“I used to think that I was going to hell for what had happened,” Fatima said. “I would cry silently in my bed at night and pray to God that I would be forgiven.”
Fatima was six years old. The crime she thought she was going to hell for? Being sexually abused by a relative. For years, she never told anyone, haunted by the fear that her abuser had instilled in her. He had threatened her younger sister if Fatima told someone what was happening. He would continually repeat that what she was going through was her fault, as though somehow she had provoked his behavior. He absolved himself of guilt and placed the burden of it on her.
So for two years, she suffered in silence. The abuse finally ended when her abuser moved to a different town, and eight-year-old Fatima was left to heal from the nightmare she had endured. There was no way she could cope. Overwhelmed by guilt, ashamed of what her parents, immigrants from Pakistan, would think of her if they knew the truth, and unable to find words to describe the horror she had lived through, she continued to suffer in silence.
Unfortunately, Fatima’s story is not unique. Physical and sexual abuse against women is rampant. Globally, one in three women is beaten or sexually abused (UN Commission on the Status of Women, 2000). Children are especially vulnerable to sexual abuse partly because perpetrators are often members of the family, family friends, or neighbors, who are trusted with access to children. In the US, sexual violence often occurs when the woman is still a child: 54% of women who were raped were under eighteen (www.pcar.org).
If these statistics corresponded to those of a deadly new disease, it would be called an epidemic. Action would be taken by the government to protect those who were at risk of contracting the disease, and the community would be educated about prevention and treatment, which is what happened when the SARS virus emerged in the global community.
Yet cohesive action against the epidemic of sexual abuse and rape is rare, especially in the Pakistani community. The cultural stigma associated with sexual abuse and rape is such a daunting barrier that few are willing to broach this taboo subject. Some people even go so far as to deny that sexual abuse occurs in Pakistani society. While there is little data about the rate of sexual abuse in the Pakistani-American community, women like Fatima are evidence that it exists. Those people who avoid facing this issue are tacitly protecting the perpetrators. Silence on this topic negates the experiences that sexual abuse survivors have gone through. Ignoring their stories reinforces the message that Fatima’s abuser told her: that somehow, this abuse is the survivor’s fault.
Yet as a society we must do more than just acknowledge that sexual abuse occurs: we must question the underlying cultural norms that enable perpetrators to inflict horrible suffering on the most innocent members of our society. When men have a more powerful position in society than women, who are often undereducated and financially dependent on their fathers or husbands, they can abuse that position with very little repercussions. In many cases, cultural expectations are different for Pakistani men versus women, and society judges the genders on vastly different scales. In many areas of the US, the Pakistani-American community, while leaving behind the motherland, has not left behind its patriarchal culture.
For example, Pakistani women who have immigrated with their husbands to the US are often unable to communicate well in English and thus have no access to the outside world. They are completely dependent on their husbands for all their basic needs, even more so than they were in Pakistan, where at least they could fluently communicate with society. Cut off from traditional support systems, such as their family or friends, they are powerless to stop any form of violence—whether it be physical or sexual—from occurring in their homes. After all, even if they wanted to tell someone about the fact that one of their children was being abused, there would be nobody to tell. Their powerlessness and lack of autonomy endangers them and their families.
Sexual abuse and rape have very little to do with desire or lust, but everything to do with controlling another human being and establishing a power dynamic that gives the perpetrator unquestionable superiority over his victim, who is often younger and weaker than he is. In a society where men have cultural advantages over women, this power dynamic already exists and can be further exploited. It is our responsibility to ensure that women and children, often the most vulnerable groups in any population, are safeguarded from harm. It is our responsibility to educate ourselves about the epidemic of sexual abuse, help those who have survived through it, and ensure that it is eradicated.
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