Daily Times

Islamabad is a city where highly educated people sell poverty, human rights, democracy, terrorism, abuse of children and plight of women etc. to donors in lavish halls of five- and three-star hotels. They smell the dollars and become experts onthe subject that gives them a chance to grab these dollars.

The calamity is compounded when they contribute in writing manuals to train victims how to protect themselves against abuse only to learn how to foil these protection methods. Abusers themselves, they find readymade availability of victims in the shape of trainees.

I remember about over a decade ago in 2004 I interviewed head of the department of anthropology of one of Pakistan’s top most universities and he, wearing dyed black beards, told me that their lust is refreshed daily so they do not grow tired of abusing girls.

The professor at least spoke truth. Recently, I came across a trainer who, being a senior reporter in an Urdu language newspaper, some years back married a trainee reporter who was freshly passed out of the department of mass communication of a public university.

The senior reporter, twice the age of his young wife, would subject the victim to different forms of abuse in addition to running affairs with other trainees. The marriage landed into divorce as its logical end and when the victim’s father came to collect his daughter and her belongings, the senior reporter used his influence to call the police on the spot overawing the victims into submitting to whatever he says.

As if as a reward, he was then given an authority position in other media houses and recently another trainee reporter is his wife waiting for the same fact as the previous victim. This is just one single case while the media industry is rife with such cases. In many cases, marriages of seniors with trainee reporters go well and in many they are not.

The question is that it is not illegal to marry trainees; hence, the solution is not in the law. But then there has to be a code of conduct for dealing with such issues. Protocols need to be drawn to define working relationship of those in authority positions with the trainees and newcomers in the industry.

Utmost care needs to be taken of the fact that no one is given the opportunity to manipulate his powers to exploit anyone, not least the newcomers in media so that this industry is also conducive for female journalists. A track of the people, found involved in abuse of women, needs to be kept on the record so that they are denied the chances of doing more damage.

If you put such a tainted person in a commanding position or as a trainer, it is worse than putting a cat to watch milk. Law is reactionary. Had there been a proactive approach adopted at the time of making laws, the ratio of such cases of abuse in media or any industry for that matter would surely have declined.