2,322 children were abused in the first half of 2018: report

Author: Our Correspondent

SHIKARPUR: A shocking number of 2,322 children sexual abuse (CSA) cases were reported in the first six months of the current year, according to the statistics revealed by SAHIL, a non-governmental organisation which offers free legal and psychological aid to the victims of CSA, in a report entitled “Cruel Numbers”.

Reportedly, SAHIL representatives including Barkat Ali Ansari and Irshad Ghanghro held a press conference in which they asserted that the data collected from daily monitoring of 91 newspapers and cases reported to the NGO directly indicated a horrific 32 percent increase in the CSA cases as compared to the 1,764 cases reported during the same period of the previous year.

The report includes cases reported from the four provinces of Pakistan with nearly 12 children being abused every day.

Most of the children were either abducted or manipulated into a situation by someone known to them.

The recent spike has been reported with 542 abduction, 381 sodomy, 360 rape, 236 missing children, 224 attempted rape, 167 gang sodomy, 112 attempted Sodomy, 92 gang rape, 53 child marriage and 57 rape-cum-murder cases from January till June-2018. The report suggests a comprehensive analysis for contributing to the existing information on CSA in Pakistan.

The data further revealed 1,298 minor girls and 1,024 minor boys were abducted by 1073 acquaintances, 251 strangers and their relatives, neighbours, female abettor, drivers, clerics, policemen and others.

Moreover, the data also indicated 321 children in the age bracket 1-5 years, 526 children between the ages of 6-10 years, 622 children in 11-15 years and 161 between 16-18 years were the most vulnerable to abuse.

Provincial divide statistics show 1515 cases from Punjab, 592 cases from Sindh, 68 cases from Islamabad, 69 cases from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 55 cases from Baluchistan and 21 cases from Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

Out of the total reported cases, 74 per cent were from rural areas and 26 per cent cases were reported in urban areas.

The statistics further show that 2,077 cases were registered with police, 17 were unregistered, 196 cases were not mentioned in newspapers and police refused to register 32 cases.

Published in Daily Times, August 31^st 2018.