By Ozioma Onyenweaku
When my team and I were on a Speak out campaign to schools, (a program in which we educate and encourage the young ones on the need to speak out about any sexual abuse or harassment) some schools made available only the girls. When I asked one of the teachers why it was only girls that were in the hall, she was like, “is the program not about sexual abuse?”
Whenever rape or anything sexual abuse is mentioned, most people’s minds simply go to only the female as the victim. This is because within most jurisdictional context, child sexual abuse usually connotes abuse predominantly of the female child. For this reason the female child is the one that is seen as needing the protection from sexual abuse or rape. This, unfortunately, results to the neglect of the male child sufferer of sexual abuse.
Given our culture of male supremacy and chauvinism, the males are kit up to believe that they ought to be in charge of every aspect of their lives. When abused, the boys would readily think and feel shame of not being in charge as to be able to stop the abuser, and then would rather keep silent about the abuse, and hurt internally.
The truth of the matter is that as many boys as girls are sexually molested. The sexual abuses in which the boys are the victims are the least reported. Yet they go through all the mental, psychological and emotional trauma silently to the greater harm of their overall health and welfare. Sexual abuse affects the males as much the same way it affects the female. The torture is not gender defined. One unique point in the case of sexual abuse of the male child is that the perpetrators are mostly males. There are only very few female abusers of the male child.
So it is mandatory that attention and protection be extended to the male child with respect to sexual molestation or abuse. Report has shown that sexual abuse is the underlining factor in the depression and suicidal attempt of some male children. They feel the hurt; they go through the trauma and nightmare, and cannot even voice it out; and no one seems to notice. They fall into depression and then attempt suicide. Those who survive it brave to speak out only at older age mostly when they have become parents. That’s even the brave ones.
I remember one man who I choose to simply call Ben here. It is as an adult that he was able to relate his experience in the hands of his father’s best friend. He was his dad’s friend’s favourite. Ben was receiving special attention and gifts from the man. Ben was in junior secondary school and in boarding house when one day his father’s best friend volunteered to take Ben back to school. Before proceeding on the journey, the man took Ben to his house and had anal sex with little Ben. Ben bled all the way to school, but received a stern warning from the man never to mention it to anybody. Ben, of course, never mentioned it but started distancing himself from the man. Ben was highly disappointed when the parents could not read the subtle signs.
We must pay attention to the male child so as to protect them from sexual abuses. One area we must pay particular and urgent attention to now is the Boy’s Boarding Schools. A lot of the junior ones are going through nasty experience of sexual abuse in the dormitories at the hands of the senior male students. A man reported, in one forum, of the kind of sexual abuse he went through as a junior student and exclaimed that it is even worse now in many schools.
So, parents please be more attentive to subtle signs; and engage the boys in heart-to-heart discussions to find out if any abuse is going on around them. Do not dismiss or ignore that frown that comes up on the face of your boy whenever it is time to go back to the boarding school. Do not expect that your boy would easily relate everything immediately; do not forget that they are usually warned that they or their parents would be killed if they talked. So be patient and consistent, and tenderly probe. Investigate and take action promptly. Boy’s life matters too.