By Rashika Fazali
Image Credit: The Hill
One event can change your life forever. The assassination of a leader can change the course of history. The birth of a child is the start of a new life for parents. An invention could make our life easier, and a viral post could make your day. Sometimes it takes one incident to change the way you behave and think forever. What happens if something bad occurs to you repeatedly? That can change your life immensely in the wrong way.
Life changed forever
Ameera* recalled one particular incident in her life starting at around 6 to 7 years old when she lived abroad and how it transformed her into someone she was not proud of. Her story starts the day her uncle summoned her to the bathroom while her parents were out, and like any obedient child, she went. After all, that’s her mother’s brother, her uncle, married with two kids, one younger than Ameera, and she trusted him with all her heart. Little did she know that when he called her, he had other intentions. She remembered being naked and her uncle masturbating while seated on the toilet seat and touching Ameera everywhere from her non-existent breasts to her vagina. She remembers him ejaculating on his hands and then proceeded to show her. He even went to the extent of getting her to touch his semen.
From time to time, he would call for her when her parents were not at home. “I started craving it because it was attention for me. At that point, I was the special kid that my uncle always picked me because he managed to convince me that this was something normal. This is something that uncles and their nieces do,” said Ameera continuing, “And my parents also never taught me the whole you know – even if they say don’t talk to strangers, your uncle is not your stranger, right?” Her uncle was living with her at that time, and she learned at a very young age, just like we all do, that our uncles are trusted people we can rely on. “No one was there to tell me that it was wrong that someone touched you in places like that because no one even knew this was happening to me in the first place,” said Ameera. It was their little secret.
Ameera believes that he did what he did because of this “village mentality” he has grown up with – the act of being conservative, pious, and reserved, but in reality, and behind closed doors quite the opposite. Unfortunately, Ameera was not the only one he was molesting. He also did the same thing to her younger sister, Deena*.
This despicable act moved from uncle to nephew (Ameera’s cousin) when he taught a nephew of his to molest Ameera, teaching him that it was a good way for him to practice for when he had children later on. She remembered one incident clearly when her cousin called her to a room, got her to lie flat on the bed, and proceeded to take off her clothes. He then got on top of her, put his penis in between her thighs, and emulated the process of sexual intercourse. He mentioned that their uncle told him to do this act to have children. This carried on until she was around 9 or 10 years old, that is, until he got caught by his mother and Ameera’s mother.
On that day, Ameera had been sleeping when she felt hands down her vagina. She woke up screaming, and that alerted her mother and her cousin’s mother to storm into the room. Ameera recalled their mothers hitting her cousin, who was around 18 years old at that point.
When I asked Ameera if her mother ever found out or knew about what her uncle did to her, she said that at that time, she didn’t think her mum knew about the molestation or at least never indicated that she knew about it. But she can guarantee that her mum knows about it now because Ameera told her a year ago, and her reply was not what she had hoped. Her mum said, “Nothing bad really happened.” In other words, Ameera clarified that what she meant was that she did not get pregnant or was not penetrated. Her mum even asked her why she couldn’t let it go and was holding on to it. “I wouldn’t say I’m holding on to it. I’ve definitely moved past it, but it tends to haunt you at the weirdest moments in your life. It’s something that’s never going to go away,” said Ameera.
Wrecking more lives in one family
What is heart-breaking in this story is that a similar incident also happened to Ameera’s youngest sister. In a family of 3 girls, can you imagine child molestation happening to all three girls at different ages of their life? Her youngest sister, Samira*, was sexually abused by a neighbor during a funeral procession in her house. Samira had been playing with the neighbor’s kids, and she ran into the house to find one of the kids. The neighbor then cornered her, pulled her pants down, and performed oral sex or cunnilingus. By this time, Ameera was a teenager, and she knew that what happened to her and Deena was wrong. So, when Samira finally told them after Ameera repeatedly asked her due to her sister’s morbid demeanor, it took them back to what happened to them. “It felt more traumatizing when we found out this was done to our younger sister as opposed to how traumatizing it was when we realized it happened to us because we were able to react. We knew what was going on and what he did to her was wrong,” mentioned Ameera. They got so angry and immediately told their mum about the incident.
Are parents to blame partially?
If this happened to your daughter, what would you honestly do? I would create havoc. But in Ameera’s mums’ case, she confronted their neighbor, and that was it. She didn’t report it. She didn’t mention it to anyone. Not even her children’s father. According to Ameera, she just let it slide under the carpet because she didn’t want to make a scene at the funeral as what happened was embarrassing. Even after that incident, her mother continued to keep ties with that family as if nothing happened to her child. They were even invited to Deena’s wedding, and when the children confronted their mother, she said that she couldn’t disinvite them as people would ask questions and his wife was her childhood best friend, so how could she not. Sadly, Ameera’s mother is one of those individuals who cared more about what the community and society thought of them than her children’s happiness or well-being. “According to my mum, it’s normal because, from the village mentality that she comes, this happens in a village, and when this happens in a village, it’s almost never the guy’s fault. It’s the girl’s fault,” stated Ameera continuing, “For them because they come from a very reserved or what they call a reserved community, for them that whole idea of what society has of you and your family is very important. So especially because this happened within the family, you have to protect your reputation.”
We blame the system or the law for not arresting and persecuting molesters or rapists, but how can we blame them when these incidents are not reported? How can the system take any action if they don’t even know about it? The issue isn’t systemic barriers but more grassroots issues of maternal and paternal ignorance and accountability. We need to truly understand why we bring children into this world – if not to care, love, and protect them, why are they here? Let’s hope it’s not for the sake of society, face, or for the symbol of what constitutes a successful marriage.
Parents must do better to listen and help their children. Sometimes bad things happen, no matter how protective we are, but we can end this cycle of childhood sexual abuse by reporting it. How many other children did those preparators molest? But unfortunately, most people are worried about their reputation and what others would think of them if anyone found out that their child was molested. Sometimes keeping that as a secret is better than the shame associated, or so they believe.
Child molestation and sexual abuse in Sri Lanka
What happened to Ameera and her sisters was sickening. Unfortunately, it has happened and is happening to thousands of girls in Sri Lanka. The Women’s Wellbeing Survey 2019 conducted by the Department of Census and Statistics revealed that out of 2264 women and girls, 42 women had experienced childhood sexual abuse before the age of 15; 58.1% of them were between the ages of 5 and 9 years old, 23% were between the ages of 10 and 14 years and 14.3% below the age of 5. For 97.4% of women, the perpetrators were males outside of the family, and 21.3% were males within the family. In a country with 21.8 million people, 52% of them are females. We can roughly estimate that given a sample of 2264 women and girls, out of which 42 women experienced childhood sexual abuse that at least 150,000 women and girls may have been molested before the age of 15. That’s just a rough estimate. It could be much higher than that, especially if we consider the numerous cases like Ameera’s that do not get reported.
Statistical data provided by the National Child Protection Authority revealed that out of 8126 child complaints received in 2020, sexual harassment accounts to 518 cases, grave sexual abuse to 373, rape to 256, trafficking to 82, soliciting a child to 7 and incest to 2: all under the banner of child molestation and childhood sexual abuse accounting to 1,238 cases that is 15% of the cases. One might say that’s not a lot, but that’s 15% of girls who may end up with long-term effects of sexual abuse developing emotional, psychosocial, psychiatric, and physical disorders. We don’t talk enough about what these incidents do to children in the long run. They could succumb to complete withdrawal from society or go in the other direction of wanting attention through sexual means or even become molesters themselves. This sounds so extreme, but this is what happens because we don’t address these issues.
These are just not numbers. They are people with feelings subjected to atrocities mainly because they are female, and thanks to society’s ideals of what a female should be – quiet, accepting, and allowing.
What is our responsibility?
Parents have a massive responsibility in teaching children about their bodies and protecting them from sexual abuse at the hands of their family or outside the family. We cannot protect our children in every other sense and forego when leaving our child with the family. Pedophiles and predators exist even within families. According to a UN report, children are most likely to be sexually abused by someone they know; it can be an adult, an older child, a boyfriend, a relative, neighbor, or even a family friend, with the most common location being either the child’s or the preparator’s home.
Sexual childhood abuse doesn’t limit itself to region, race, or religion. It occurs everywhere, even in communities like the Muslim community, who adamantly believe that they don’t happen in their community since such things are prohibited. It is also considered taboo, so such things are not spoken in their community. Still, they should be, so that young girls like Ameera can have happy childhoods, not childhoods marred by sexual abuse and with adults who refused to do anything for the sake of community shame and their reputation.
Ameera learned what pornography and sex were at a young age. Sex, for her, was about lust and nothing to do with love. Sexual gratification was linked to her need for attention. She was treated as a special girl by her uncle even though what she experienced was traumatic, and she continued to want attention in every way possible, whether it’s about a dress or going out. Her way of dealing with a traumatic experience was to get everything she wanted at whatever expense. A rebel is what she became. However, after years of learning and unlearning all by herself, she understood what was right and wrong and how to deal with them. She is one of the lucky girls who knew to get out of a bad situation all by herself. But not everyone is like Ameera.
So, what can we do? We educate parents so that they can educate their children. We focus our energy on minimizing and avoiding these scenarios from playing out this way. We ask parents to care more for their children’s well-being than what society would think of them. We report cases of sexual abuse. We put those at fault in jail. We have to come together as a society and battle these predators.
*names changed to protect identities