Invisible victims: how young boys are systematically exploited in Pakistan?

By: Maira Sulaiman

ISLAMABAD: He was only 14, when the madrasa, which meant to guide him – killed him.

In Swat, young Farhan endured five hours of “torture” in the hands of his Ustadh, eventually dying of his injuries.

“Our teachers started hitting him hard. Later, they dragged him into a side room and kept beating him. I was called in to bring water. He drank a little, then put his head in my lap – and just went silent,” said one of Farhan’s classmates.

It was not just any kind of torture; it was Farhan’s denial against being sexually assaulted, which then provoked his teacher into beating him to death. Unfortunately, not only in madrasas but, truck stops as well – patterns of abuse in highway rest areas are quite common too.

According to a research paper on plight of young men working on highways, around 95 per cent of long-haul truck drivers in Pakistan admitted to engaging in indecent activities with young boys, who are either homeless or are looking for work. In deeply patriarchal cultures, controlling someone, especially another male, through humiliation and force is tantamount to a show of power. The ones in control see the controlled as something to which they are entitled.

Anecdotal evidence also shows that most recorded abusers were once victims of such humiliation themselves. Instead of healing, they internalise their trauma and repeat it – as a means of ‘Dysfunctional coping’.

In psychological terms, dysfunctional coping refers to behaviors that individuals use to manage stress, emotions, or psychological distress that ultimately do not effectively resolve the issue and may cause harm or worsen the situation over time. They might provide short-term relief but are ineffective or even harmful in the long term. To simply put, it sounds something like: I couldn’t fight back then. But now, I’m the one in charge.

It is a toxic coping mechanism, not a cure. The cause is deeper than just the symptoms. It is the taboo that is birthed out of social expectations – how boys are imbibed within the idea of invulnerability, which leads to their under-recognition and lack of psychosocial support.

Whether it is in the brutal silence of madrasas where violence is passed off as “discipline,” or in the disturbing narratives of truck drivers grooming young boys under the pretense of “male bonding,” the abuse is rarely seen for what it is.

Regarding this issue, HUM News English reached out to child protection agency Sahil’s CEO Dr Muneeza Bano, who speaking on the causes behind such violence against boys, said, “One reason is that there is no implication of impregnating, having any strings attached as they can ‘use’ their victims and then move on.” She added that since boys are more mobile and accessing them is easier than girls, culturally girls are not sent out or allowed to go out as often which leaves those men with no other choice.

Boys aged 6-15 are targeted more since they have not hit their puberty and the masculinity in them is not as obvious, their innocence (a trait often associated with women) is more flagrant, Dr Bano added.

She said that most of those boys who are subjected to such violence have been sent out by their own parents or guardians to bring in income and support their homes, and most fall vulnerable to such pedophiles who then exploit them sexually and pay them for it – instilling a normalisation for prostitution as well.

The abusers “feel in power when it comes to violating those helpless kids, whose parents abandon them for months away from home, to ‘learn’. “It is not always about satisfying their urges, its related more to the psychology behind it which mentally pushes them into oppressing them in return of ‘feeling in control’. For them exploitation equals dominance,” she added.

Speaking on the prevalence of such incidents in the truckers circles, she said that “those kids are manipulate in return of teaching them truck driving, as they are given false ambitions of how if they spend time with them, they can get into the same work industry early on and earn a lot. Those kids fall victim to their lies and then get used by them, those proletariat men then pay them money by assaulting them sexually.”

When violence is disguised as mentorship and trauma is silenced under the pressures of masculinity, it becomes painfully transparent that our society has a problem. The only question that remains is why are we still pretending there isn’t one?