A 15-year-old boy holding dual American-Pakistani citizenship was sexually assaulted by three boys in Pakistan.
The boy had gone shopping when he ran into a schoolmate who was out with friends. The three boys lured him to an ice cream shop. They then forced him into a car in a parking lot and tried to assault him. When he made noise they tied his mouth with a cloth, according to a police report obtained by Pakistani news outlet Dawn.
The victim said that the suspects took him to a structure in a deserted area. They opened the lock on the structure with keys already in their possession.
There, the three took turns raping him. One would hold a pistol while the other would hold a video recording device and another would rape him.
The videos of the act were sent to other people. One of the schoolboys later sent the video to the victim and tried to coerce him into doing it again. Instead, the victim contacted the police, Dawn reported.
Two of the suspects were arrested and are undergoing questioning. The third suspect is still on the run. The victim has undergone a medical exam and the results are forthcoming.
The victims parents reside in the United States. His cousin, Mohammad Nasir, told Dawn that he has been in Pakistan one and a half years. He is now reunited with his parents in the United States.
The victim came to Pakistan to study at a private school in Rawalpindi, in the Punjab province, Daily Mail reported.
Rape in Pakistan
Rape, including child rape, is a huge problem in Pakistan. There also remains a taboo against reporting rape incidents, so perpetrators often don’t face consequences, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“The lengths this country goes to punish rape victims is unimaginable,” said Jawad Bukhari, chief executive of Alpha Foundation, a child rights advocacy group in Kasur, via the LA Times. “From police to the judicial system, every step is flawed and filled with hurdles for victims and parents.”
The Cruel Numbers 2018 report from Sahil says that boys from 6-years-old to 15-years-old were more vulnerable to child sexual abuse in Pakistan in 2018 than girls in the same age range. Girls 0 to 5-years-old and 16 to 18-years-old were more vulnerable than boys in those same age ranges.
The report says that the major crimes against children include sodomy, rape, missing children, attempted rape, gang sodomy, gang rape, and child marriages. Sodomy cases, the most prevalent of these crimes, increased by 60 percent from the previous year, and rape cases increased by 15 percent.
In 2018, 3,832 child abuse cases were reported. The majority of the crimes were reported in Punjab, according to the report.
The police are notorious for inaction, such as in the case of a man whose daughter was killed and raped after being kidnapped from a wedding.
“For one year, I made trips to the police station, but they kept telling me that I should look for the culprit within my own family and surroundings,” Mohammad Asif said, via LA Times. “If the police had done their job in the previous cases, my Ayesha would have been saved. Or if they would have done their job in Ayesha’s case, Zainab would have been saved.”
Ayesha was 5-years-old when she was killed. Zainab was 6-years-old when she was also raped and killed.
