KABUL (AFGHANISTAN)
The New York Times
November 25, 2019
By David Zucchino and Fatima Faizi
An advocacy group says it has documented systematic sexual abuse by teachers, principals and other authorities of dozens of boys in one rural area.
The 14-year-old Afghan boy said his teacher had asked him for “a little favor” in return for not failing him on his final exams. Then the man took him to the school library, locked the door and raped him, the boy said.
At the same school, a 17-year-old boy reported similar treatment from the school’s principal. He said the man had threatened to kill him if he told anyone.
But the boys did talk, giving their accounts to a child advocacy group in their province and repeating them later in interviews with The New York Times. The advocacy group discovered that those two boys were not the only victims. From just three schools in one area of Logar Province, south of the Afghan capital, the group said it had taken statements from 165 boys who said they had been sexually abused at their schools, or by local officials they went to for help.
Now, Afghanistan is again caught up in discussion of rampant sexual abuse of children, and of a deep reluctance by many officials to deal with the issue at all.
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