MADRASAS IN PAKISTAN PLAGUED BY SEX ABUSE PF CHILDREN.

[Based on a news item published in The Times of India dated 23rd November, 2017 (Thursday)].
Kausar Parveen struggles through tears as she remembers the blood-soaked pants of her 9-year-old son, raped by a religious cleric. Each time she begins to speak, she stops, swallows hard, wipes her tears and begins again. The boy had studied for a year at a nearby Islamic school in the town of Kehrore Pakka. In the blistering heat of late April, in the grimy two-room Islamic madrasa, he awoke one night to find his teacher lying beside him. "I didn't move. I was afraid", he says. The cleric lifted the boy's long tunic-style shirt over his head, and then pulled down his baggy pants. "I was crying. He was hurting me. He shoved my shirt in my mouth", the boy says. Parveen reaches over and grabs her son, pulling him towards her, cradling his head in her lap. 
Sexual abuse is a pervasive and long-standing problem at madrasas in Pakistan, an AP investigation has found, from the sun-baked mud villages deep in its rural areas to the heart of its teeming cities. But in a culture where clerics are powerful and sexual abuse is a taboo subject, it is seldom discussed or even acknowledged in public. It is even more seldom prosecuted. Police are often paid off not to pursue justice against clerics, victims' families say. And cases rarely make it pass the courts, because Pakistan's legal system allows the victim's family to 'forgive' the offender and accept what is often referred to as blood money.
The AP found hundreds  of cases of sexual abuse by clerics reported in the past decade (2000 - 2017), and officials suspect there are many more within a far-reaching system that teaches at least 2 million children in Pakistan. The investigation was based on police documents and dozens of interviews with victims, relatives, former and current ministers, aid groups and religious officials. The fear of clerics and the militant religious organisations that sometimes support them came through clearly. One senior official in a ministry tasked with registering these cases says many madrasas are 'infested' with sexual abuses. The official asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution; he has been a target of suicide attacks because of his hard position against militant groups. 
Pakistan's clerics close ranks when the madrasa system is too closely scrutinised, he says. Among the weapons they use to frighten their critics is a controversial blasphemy law that carries a death penalty in the case of a conviction. A tally of cases reported in newspapers over the past 10 years of sexual abuse by maulvis or clerics and other religious officials came to 359. That represents 'barely the tip of the iceberg', says Munizae Bano, executive director of Sahil, an organisation that works against sexual abuse of minors. Religious affairs minister Sardar Muhammad Yousuf dismisses the suggestion that sexual abuse is widespread, saying such talk is an attempt to malign the religion, seminaries and clerics. He says he was not aware of even the cases reported in newspapers, but that it could occur occasionally 'because there are criminals everywhere'. The interior ministry, which oversees madrassas, refused repeated requests for an interview. Parveen had vowed that she would never give in to intimidation. But relatives and neighbours say the family was hounded by religious militants to drop the charges and take money. In the end, the mother 'forgave' the cleric and accepted $ 300, according to police. The cleric was set free.
-Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy-  
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