PESHAWAR, Dec 31: Pakistan is one of those countries that have failed to curb the rising trend of sexual abuse of children. Society is shy towards the matter and reluctant to take it as an issue.

This was said by Dr Tufail Mohammed in a lecture on “the sexual abuse of child” organized by the Aurat Foundation at the Peshawar Press Club on Monday. Dr Tufail is a child specialist and engaged with an Aurat Foundation project being run to help the child rape victims.

All the nations, he said, had agreed to save the children from this growing menace at two conferences held in Stockholm and Yokohama.

Over 132 countries had pledged to formulate a national policy and a comprehensive plan to do away with the sexual exploitation of children, he said, adding the issue had been taken up with the National Commission for Child Welfare and Development for the implementation of recommendations of the Yokohama conference.

“Less than 10 per cent rape victims dare to inform the police about the incident. Most of the parents consider it a matter of shame and try to conceal it for honour’s sake.

“The powerful abusers try to influence the police and doctors to wash away all traces of their crimes,” he said.

In the year 2000, the doctor said, people had reported 2,309 cases of sexual abuse all over the country and added that 297 of them were killed by abusers. Some of them were incest cases, he pointed out. Giving a break-up, he said that 529 of the victims were female. The crime graph showed an upward trend in rural parts of Sindh and Punjab, where people deemed it fit to remain silent over the tragedy, he added.

“Over 83 per cent abusers are either neighbours, or acquaintance or relatives of the victims. Only 13 per cent are strangers,” he said.

Dr Tufail said that 50 per cent victims were under 15 which he described as the most vulnerable age group. The gang-rape figure was also high during the year under review, he added.

He said that video game centres, snooker clubs, cinema houses and bus terminals were areas where abusers mainly hunted their prey. Pornographic sites on Internet, he added, were attracting youngsters into exploration of and doing experiments with their bodies.

Criticizing the role of media, he said that most of the newspapers gave a bad treatment to victims by making a mockery of their suffering, adding they highlighted the rape incident mainly focusing on victims but ignoring the abusers.

The language used by Urdu newspapers made the victims feel disgraced individuals. The press could bring abusers to the justice by helping the investigators tracking them down, he added.