How to deal with the pedophile problem
Two weeks ago, Sohial Ayaz, who had been residing in the United Kingdom, was arrested for brutally raping and filming a teenage boy in Rawalpindi. In addition to the cruelty he inflicted on the young boy, Ayaz threatened the victim’s family and said he would upload the video on the Internet. Luckily for the other children of Pakistan, the family and the boy, took the courageous act of reporting the case despite Ayaz’s threats.
Ayaz’s story is an example of just how manipulative and clever pedophiles are in exploiting the holes in monitoring systems and slipping through the cracks of law enforcement. Ayaz was able to do this not only in Pakistan but in several other places.
In 2008, Ayaz who had previously been deported from Italy for having abused a child procured a high skilled worker visa for two years. Off he went to the United Kingdom where he worked for the international charity Save The Children as a grant monitoring officer. The feat is remarkable, because not only was he able to pass through UK immigration monitoring mechanisms without having been discovered as a pedophile, but he managed to get employment at a charity whose very purpose is to safeguard children from abuse and exploitation.
In the meantime, Italian authorities were already looking for Ayaz on a different charge of child abuse, and when they raided his apartment they found over 2,000 images of children being abused and tortured. According to authorities, the torture and sexual deviance in these photos and videos was of the very worst kind. In addition to the British charge, Ayaz was wanted in a case where he had been acting as a go between connecting a Swedish pedophile who said he had Romanian children for sale with an Italian man.
Pakistani authorities say that Ayaz slipped through the cracks because they received no information from British authorities when he was deported. In addition, they like to point out, Pakistan, unlike the British and the Americans does not have a system via which pedophiles like Ayaz can be monitored. Because of this, not only was Ayaz able to return to Pakistan, he was also able to get a job working for the government. In simple terms, a pedophile who was most likely raping and abusing children for the nearly ten years between when he was deported and when he was caught, was being fed and clothed by Pakistani taxpayer money.
This is not the first time that this has happened. Earlier in this decade, members of the notorious Rochdale Sex Trafficking ring, who were convicted of the trafficking and rape of scores of underage girls, were also deported to Pakistan. It is alleged that even these men have been able to get themselves freed and may likely be abusing other children. UK authorities have blamed Pakistan for serving as a haven for men who are convicted or wanted for sex crimes in the UK. The accused men simply run off to Pakistan where they can hide in plain sight and keep victimizing children.
There is a solution to this mess. First, while British and Pakistani authorities may say that they only co-ordinate in high profile cases, the fact that lines of communication exist means that there is a possibility of coordination in cases of pedophilia. As all those who have traveled between Pakistan and Britain know, there is effective monitoring of passports and travel documents. If this sort of monitoring is already taking place, then it is entirely possible to place alerts alongside passport numbers of pedophiles who are traveling between the two countries.
Second, Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari stated that the pedophile registry that exists abroad does not exist in Pakistan. The answer to this is not the wholesale development of a pedophile registry from scratch. Pakistan already monitors most of its citizens via National Identity Card numbers. The system can easily be deployed to also monitor child abusers who victimize children.
Men who are convicted of child abuse crimes anywhere in the country should have a special notation in their identity card numbers so that when they supply these numbers for gaining housing, cell phones, computers etc., the party who is providing them with these services know that they are interacting with a known child abuser.
Finally, there needs to be a more concerted effort to name and shame those who are found out to be child abusers. Pakistan’s television and other media platforms need to host wider discussions about how to deal with such issues while also educating parents in how they can teach their children that such demons exist in the world.
Men like Sohail Ayaz slip through the cracks because they can. They slip through the cracks because no one wants to take responsibility. In the meantime, hundreds, even thousands of Pakistani children face the consequences of such lapses.
After he was arrested, Sohail Ayaz confessed that he had abused at least 30 other children in addition to the one who registered the FIR against him. In truth, the number is likely much higher. The existence of such evil is a tragedy for any nation. But in tragedy there is also opportunity, and Pakistan must deploy the resources it already has and make fighting this scourge an immediate and urgent national priority.
*Rafia Zakaria is the author of “The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan” and “Veil.” She writes regularly for The Guardian, the Boston Review, the New Republic, the New York Times Book Review and many other publications.
Twitter: @rafiazakaria
