Wednesday 1 April 2009

‘1,838 children abused in 2008’

SAHIL, an NGO against sexual abuse of children, has its published annual report titled ‘Cruel Numbers 2008’ which has recorded 1,838 total incidents of sexual abuse of children in the country.
According to details, Punjab topped in recording 1,254 sexual abuse cases following Sindh with 453 cases, 81 cases in the federal capital, 35 cases in NWFP,10 cases in Balochistan and five cases were reported in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
According to the report, 1,298 girls and 540 boys have fallen victims to sexual abuse with the rate of 5.3 children sexually-abused in the country. The report further added that 220 girls and 126 boys were abducted with an intention of gang-rape. Almost 12 girls and 20 boys were murdered after gang-rapes, the report said while adding that 140 girls and 54 boys were attempted to abuse sexually and 21 girls and 18 boys were murdered after frustrated-attempts to abuse them sexually.
The report further said that 3,968 people were involved in sexual abuse of children in which 2,986 people were close relatives of the children while 650 were strangers, 71 were relatives and 208 women helped sexual abuse of girls in the country.
The report said that 82 sexually-abused children were of the ages between 1-5 years, 281 were of 6-10 years, 451 were of 11-15 years, 204 were of 16-18 years and ages of 820 children were not known.
Sahil Coordinator said the data was collected with the aim to know the reality so that relevant strategies for prevention, intervention and protection could be made in the future. He said the aim of producing this report was to inform the general public and child policy-makers with the incidents of child sexual abuse occurring in Pakistan. He said the child sexual abuse was not an individual or family problem rather it was a serious concern for the whole society. He said the data further revealed that almost three children per day were sexually abused in the country and the boys were as vulnerable as girls to the incident of sexual abuse.

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