Two Survivor's Stories in One of the Darkest Places to be a Child

‘He is handsome’, remarked her best friend

Musab Omer
Enlightenment

When we talk about child sexual abuse (CSA), it seems like a pretty simple and straightforward subject. However, being a survivor of child sexual abuse myself and having spoken to a number of fellow survivors, I have understood that CSA is way more complicated than one can imagine or comprehend.

In 2017, I conducted a few sessions on raising awareness about CSA in Kashmir. In almost every single session that I conducted, a few people approached me afterwards and shared their ordeal of sexual abuse that they were subjected to in their childhood. The most noteworthy fact about these stories was that each one of these survivors were speaking up for the first time.

During one of those awareness-raising sessions about CSA, a senior lecturer from the audience stood up in the middle of the session and spoke up about the sexual abuse that he was subjected to during his childhood. There were more than 100 senior lecturers from erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir present in the hall and it came across as a shock to many of his colleagues present there. However, almost everyone empathised with him at that moment and lauded his courage to have spoken up about the abuse. Due to the social stigma attributed to sexual abuse in Kashmir, he had not spoken up about it in the past 30 years.

I spoke to him afterwards in detail and he told me that he has become very controlling as a father. He wouldn’t let his children go out or spend a night at any of their relatives’ or friends’ place. He wouldn’t trust anybody hanging around his children. He would constantly worry about their well-being and all these overprotective behaviours combined with the constant negative thoughts had not only made his life miserable but also his children’s. After speaking up about the abuse, he felt a huge burden was off his shoulders.

After about two months, I received a phone call from this senior lecturer and I could tell from his voice that he was extremely distressed. He told me that he deeply regrets having spoken up about his childhood abuse in front of the other teachers present in the hall during my session on CSA. What had transcribed in the past two months is simply a reflection of our society’s orthodox and backward mindset. He was ridiculed by some of his colleagues, who blamed him for having created a bad image of the Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmir valley in general by speaking up about the sexual abuse he was subjected to during his childhood. In other words, this teacher was re-victimised by our society’s educated class for speaking up about the abuse, despite him having suffered mentally and physically for more than 30 years because of the abuse.

For me, it was worse than a shock.

For the rest of this eye-opening report please visit Musab's Enlightenment.

God bless you Musab, my friend, for the great work you are doing in shining light into the darkness.