Saving the girl-child from a trauma

The crime of sensual assault on vulnerable women is understandable in one or another way. The beast in a section of males may come alive in order to satiate their carnal desire or due to their being influenced by substances. In this country, property-related feuds or avenging may also lead to sexual violence against women. But an innocent female child as young as 4-7 becoming an object of male desire eludes logic and credulity. In fact, the revoltingly aberrant reality would once appall people having the primary elements of human values. Times have changed fast. News of small girls strangled to death after being molested fill the air in a casual manner.

In today's Bangladesh, the spectacle has degraded to such a shocking low that many lawless societies might feel dwarfed. But to this country's people in general, the news of brutality let loose on a baby-girl is like one related to a normal robbery. The abrupt rise in its frequency may have made people inured to the ghastly crime. Many have begun predicting: unless the pandemic of child molestation is reined in stringently with the highest exemplary punishment the nation may well brace for the reenactment of a dark chapter from the primitive times. This solution might sound simplistic. For, the menace itself is highly complex embodying scores of human propensities which are related to a lot of vices. They range from the diabolic impacts of psychedelic drugs to the occasional raising of heads by the 'killer's self' latent in some. However, these theorising exercises boil down to one thing. Bangladesh may be destined to be declared soon one of the most unsafe countries for the girl child during peacetime. Unfortunately, few sensible sections in society and the authorities seem to be sufficiently bothered.

The scourge of girl child abuse has lately reached a distressing level in the country. The nation can ill afford to look the other way. The problem is deceptive and delicate. Unlike in the Western world, fondling unknown children has traditionally been viewed as a normal and innocent socio-cultural practice in this country. Few would suspect in it anything having a dirty motive. Those days may have vanished. With paedophiles and male adults with diseased minds roaming about, cautious parents have started sitting up. Few urban educated families now let their children go out and visit places not known to them. As feared, these restrictions make children feel fettered. Child rights activists view them being robbed of their freedom and the carefree childhood. The newly popped up nightmare in Bangladesh has devoured the children in villages more cruelly than those in the cities. Poverty and struggle for survival leave little space for the parents to keep an eye on their children continuously. The same applies to the underprivileged, shanty-dwelling urban families.

In view of the insidiously frightful nature of the malady, conventional deterrents are not expected to bear much fruit. It's because nobody knows for sure which of the males moving around in a neighbourhood would finally emerge as a paedophile. A number of people would like to bring up the issue of atavism which is prompting criminals to swoop on children. Plainly speaking, like oppression of women, girl-child persecution has been dormant in society for ages. These horrid injustices burst into the fore at intervals like other atavistic outbreaks do. If this is the case, then an age-old social set-up can do little. But time has come to accept the bitter truth that the aberrant occurrences have lately become the order of the day. It's high time to act to stop this orgiastic criminality in order to save scores of little girls from a traumatic experience.

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