AFTER I had completed a presentation on child sexual abuse, a person from the audience came up to me and said: “When we were young, our maulvi sahib used to give us extra love by hugging and touching us all over, especially when he was happy. Was that abuse?”

Unfortunately, most of the time, children have no clue that they are being abused. Although they feel uncomfortable, they are often unaware that this is unacceptable behaviour. The perpetrator convinces the child that his actions are just a form of warmth and affection.

Child grooming is a process in which a predator searches for and targets a vulnerable child. They first cultivate a trusting relationship with the child by giving the child their time and attention. Additionally, they often lure children with money and gifts. As soon as the child starts to believe the predator’s affection is genuine, the predator takes advantage of the situation and begins to abuse the child. The predator then convinces the child that the abuse was consensual and commands him to keep the secret between themselves. At this point, the child becomes entangled; he or she may feel strong guilt and fear from the predator’s threats, and is deterred from speaking about it. The resultant psychological impact is so significant that it affects the mental and physical health of the child for a long time to come. Social interaction, personal growth and school performance are all severely affected by this.

Studies that have been carried out on the characteristics of child sex offenders show that the predators do not fall into a unifying category; therefore, there is no easy way to identify them. They come from all backgrounds, all social classes, and all educational levels. Paedophiles are people who are attracted to children, but all child sexual offenders are not paedophiles. There are other various psychological, environmental and situational factors that can make a person a child sex offender. Studies conducted on the subject have shown that some predators may have been sexually abused during childhood; others are unable to find mates of the same age and find it easier to unpack their frustration on a child. A history of crime and substance abuse is also sometimes found in perpetrators. The frightening reality is that child abusers are not only adults but juveniles too — especially those belonging to the adolescent age group.

The vast majority of sex abuse occurs at home.

Research has shown that the majority of these cases — around 90 per cent — are perpetrated by someone the child knows. It could be a parent, a grandparent, an uncle, a sibling, or some other relative, neighbour, school or madressah teacher, tutor, house help, shopkeeper, an acquaintance, or a total stranger. It could be anyone around your child.

The internet and especially the unregulated dark web provide abundant opportunities for criminals to exploit children and use child sexual abuse as a money-making business. Unfortunately, there have also been many cases where parents and acquaintances of children, succumbing to poverty and greed, are enticed by criminals to make videos of the children. Moreover, the easy accessibility of pornographic material and objectionable social media content can sometimes become an adjunct to the reason for the crime.

The fact is that the majority of the abuse occurs at home. Unfortunately, it is also a fact that there are adult bystanders who know that the child is being abused but prefer to remain silent. The most common reasons for not speaking up are economic consequences, ‘family honour’, fear and retribution, and not knowing what to do. These children grow up in an environment where there is a constant threat of being abused by someone at home and of not being supported by the people they reveal their trauma to. This trauma on a continuous basis over-activates the fight-and-flight response of the body, and the normal psychological, social, cognitive, and physical development of the child is put on hold. The result may be a child who is destroyed in every way possible.

We teach our children a lot about how to deal with strangers but we do not prepare them for a situation where they are stuck with someone they know very well. When targeted by abuse, if the child is not aware of what a safe or unsafe touch is, they are left confused and unable to comprehend the reality of what happened. Consequently, they are unable to communicate the abuse and prefer to stay quiet.

It is essential to understand that staying quiet or silencing the child does not mean that they will forget about what happened to them. With no adult support, psychological trauma can take over their childhood and haunt them for their entire life. Talk to your children, listen to them and support them.

The writer is a paediatrician at Aga Khan University Hospital.

Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2021