It is estimated that at least two out of every ten girls and one out of every ten boys are sexually abused by the end of their 13th year. To protect all children, we first need to learn the facts.

Learn the Facts
What exactly is child molestation? How many of our children are sexually abused? How seriously are they damaged? What are the characteristics of a child molester? What causes someone to sexually abuse a child? Which of our children are most at risk?

A child molester is any older child or adult who touches a child for his or her own sexual gratification.

Child molestation is the act of sexually touching a child.

A child is a girl or boy who is 13 years of age or younger.

What’s the age difference between a molester and a child? It is five years, so a 14-year-old “older child” sexually touching a nine-year-old is an example. This is the accepted medical definition.

Is child molestation a public health problem? It qualifies on two counts: damage to health and numbers of victims. Sexually abusing a child endangers that child’s physical and emotional health. And, unfortunately, the number of victimized children is in the millions.

Effects and Damages
Depending on the seriousness, the duration and the sort of abuse, some of those who were abused in their childhood, or recently retain certain problems due to this trauma. These can be divided into psychological, social, sexual and physical problems.

Psychological problems:
# Fears, panic attacks, sleeping problems, nightmares, irritability, outbursts of anger and sudden shock reactions when being touched.
# Little confidence, and self-respect and respect for one’s own body may change.
# Behavior that harms the body: addiction to alcohol and other substances, excessive work or sports, depression, self-destruction and prostitution.

Social problems:
# Have little confidence in other people.
# Fear of loss of control in relationships.

Sexual problem:
While making love problems often occur. The partner may be confused by a certain remark, touch or behavior that brings back memories of the abuse.

Physical complaints:
# Abdominal pain
# Pain while making love
# Menstrual pain
# Intestinal complaints, stomach ache
# Nausea, headache, back pain, painful shoulders

Reactions to trauma may appear immediately after the traumatic event or days or even weeks later. The symptoms of the traumatic reactions may be very individual and depend on the age of the child.

Very young children typically have a strong fear of being separated from their parents. They might show behaviours of earlier developmental stages (regressive behaviour) like thumb-sucking, bedwetting, or they cannot sleep alone in their beds anymore (fear of darkness)

Any change of social interaction to relatives or at kindergarten or school with withdrawal, disruptive behaviour or changes of the attentional functions (inability to pay attention) with additional sleeping problems or nightmares can be due to trauma. Some children only report somatic complaints or other bodily symptoms.

Older adolescents will describe flashbacks or dissociative symptoms. Social withdrawal and avoidance of any stimuli that are closely related to the trauma (traumatic trigger) are very typical for traumatic experiences. Some adolescents try to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs to compensate for flashbacks and major emotional disturbances.

Who Are These Molesters?
Did you know that most children who are sexually abused, are abused by a family member or close friend? Did you know that “stranger danger,” by comparison, is quite rare? Many children or adolescents are afraid to talk about their traumatic experiences, especially if close relatives are involved. They may even feel extreme guilt over their failure to prevent the traumatic event.

George’s Story
George was a typical teenager. In his twenties, George emerged from his shell, got married, and had two sons. His parents were proud of him, of the family he had established, of the values he taught his children.

During his thirties, he was promoted to a new position in his company every two or three years. More money, more responsibility, more travel, more stress.

One day when George was on the road, his wife got a call. Her husband was three states away. He’d been arrested in that state for child molestation. By now George was 43.

His wife remembers smiling into the phone. She had a flash image – her telling the story about this mistake. “Can you imagine? Poor George, – the most conservative man in the world.” – and how their friends would laugh. She repeated her husband’s name, including middle name. She spelled out the first, middle, and last name. His wife was sure it was somebody else with a similar name. After she was convinced that her husband was the George in custody, her next emotion was fury. Who would falsely accuse a fine man like her husband? Would the lawyer’s fees bankrupt them? What would his boss say? After 20 years of marriage she knew George, knew he was the last man in the world who would ever. . . .

Like most people, George’s wife, when she considered child molestation at all – thought about it only as a sin or a crime. Her husband was simply not a criminal. He had never even had a traffic ticket. He was a regular hardworking man with a great sense of responsibility. If anything, he was a law-and-order guy. He was, like many husbands, concerned for his family’s safety. He was their protector.

His religion was an important part of his life. Their religious beliefs were important to both of them and to their children.

And besides that George couldn’t be a child molester, she thought, because they had a vigorous and happy sex life.

Through the months that followed, George’s wife and his parents received several shocks. He confessed. Yes, he had sexually molested the 10-year-old girl who accused him, the daughter of a man who’d been his friend since high school. Then she found out there had been other victims. He had molested 23 little girls. The number included two nieces, one the daughter of his wife’s sister and, the other the daughter of his own sister. He had also molested several daughters of close friends. His two nieces he had molested over a period of years. Both nieces kept the secret from everybody in the family. In a further shock to his family, he also confessed that when he was 17 and she was in grade school, he had repeatedly molested his stepsister. She also never told.

George’s larger family is, of course, destroyed. Neither his sister nor his sister-in-law will ever forgive him for sexually abusing their daughters. They also shun his wife. No matter what she says about her innocence, they believe she knew all along and allowed him to molest. His parents are shocked. Both are devastated by their failure to protect George’s young stepsister and their grandchild.

Kids NEVER Tell!
Unfortunately, most of today’s children will never tell. They feel ashamed that this has happened to them. They are protecting their abuser because he or she is part of their family. They are protecting other members of their family – saving them from the pain of knowing. Those millions of children are a secret. They are the secret in family after family after family. Even adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse seldom tell. What we do know from studies of adult men and women is that the number is at least three million. At least three million children are molested before they finish their 13th year. In 1998, there were 103,000 reported and confirmed cases of child molestation. For comparison, at the height of the polio epidemic that struck children in the 1950s, there were 21,000 cases reported in a year. For rubella, there were 57,000 cases reported. For child molestation, those numbers of reported and confirmed molestations are only the tip of the iceberg. For every case reported there are at least two and maybe three more cases that never get reported.

We CAN Help!
In spite of the millions of victims in our families, many people stick to their mistaken belief that child molestation has nothing to do with them. This is, however, quite depressing. It shows how we’ve narrowed our thoughts and limited our communication with children. We don’t want to believe in harsh realities that could happen to anyone we care about. And believe it or not, we can actually do something about it!

Sometimes a listening family member or friend can be a great support. Most people can’t handle sexual abuse alone. They need help from therapists or fellow-sufferers. Professionals – physicians and therapists – can never put an end to sexual abuse; neither can the police or the courts. Why? Because they come on the scene too late. By the time they get there, the children have already been molested. Only you can get there in time.

There’s a bigger reason why the professionals and the courts can’t put an end to sexual abuse. They have no permission to talk to a child about sex – unless, of course, they talk to the child after the fact, after the child has already been sexually abused or has abused another child. Only you can talk to your children before anything happens, before any damage is done – to anyone.

Prohibited Activities
The activities identified as sexual abuse of a child varies between countries. In the United States, sexual activity of any kind is prohibited between an adult and a person under the age of consent. Examples of prohibited activities:# sexual intercourse (oral, anal or vaginal) with any person under the age of consent
# soliciting sexual activity from a child
# contact with a child’s genitals for the purpose of sexual gratification
# inducing a child to touch his/her genitals or another’s genitals
# acting as a pimp for prostituted child
# inducing a child to behave sexually in a performance, or to watch any kind of sexual behavior
# inducing a child to appear in child pornography
# lewd acts with children, including disseminating pornography to a minor

It is about time we step forward and stop child molestation in our society. As parents or relatives, we can be friends with our children , be open-minded to their thoughts and be understanding to their needs. We can reassure them that their secrets are absolutely safe with us and hence, identify perverts in our families and society.

—-
Sabhanaz Rashid Diya

Autism is a lifelong disability that restricts people from communicating or relating to others properly. Their brain lacks certain developments so they have a hard time making sense of the world and everything around them.

Autism is an “invisible” disability – you won’t know something is wrong by looking at them (unless they have other associated physical disabilities). No specific cause has yet been discovered, but it is assumed that there may be a genetic link. Autism may be associated with a variety of conditions affecting brain development that occur before, during or very soon after birth.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder. Development of certain areas of the brain may suddenly stop, thus hampering proper development of other important areas of the brain, e.g. speech, academic skills, general understanding, etc.

Autism is not a mental illness – people with mental illnesses have very low skill development, but it is even in all areas. People with autism show uneven skill development with deficits in certain areas, but in other areas there may be normal or exceptional development.

Autism does not occur as result of poor parenting, emotional problems or emotional deprivation. Family income, life style and educational levels probably do not affect the chance of autism’s occurrence.

The onset of autism is almost always before the age of three years. The worldwide statistics show that the risk is four to five times greater for boys than girls. Scientists have yet to explain this disparity.

Autistic people cannot process information and sensations properly, hence most cannot communicate their wants, thoughts or feelings effectively. They find it difficult to interact and even when they do, it may appear awkward or inappropriate to others. Certain sensations, e.g. hearing, touch smell or light maybe difficult to tolerate. This is why autistic people get easily frustrated, and this leads to several behavioural problems.

Simple activities, e.g. feeding, dressing, going to the bathroom, etc, are difficult to them because of sensory problems and these also take a long time to master. Hyperactivity, short attention span, poor eye contact, make it difficult for the child to learn.

People with autism have the ‘triad of impairments’.

1. Social interaction – They have a low emotional level and rarely get emotionally attached to any one. They appear not to ‘care’ about anyone. They are always wrapped up in their own world.

2. Social communication – They cannot express themselves or their feelings properly, or they don’t know the proper way to do so. They take things literally (cannot understand metaphors, gestures, read expressions or in between the lines, detect sarcasm; they cannot tell what others may be thinking or trying to imply).

3. Imagination – They posses absolutely none or hardly any imagination; they hardly or never take part in creative activities. They posses no abstract thinking.

The main characteristic features of autism are:

• Impairments in verbal and non-verbal communication
• Impairments in social interactions with parents, siblings and others
• Restrictive and repetitive patterns of behaviour or interests

Autistic children may also exhibit:

• Attention problems
• Repeated body movement (hand flapping, rocking, etc)
• Unusual attachment to objects
• Resistance to any change in routine
• Apparent insensitivity to physical dangers and pain
• Impairments in imaginative and social play
• Disruptive, aggressive or self injurious behaviour (tantrums, streaking, biting, etc)
• Lack of eye contact
• Unresponsiveness to people
• Lack of attention to people
• Lack of behaviour according to social norms
• Attention to the non-social aspects of people
• Lack of awareness of the feelings of others
• Flat facial and vocal tone
• Echolalia – copying words like a parrot
• Sleep disturbances
• Inappropriate laughing and giggling

• Treatment of parts of people as detached objects or treatment of people as if they were inanimate objects.

Autism is a Spectrum Disorder, which means that the condition has wide ranging degrees of severity. The developmental rate of each autistic child is different. In more severe cases, the child usually gets mentally retarded. In less severe cases, the child may be high functioning, even possessing normal or very high IQ. Their verbal communication is good, and they can sufficiently express their needs and feelings. These children are usually sent to mainstream schools if their learning capability is good enough. However, as they grow older, it becomes difficult for them to cope with the increasing academic and social pressures. Their behaviour is often unacceptable and they cannot make friends.

Some autistic people are known to have exceptional talent normally not seen in most people. Some have amazing memorising abilities (e.g. memorising a hundred years’ calendars); some can draw extremely accurately; some can play a tune on instruments having heard it only once; some can imitate noises of vehicles or machines. However these do not show creativity because these children can only copy and reproduce, never create.

 

CARE FOR AUTISTIC CHILDREN

There is no miraculous cure for autism. Autistic children can be made more functional and can be brought towards normality by proper training, behaviour management and education programmes, starting from the very beginning of their lives – when the problems have just begun to appear. If this intervention is delayed, the child’s case will become more severe and s/he will eventually appear to be mentally retarded. He or she will become less functional and a burden to the society.

First of all, a proper neurodevelopmental assessment and diagnosis is required. Once the diagnosis is established, the child needs a timely intervention. The child requires a special education programme. But the parents must first fully accept that their child is autistic, and not keep hoping for a miraculous cure. They should not hide the child from society or be afraid of getting “exposed” as the parents of an autistic child.

There are special schools providing the correct type of training and education for these children. They also give practical guidelines to help the parents handle their child and to help the child to reach full potential. They will assess the child continuously and produce follow-up reports of their progress. These schools also help to build up a parent support group where parents can share their experiences. But at the same time, the parents cannot expect the school to do everything for them. They have to work with the child and give him/her enough attention at home. They will have to work on how to become a parent therapist and create an optimal learning environment for the child at home.

The most important ability required to handle an autistic child is patience. To make these children independent (as in taking care of themselves and carry out the daily living activities) is not easy and requires continuous training and supervision. Those who cannot talk are taught to communicate with flashcards or sign language. Speech therapies, communication skills development and behaviour management help them to be more functional.

SOCIAL STRAINS ON THESE FAMILIES

Family members of autistic children have to put in a lot of effort into raising the autistic child. When there is an autistic child in the family, the family members have to go through a lot of mental and physical strain.

Since autism is an invisible disability, it is impossible to determine whether a child is suffering from autism before two years of age. Thus, it becomes extremely difficult for the parents to accept that their child is autistic, when these problems become clear. It is extremely painful for them to see that the child, who had been developing normally for two years or so, gradually losing meaningful speech and communication skills. When they try to enrol these children in mainstream schools, they find that the child is not accepted due to his/her unexplained restlessness and deviant communication patterns.

According to surveys, this has lead to major depressions, mostly in case of mothers. Domestic problems also occur, when some working mothers have to let go of their jobs, to give the child more time. Their self-esteem is greatly reduced as they try to compare their child with other children and feel a deep remorse about why they have been endowed with this “curse”.

It is normal for some people with autism to display “challenging behaviour” and become extremely problematic for the family members, as well as those outside the family. Parents face difficulties in taking the child out of the house, as other people of the society, sometimes even relatives, show annoyance and disagreement, as they cannot accept the child. This causes the parents to become more and more secluded form society, as they start to avoid social circles, for the sake of their autistic child.

Autism in the family not only affects the parents, but sibling as well. Parents sometimes tend to vent their frustrations on the other normal child, spend more time with the autistic child, all of which can lead to severe depression of the normal child.

These families need to overcome their depressions by going for proper counselling sessions from professionals who are experienced in this field. They need to stand strong because of they remain depressed; it will only harm the child even more. If they don’t delay their acceptance and begin an early intervention, then the child can be made to overcome the problems significantly.

When an autistic child grows older, in some ways, the strain becomes greater because abnormal behaviour from older children is less socially acceptable than from younger ones. As autistic children step into adolescence, they also face the physical and emotional changes and challenges. It is also during this time they start to realize how different they are from other children and some of them may go into depression. For some people with autism, deterioration occurs during puberty. It is during this transition period, that the strengthening of the lateral support system (home, family, school and environment) is required. Most of them transit into adulthood with much difficulty. Proper training must still be carried on and these adults should always be under supervision.

AUTISM IN BANGLADESH

All over the world, autism is increasing at an alarming rate. In a recent survey in Canada, it has been seen that one in 500 cases are suspected to have autism, making it more common than Down’s syndrome or other childhood disabilities.

The situation in Bangladesh is not clear yet. The correct statistics are not known because a proper epidemiological survey has not yet been carried out. Parents tend to hide their autistic children and do not bring them out to society. Many of them don’t even know what autism is, especially in the rural areas. Autism is a fairly recent discovery in Bangladesh. It has been diagnosed since 2001-2002. Child development physicians are working on it and it is supposed that statistics here will be similar to that of the rest of the world.

Organisations like Child Development Centre (CDC) in Dhaka Shishu Hospital and its network throughout Bangladesh are carrying out the developmental assessments and diagnosis of these children.

Organisations providing education for these children are:

• Autism Welfare Foundation (AWF)
• Bangladesh Protibondhi Foundation (BPF)
• Society for the Welfare of Autistic Children (SWAC)
• Society for the Welfare of the Intellectually Disabled (SWID Bangladesh)
• School for Gifted Children
• Beautiful Mind
• Caring Glory

The main problem is that the provisions for special education programmes are only available in Dhaka at present. These schools need to be opened outside Dhaka. Homes need to be opened for adult autistics, where they can live under supervision, and where they will have jobs. They can be taught to work at handicrafts and the like, because they are good with repetitive tasks.

Running these organisations is not an easy job, but they have crossed many hurdles and there are still hurdles yet to come. We can hope they will succeed in carrying on their work, because these organisations are extremely dedicated to their work, mainly because a lot of them are run by parents of autistic children.

In mainstream schools, an intensive training programme has to be run, so that the teachers can support those autistic children with greater learning capabilities and milder behavioural problems.

The Ministry of Social Welfare, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and Ministry of Primary and Mass Education should extend cooperation to them. Attention of foreign donors may be invited to this field.

Most of all, we need to raise awareness. We need to learn about autism and accept these people as part of the society. We have to learn how to behave with and handle autistics, so we can all make the confusing journey of life easier for them.

—-
Submitted By :
Tushmit Mehruba Hasan
Amreen Rahman