Sexual Assaults in Sacred Connections
Infatuation, lust, madness or media; you may use these words in trying to justify the sexual relationship between a student and his/her teacher, but in no meaning of these words, you will be able to justify it. From our religious institutions to the high-fi private and public educational institutions, the disease is spreading so fast that the traditional and historical posture of the parental figure, “teacher” is at stake. Sexual predators, masking themselves as teachers have gone through all odds to satisfy their lust with the students. A couple of decades ago, every religion and society used to term these students as the children of these teachers with confidence.
Leave the discussion about the famous “X-rated Teachers” including Symone Greene, Megan Mahoney, Shelley Dufresne, Rachel Respess, Brianne Altice, Rachelle Gendron, Kelly Ann Garcia, Jennifer Schultz, Erin McLean, Mary Kay Letourneau, Amanda Sotelo, Carrie McCandless and Debra Lafave because all of them did not belong to Pakistan, an Islamic republic where one would not expect a teacher to fall that low. But the events and data suggest that teachers of the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan” have actually outclassed their above mentioned “competitors” in the game.
The “2015-Cruel Numbers”, compiled from 84 national, regional and local newspapers of Pakistan show that the increased percentages of teachers are involved in sexually abusing their students in or out of the institution premises. The numbers also suggested that percentage of X-rated teachers in Pakistan has been increased by more than 8 times during the years 2011 to 2015. More than 10 children were abused a day in 2015 and out of them the number of girls exceeds boys.
Our national media reported a total of 3,768 child sexual abuse cases in 2015. Out of them, some 52 percent (1974) were girls and 48 percent (1794) were boys showing that sexual assault is not limited to females alone. Children of 11-15 years were the most vulnerable and within this bracket, more boys were abused than girls. 44 percent of the abuse incidents took place in the enclosed areas (school, room, office) whereas 21 percent cases took place in open spaces. 73 percent of the children were abused once while 13 percent were abused for more than a day.
There is no religion in the world that takes the role of a teacher as an ordinary professional. Christianity, the largest religion in the world, for example, requires a different level of character from the one “teacher” as here, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.” [James 3:1-2]
Islam too, the second largest religion, requires high moral attributes as a pre-requisite to becoming a teacher. “We said: Get ye down all from here; and if, as is sure, there comes to you Guidance from me, whosoever follows My guidance, on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.” The Holy Prophet (SAW) said, “Your teacher to you is like a father who desires to save his child from the fires of hell.”
All other religions of the world and even the atheists have no confusion on the requirement of high moral character from a teacher. But with the passage of time, “character education” is fast disappearing from our society because of many characterless teachers we have in our mosques, schools and workplaces. Last year, an Islamic Studies tutor in London, Muhammad Islam bought a worldwide shame when it was found that he sexually assaulted a young girl over a five-year period. He has been jailed for 19 years after the victim delayed having an abortion so she could prove he was the father. This X-rated teacher assaulted her at first when she was aged nine and at a time when he was teaching the Koran to schoolchildren in the East End.
In Japan, an American English teacher was arrested in 2007 for sexually assaulting at least 40 schoolgirls, videotaping himself abusing them in over 600 tapes. He explained to police that he was “creating a record of their transition from childhood to adulthood to show to them later.”
In 2014, police arrested a teacher at a Quranic school in Mansehra district of Pakistan’s KPK province who along with his two friends gang-raped and filmed his female student. After their confession and court appearance, the crowd pelted them with bottles of black ink, stones and tomatoes, demanding they be hung in public for the crime.
In 2015, another teacher Hussain was arrested in Lahore. Running a tuition center, he used to rape his students, videotaped the action and then continued to blackmail them for years for a continued assault. Talking to the media, he confessed to committing the crime and ironically demanded an apology being a “teacher” as well.
In May-16, a private Islamic school teacher Qari Yusuf was in the news when in Lahore, his school was attacked and its property damaged by area residents to protest sexual assault and subsequent disappearance of an eight-year-old boy by him in the Green Town area. Last year, another case was reported in Larkana, Sindh, the family of M Kalhoro, a farmer in the riverine area of the Indus River, was devastated when they discovered that their 13-year-old daughter was pregnant after being repeatedly raped by her teacher. Kalhoro filed a case with the Hatri Ghulam Shah police and the teacher was arrested.
Police arrested a Madrassa teacher in March-16, who raped a 13-year-old boy in the Village of Bachkan Ahmadzai of Lakki Marwat District. The boy narrated that Mr. Saifullah lured him into his room, by asking him to fetch water for him to perform ablution. He was then raped and threatened with dire consequences if he is going to tell anybody what took place. On the 28th of March, the boy was able to escape from the Madaraasa and tell his father what had happened. His father took him to Tajori Police Station. Police later arrested Maulana Saifullah who later confessed to raping the boy but claimed it only happened once.
In the last month, December-16, a 15-year-old disabled daughter of a laborer was raped multiple times by her teacher Zuhaib in a Government Special Education School. She was transferred to District Headquarters Hospital (DHQ) after she had fallen ill. The victimized disabled girl stated that she was raped multiple times by her school teacher. Medical tests were conducted for the victimized girl on the order of the magistrate and the rape was proved. She told that the teacher was raping her for one and a half year and had also threatened to kill if she tells anyone about it. Her father expressed with sorrow that he had sent his daughter for education and had no idea that her teacher will turn out to be a rapist.
This “educator sexual abuse” of molestation, rape, sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and sexual harassment has brought up a generation of students who find no harm in wishing and attempting an affair with their teachers at all.
A 23-year-old teacher, in 2014, was kidnapped, raped and videotaped in the Balwakheri, Muzaffarnagar, India by her student and his two friends. The incident happened when she was coming home after giving tuition. In 2015, a 21 old female teacher was going to school in Islamabad when 9 persons including a student with guns went to her, kidnapped and then raped her.
And this month, a 7-grade student of a school in Islamabad, who wanted to marry his teacher, committed suicide after getting the negative response from the other side. He brought the pistol of his father to the school for the purpose. The student also left a note for the school administration begging apologies for the act.
The matter is not limited to schools only. The trade of grade in our universities is at peek as well. While a huge percentage of such sexual trade is not reported because of the mutual consent and gain-gain relationship, somehow, there are a few horrible examples to quote from the most prestigious varsities of Pakistan. Who can forget the College of Earth & Environmental Sciences (CEES) Principal Prof Dr. Iftikhar Hussain Baloch, who had gained fame in the wake of an attack on him by the students of Punjab University for his mysterious and objectionable activities and on suspicion of moral turpitude and indecent acts? He was finally booked by the police for sexually harassing a female student of the M.Phil and a female administrator of his department.
In 2015, the GCU Lahore Students, faculty and old Ravians had written to the Chief Minister asking him to remove the Vice-Chancellor Professor Khaleequr Rahman for protecting the Lecturer Nadeem Sheikh, who tried to rape a student. The letter alleged that the VC not only pressurized the girl not to tell anyone about the incident but also tried to silence those who spoke out about the incident.
In the Karachi University, a rape case of on teacher at the Department of Islamic History along with another case reported last year at the Department of Social Work is also under investigation.
Either it be the LUMS professor, “Abid Imam” who was convicted and forced to leave the top university through a decision of “Federal Ombudsman on Female Sexual Harassment” or Sex scandals that have rocked the International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) in recent months, with several faculty and staff members accused of preying upon the vulnerable female students or juniors, it is established that “seedy affairs had been going on in the holy precincts”.
While the “pious” minds in the society are busy in judging females on the basis of their “modern and western clothing”, a few of our “X-rated teachers” are trading X for %. They are neither the torch bearers of the profession, nor define the parental role a good teacher performs. But, they are certainly blowing off the torch of education in our educational institutions. They are shaking the trust of parents in the education as a catalyst and agent to prepare a human being. When “good marks” in a course are offered for sex with a teacher, they call it “consensual”. For everyone else, it is incest, between a father and a daughter.
In schools, they are raping and in varsities, trading.
Do we need to find a new alternate for the word, “Teacher”?
