Where’s the uproar over abused children at welfare homes?

 

You must have heard about the hundreds of children rescued by the police from a number of so-called welfare homes and religious schools around Selangor and Negeri Sembilan amidst lurid allegations of abuses, including those of a sexual nature.

The organisation that owns and runs these homes and schools has said that at most there’s been only one or two instances of sodomy.

They further said the idea of sodomy could have come into the children’s heads from many sources, such as the internet, and not necessarily from being in their homes and schools.

As somebody who grew up in pre-internet years, and who spent six years in an all-boys residential school minding my own business and studying as hard as I could (sometimes anyway) I had to ask…sodowhat?

I’m being silly. With the internet, anybody can find the meaning of any word in seconds. I do know its meaning. It was even on the front pages of our leading newspapers not too many years ago.

All I can say about the little that I do know of this sordid story is to wonder why I am not surprised.

Unnatural segregation

The organisation in question actually has its headquarters near where I live. They took over an entire failed development project and turned it into their own enclave.

Once notorious, they’ve been lying low for many years since their controversial founder and leader passed away. But apparently they haven’t been idle.

Here’s why I’m not surprised. I often see young people, maybe the very young ones rescued by the police, in my neighbourhood. I notice how listless the kids are. They look like robots running low on battery, with just a flicker of life in them to show they’re not zombies.

I’m not a fan of forced segregation of kids especially at such an early age. It insulates them from what real life is about. Many will later find it a tough adjustment to life in a more open, competitive, multi-gender, multiracial and multi-faith society.

Cult-like existence

But perhaps that’s the whole point. Perhaps they’re being indoctrinated to be scared of the outside world, to be needy and to cling to figures of authorities in their cult-like existence.

That children can be sexually abused in such an arrangement is also not a surprise. That this can happen in a religious setting is even less of a surprise.

I haven’t seen any statistics for Malaysia, but in France it is estimated that at least 200,000 children have been sexually abused in the post-war era, when they were under the care of churches. And this number is on the low end of the estimate.

I dare say such abuses are likely to be worse in other more conservative countries. Heck even the US has its share of such abuses.

When you keep people confined in unnatural surroundings, unnatural things happen. Religious confines, whether dakwah schools or monasteries or churches or even quasi-religious ones (boarding schools for example) are as unnatural as it gets.

Deafening political silence

I’m more interested in the reactions from our religious and political authorities. These, however, have been nowhere near matching the intensity of earlier issues such as halal certificates or socks sold in thrift shops.

You would have thought the youth wings of the political parties would be leading demonstrations in the street to bring these perverts to justice. No such thing so far, and I’m not holding my breath waiting either.

The nearest has been announcements by religious authorities that they’ve been keeping an eye on this organisation because it’s deemed as a deviant group. A fatwa or two has been mentioned. Nary a word about the abused children.

That’s hardly a surprise. As far as our religious authorities are concerned, their biggest worry is that this sect may convert more Muslims to their own brand of deviant Islam.

I’m not saying those in religious authorities are totally uncaring about the plight of the children. I’m sure something is being done behind the scenes. But you won’t see much in front of the scene. The operating belief is that bringing down the reputation of any religious institution, even corrupt and despicably deviant ones, will cause every religious institution to suffer.

Blind surrender by parents

I’m actually angrier with the parents who willingly surrendered their children to these evil people, thinking they’re doing what’s best for them, even if in reality they’re doing what’s best for themselves.

By blindly surrendering their children to such people, they feel they’ve done their parental duty to obediently follow what the more 

learned

 tell them. When things go wrong, it’s then easy for them to blame fate, and not themselves.

But in reality these parents are also victims, even if not to the same extent as the children. They too have been brainwashed into thinking they somehow are not learned enough to decide what’s good for their own children.

The law and society at large, even if not the religious and political elites, shouldn’t be so lenient. These parents must answer for putting their children in harm’s way. Did they do any research? Did they ignore tell-tale signs, maybe even outright pleas for help, from their children?

Being rich is no cure

This is the dark side of blind belief. This is how many in society have willingly surrendered their brains, maybe even their heart, while surrendering their children to those who claim to be closer to God.

It’s not just poor people who have been suckered into this, probably for the simple reason that the poor can’t pay well. I often see expensive cars outside such schools and homes, usually during one of their many regular gatherings.

So being well-to-do doesn’t seem to offer any protection from being intellectually and spiritually lazy, or from being brow-beaten into thinking that others more learned than them should make important decisions for them.

If religious schooling is so important to these parents, there are many legitimate schools run by religious authorities that can educate their kids to a level that would be at least a few notches higher than zombies.

‘Deviant’ ups and downs

I would never send my kids to such schools. Heck, I wouldn’t even send any of them to a normal boarding school, such as the one I myself went to. I’ll decide what’s best for my children, until they’re old enough to decide for themselves.

As for this 

deviant

 organisation, I can see them paying a heavy price for what had happened . But I have a feeling the deviant part is the one that bothers the authorities more, plus the part about shining a light on this shameful family secret, and not so much the actual abuses themselves.

But go ahead – punish these organisations anyway, and punish them hard. Throw the books at them – holy or secular – and you can count on the support of millions of fellow Malaysians on this.

And things will go quiet for a few years, until another spate of similar incidents happen. As long as this unnatural practice of not taking responsibility for your own children continues, unnatural things will also continue to happen to them. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.