Only Yaous and a handful of students had stayed behind. It was near the end of December last year - a holiday at the madrassa. In an interview with the AP, with his uncle interpreting, Yaous’ tiny body shivered as he told of his ordeal. Too poor to even own a phone, his father went for months without speaking to his son. He had heard of a religious school in Mansehra, several hundred kilometers (miles) south of his village, where other boys from the area had gone. Yaous’ father was a poor laborer who had no education and spoke only the local language of his area, yet he wanted to educate his son. The clerics for the most part had access to and trust with boys, who are less likely to report a sexual assault.Įight-year-old Yaous from Pakistan’s remote northern Kohistan region is one of those boys. The officials said clerics often target young boys who have not yet reached puberty in part because of the restrictive nature of Pakistan’s still mostly conservative society, where male interaction with girls and women is unacceptable. Police officials say they have no idea how many children are abused by religious clerics in Pakistan.
“In our society so many of these men, who say they are religious, are involved in these immoral activities.” “It is the hypocrisy of some of these mullahs, who wear the long beard and take on the cloak of piety only to do these horrible acts behind closed doors, while openly they criticize those who are clean shaven, who are liberal and open minded,” Baloch said. Most often, when a family forgives the cleric the investigation ends because the charges are dropped. Overcome by shame and fear that the stigma of being sexually abused will follow a child into adulthood, families choose instead to drop the charges, he said. Families in Pakistan are often coerced into “forgiving” clerics, said Deputy Police Superintendent Sadiq Baloch, speaking in his office in the country’s northwest, toward the border with Afghanistan.
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