Streets of shame: Will children in Pakistan ever be free from crutches of paedophiles?

Mumbai: Turning a blind eye to sexual exploitation of thousands of poor and vulnerable children in Pakistan, the country is in denial of the ongoing child sexual abuse.

As the girls in the country are mostly at home, the victims are the boys who fall prey to paedophiles.

According to the Daily Mail, it is not uncommon for 90 per cent of the 1.5million street children to be abused and raped.

Naeem, who was gangraped by four men, is now an abuser himself. Ijaz, a bus-conductor, pays children something between Rs 50 and 100 and abuses them.

After a hard day’s work, instead of heading home, the lowly-paid conductors and his colleagues ‘spend their time’ with street children.

In the documentary, Ijaz confessed, “Once, there was a boy on the bus and everyone had sex with him. I did it too but what else could I do? They invited me. And he was that kind of boy anyway.”

Ijaz also admitted to raping 12 different children in different age groups - some as young as six year old - during his career as a bus conductor.

A recent survey of 1,800 men found that a third believe that not only is raping little boys not a crime, it's not even a bad thing to do. As a result, an estimated 90 per cent of street children have been victims of sexual abuse at some point in their lives.

“It is a sad and shameful aspect of our society. I am quite embarrassed that we have not been able to protect them,” Imaran Khan told Channel 4.

What is disheartening is that the drivers don’t think they have done anything wrong. Many of these paedophiles are open about their desires.

According to the Daily Mail, about four million children in Pakistan are forced into work from an early age because of poverty and of those. Out of those, more than a million live on the streets where they become easy prey to these sexual predators.

Watch: Pakistan's hidden shame