Are you aware that you could be related to an abuser, or worse, living under a roof with one?
Last year, 10 cases of child sexual abuse occurred every day -- that’s a total of 3,378 reported cases in Pakistan. Of those reported, 1,943 abusers were acquaintances while 829 were strangers, states Cruel Numbers 2015, a study compiled by NGO Sahil on child abuse cases in the country.
These are uncomfortably large numbers to digest.
“Every night before I would go to bed, my uncle's son would tell me that if he touches me, I will sleep better and I won't have any bad dreams. I was 7 years old when it all started.”
As an alarmingly high number of children fell victim to sexual abuse last year -- a 7 percent rise from 2014 -- it's high time minors are educated about protecting themselves from this atrocious crime.
Two undergraduate students from SZABIST, Maham Idrees and Mehr Iqbal, have planned to do just that. The young women decided to take a stand against child sexual abuse and created an independent Facebook page in September 2015 called Untangled Knots. Here, they invited people to share their stories of abuse.
“We made the page as part of a school project. The assignment required us to cater to a social problem in Pakistan using technology and the web. We got inspired by Talk, Dammit and started our own page for sexual abuse victims," explained Maham.
The purpose of this open platform is to encourage people to share their stories and seek professional help, if desired. Initially, it was just Maham and Mehr's friends who shared their stories on the page. Soon, others became comfortable with the idea of opening up online and more stories started trickling in.
An open forum
As Untangled Knots gained traction, stories started pouring in from friends and anonymous.
"The good part was, the people affected were talking about it; they were addressing the issue and there was relatability. Many were commenting on other people's stories of having faced the same ordeal," said Maham.
One such instance involved a married male teacher at Foundation Public School in Karachi. A member anonymously posted her experience of being abused by the teacher while going to his house for tuitions, instantly other girls reached out to her also claiming to have been harassed by the same teacher.
"He put his hand on my skirt and kept pinching my thighs till I kept my other leg down so he could freely touch me down there."
Untangled Knots thus served as an outlet for survivors who did not have the necessary access to psychological help.
"In Pakistan, people don't go to psychologists because it's a taboo," pointed out Maham.
"It's also the money factor and inhibitions. People are confused about where they should go, whether they should go or not, whether their problem is big enough or not," she added.
For this reason, the two students thought to keep the page active and running, even after completing the requirement of their project.