Viqarunnisa School case. The main issue everywhere is access to children by the abuser. The abuser is rarely a stranger; he/s is someone who is trusted by the family and the child. Sexual abuse is also a terrifying breaking up of trust whose mental impact is greater than the actual pain of physical abuse.

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It was a bit of a shock to our naïve souls when we did the report on sexual abuse of children to find that relatives, tutors, teachers and neighbours were the topmost offenders. Of course, that's because they have access to the children and are trusted by the child and the family. The most difficult part to accept is that there is no safe person and so the best protection is caution – from everyone.

The only safe person is the mother and then the father. The best way of protection is trust between the children and the parents. In many cases, the parents are not ready to believe their children particularly when it comes to relatives as abusers.

Few children will make up this horror. If a child speaks, please listen.

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The class X girl from Viqarunnisa is from a very vulnerable segment of the vulnerable. She is not a pre-sexual child but not yet a woman. She is sexually attractive to others but is not often aware of other people's sexual motivations. She may not even read the danger signs of the perpetrators and be able to protect herself. In one case study, a girl was 14 and was walking home but was waylaid on the way by local mastaans. The parents thought of her as a child not realising she had reached sexual maturity in some eyes.

In another case, a girl would be alone at home when the parents went to work and was abused by the trusted family servant. In the third case, the visiting mama baby-sitting the young girl molested the child.

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Another vulnerability at that age is the 'physical' attraction of romance. Many girls are in love with love and therefore become very susceptible to declarations of romance by a potential abuser.

Many abusers who are often serial offenders but never caught will use romantic language as a tested way to create access to abuse to gain trust. A young girl thinking she is with her 'beloved' will trust the abuser who will then abuse leaving the girl devastated.

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For girls, social vulnerability is also very high.  Most girls are often told to keep quiet because of the prestige of the family and her future marriage prospects. In one grotesque instance, the parents married one girl off to her abuser because he was such a good 'groom.'

Unless this all prevalent marriage pressure, either to marry or stay married doesn't ease off, girls will always remain terribly vulnerable. I congratulate the father for having gone to the police.

The other part is stigma on girls where it is always assumed that the girl is 'guilty'. Just as in the case of Rumana, where accusations of her having an affair were made, many accuse girls of 'seducing' the male often by the perpetrator's family saying the girl is trying to hook a good 'groom.' I have familiarity with many such cases and know it is always the excuse of the perpetrator or his family.

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I once ran a test in a workshop asking the participants how many had experienced one form of sexual abuse or other. Nine out of the ten said yes. I was one of those who said yes.

Sexual abuse is not only larger than we think but we can think it to be possible. It is not 50 percent or even 60 percent but way higher, maybe 90 percent which many of us would not dare to contemplate. It shakes the foundations of our social belief structure. And the pain of abuse is a permanent burden for the victim all their life.

Every year and after every such incident, sadly enough the only constant factor has been our collective ability to forget and think of something else quite soon. We think it will not happen to us but probably it has already happened. It will happen to our children next and then to their children.

By keeping silent, somehow we have ended up as a friend of the perpetrator.

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Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist and researcher.