(21 Nov 2017) Sexual abuse is a pervasive and long-standing problem at madrassas in Pakistan, an AP investigation has found.
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 claim.
Cases rarely make it to 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 scores of reported cases of sex abuse within a far-reaching system that teaches more than two 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.
Kausar Parveen struggles through tears as she remembers the night her nine-year-old son was raped by a cleric.
The boy had studied for a year at a nearby madrassa in the town of Kehrore Pakka. In the blistering heat of late April, in the two-room Islamic school, he awoke one night to find his teacher lying beside him.
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, using his scarf to show how the cleric tried to stifle his cries.
The secrecy and shame around sexual abuse means that numbers are hard to come by. 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.
The fear of clerics and militant religious organisations that sometimes support them, suppresses further reporting of abuse.
Pakistan's clerics close ranks when the madrassa system is too closely scrutinised, said one senior ministry official who wished to remain anonymous.
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.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees madrassas, refused repeated written and telephone requests for an interview.
The man accused of raping Parveen's nine-year-old son swore his innocence as he waited to go before a judge. "I am married for the last six to seven years. My wife is pretty," he said. "Why would I do this to a child?" He had withdrawn an earlier admission of guilt made to the police.
The victim's mother vowed that she would never give up the struggle, but in the end she did. According to police, she "forgave" the cleric, accepted the equivalent of 300 US dollars and he was set free.
There are more than 22-thousand registered madrassas or Islamic schools in Pakistan. The students they teach are often among the country's poorest, who receive food and an education for free.
There is no central religious authority that governs madrassas. There is also no central body that investigates or responds to allegations in religious schools.
"The big problem is here that the police don't help the poor. Police ask the victim, "give us money, then we will register your case,"" said Azam Hussain, a local councillor.
This is particularly true in Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, where more than 60 percent of its 200 million people live.
In a 2014 report, even Pakistan's own Punjab provincial anti-corruption department listed the state's police as the country's most corrupt department.
The family of a boy who says he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a cleric in a Punjab madrassa talks about their tussle with police.
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