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It has been another horrific week in Pakistan after two cases of the sexual abuse and murder of children shook the nation.

On Tuesday, police in Sargodha arrested four people after a seven-year-old girl was found dead after having gone to a neighbourhood shop. Police arrested four suspects in the case with the prime suspect later being killed during an attempted escape.

On Wednesday, a three-year-old in Karachi was found murdered outside her home. The police surgeon said it was “one of the most horrific” cases she had seen in her career.

The little girl had gone outside to play at noon and her parents began to search for her when she didn’t return around four and a half hours later. Her grandfather found her body stuffed into a bag and left outside their house.

In the aftermath, many of the country’s celebrities had the same questions: how many more innocent lives have to be lost before we ensure our kids are safe?

Adnan Siddiqui, asking God to have mercy on the country, said animals shield their young from harm out of a natural instinct; how then had we humans failed to do the same for our children? He called for predators who targeted children to be given “the harshest punishment allowed by law”.

Ushna Shah called out the lack of meaningful action in Pakistani society in response to such incidents. She said Pakistanis will “blame victims” and “be outraged online”, but will not take steps amend laws to “make punishments for assault more brutal” or even “hold boys accountable for their actions” early in life.

“We will never take women’s rights as human rights. We will continue to blame victims.”

Ayesha Omar struck a similar tone on the need for societal change while talking about the gruesome murder in Karachi.

“The environment all over Pakistan is barbaric. I’m shaken, so, so, so angry and feeling hopeless about this country,” she lamented. “and that’s what they want, for women to always be fearful and hopeless.”

She said the only way out was for the ment of this country to “speak up, step up [and] hold other men accountable”.

Aiman Khan called for “justice, accountability and a society where everyone feels safe”. She said all victims were somebody’s children and no family deserved to go through such trauma.

Iqra Aziz was distraught, saying nobody could say when this cruelty would stop because everyone knew it can be committed with impunity. She said we had convinced ourselves that we can’t send our kids outside our homes, but we couldn’t bring the predators we so feared to justice.

We can only hope that the outrage over these horrific incidents leads to meaningful change in the way we protect our children but as many stars noted, the monsters who abuse these children are not always punished.