Is child rape a new normal for Bangladesh?

Child rape no longer makes headlines in Bangladesh. It has become a regular incident that has lost the impact to startle us anymore. A child rape incident is just another forgettable piece in the unfathomable abyss of depressing news.

So, the statistics that each day about three children were raped in the country in 2019 did not create much of a ripple. The statistics revealed by the child rights advocacy group Bangladesh Shishu Adhikar Forum (BSAF) detailed a more harrowing scenario regarding the most gruesome crime in human imagination. It said 1,005 child rapes took place in the country last year which is an increase by 76 per cent from the preceding year. Among the victims, 133 were aged between one to six years.

Even gloomier, verdicts were delivered in only 164 of the 3,136 cases filed in four years (2015-2019). Let’s forget all these statistics. Perhaps anyone with an access to the newspaper can say there’s not a single day without a child rape here. Already this January, several cases have been reported from Dhaka, Khulna, Jashore, and Habiganj and other places. Even on New Year’s Day, child rapes took place and one of the incidents was gang rape.

It shows how dangerous Bangladesh has become for a child.

And the alarming gap between the incidents and verdicts deserves attention. What takes it so long for a verdict and why is there such a low rate of justice here? Isn’t it obvious that any particular crime turns rampant if it goes unpunished? It turns even more unbridled while the victim is the weakest.

The real statistics of child rape is hardly available in a conservative and secretive society like ours. It’s a society which for generations has taken for granted that men are inherently bad and are programmed to rape. Men are raised and condoned as ‘boys will be boys’. The families of the victims hardly seek legal procedure in fear of social stigma. We often come to know of the incidents when the victim dies, or his/her condition is critical. So it is not unnatural that such incidents are under-reported.

So, even the current shocking figures are not enough to reveal the true picture.

When it comes to trial, it’s often found that the child’s guardians cannot go on with the lengthy legal battle. Out-of-court settlements are common with complainants not eventually showing up at the court. The accused often gets acquitted despite evidence as the victims do not show up at the court. The law enforcement also fails to detain the perpetrators and they are not trained to handle such sensitive cases.

Last year, the news of seven-year-old Saima who was raped and murdered in the capital’s Wari shocked the people. Her body was found in an under-construction building where she went to play with her friends. The same year, several madrasa teachers were pictured with handcuffs for raping their boy students.
A two-year-old girl was raped and thrown off a second floor balcony in Dhaka’s Gandaria. The 13-year-old daughter of the rapist Nahid told her neighbours that she saw her father throwing the poor girl off the balcony. So the macabre incident actually devastated at least two children. The life of the girl witnessing her father committing such horrendous crime is never a normal one.

Media spotlight and prominent cases can make it easy to access justice, but it becomes hard when absence of proper evidence and witnesses lengthen the trial. Justice becomes denied being in delay. The once traumtised victims’ families undergo recurring traumas while seeking legal ordeal. Several Prothom Alo and Daily Star reports come up with several victims whose cases went on for years and finally the accused were acquitted. In a case, though the police could not find out the accused for seven years family members always found him at the area. In another case, the victim’s family could not continue the case as they did not want the little child to face the trauma of facing the rapist again at the courtroom.

In another case, despite the severity of the crime, the perpetrators got bail and walked out in front of the traumatised victims. The scenario gets even more horrendous when the victim is poor or homeless. The media is replete with such stories.

Advocate Salma Ali of Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association, once told Dhaka Tribune that there are only a few forensic experts who carry out the medical tests on a rape victim in Bangladesh. She stressed that the victims neither lodged a case nor continued the legal process as they themselves were required to prove the allegations.

Child rape cases are extraordinary as the victims belong to the most vulnerable group of the society. The children who are raped face serious mental health complications in the worse-than-death offence that haunts them up to adulthood and even for a lifetime. Though our women and child repression act stipulates a friendly courtroom procedures for the child, the child has to face serious mental agony when s/he has to face the perpetrator during the trial. We have lack of expertise in the law enforcement regarding the special nature of interrogation required for child rape victims.

But where is the specific plan and work plan regarding the solution of these? Do our concerned institutions even identify the problems?

It’s undeniable that it’s prerequisite to educate and aware the society to stop rape and seek justice. But, the state must carry out its role too. Who will teach the people? Who is to shoulder the programme to undertake such a grave duty? The culture of rape must be eliminated from within the very root of family, community, society and culture, but where is the clear roadmap to reach this goal?

It’s not the first time that such a gruesome picture of child rape been revealed. Last year, a rights group revealed that at least 41 children were raped between 1 and 8 May. Had it been paid due attention, we must not see such a huge figure at the end of the year.

If we can’t ensure safety for our children, what is the meaning of our speeches to build an educated and developed Bangladesh? For a decade, free textbooks are being distributed among children on the first day of a year. What is the use of education, if we fail to save our children from being the victim or the perpetrator? If this is not the emergency, what is the emergency then?

Most of the child rapes took place in Dhaka. This is a time of the mayoral polls for the two City Corporations of Dhaka and candidates are making pledge, but do they ever pledge to stop child rape? It’s not even in any political agenda. It’s not heard either during the national elections. It proves child rape is just a secondary issue for our politicians as it has become a new normal.

Across the world, new research is carried out and techniques are evolved to contain child rape while we are hardly fighting. We are only equipped with obsolete law and bygone outlooks. There is no revision of polices for years when neighbouring India has responded in the wake of the heinous crime revising its act and introducing capital punishment.

But what we are doing for a fundamental change? When will we learn to save our children?

*Nusrat Nowrin is a journalist at Prothom Alo.