JEDDAH, 5 June 2006 — The National Society for Human Rights is taking up the case of a 20-year-old Pakistani girl who has fled her home claiming sexual and physical abuse by her father.

Dr. Hussain Al-Sharif, member of the NSHR, speaking to Arab News yesterday, said: “We are aware of the case and will be following procedures to see justice. The first thing to do, in such instances, is to file an official complaint and we will be taking the victim to the police tomorrow to lodge one.”

Al-Sharif added that in such cases vulnerable victims are then taken to a shelter provided by the Ministry of Social Affairs.

The girl claims to have been continuously abused by her father for the last three years. What makes matters worse is the fact that allegedly the girl’s mother knew about the abuse. According to the girl, whose name is Zarni, her mother had given her a simple choice of either running away from the hell she was living in or accepting her miserable state and constantly thinking what the consequences of her action would have on her brothers and sisters. Zarni says her mother was herself terrified of her violent and abusive father.

The young girl has remained silent for more than three years, not out of her own choice but rather because she didn’t know where or who to turn to. Zarni said she was afraid to go to the police fearing they wouldn’t believe her.

The reason why she felt that the police wouldn’t believe her was simply because her pleas for help from her relatives were either ignored or not believed, she said.

Her neighbors knew that she was being beaten but had no knowledge that her father was also repeatedly raping her. Fear of humiliation made her keep this abuse a deep dark secret that defied all laws of human morality. When her father’s perverted desires came to surface, she said, a beast would be unleashed and if she was to refuse his advances he would lock her up in a dark room without food or water.

“He would threaten my mother, brothers and sisters that he would place them in a tub filled with water and electrify them to death if they gave me any food,” Zarni told Arab News.

Shock, disbelief, fear, anger and the rationale that this cannot be happening to her raged in Zarni’s young mind as she recalled her father assaulting her for the first time. “I cried for three days. I directly went to my relatives and told them about my father’s action, but they told me to go back to him.”

Zarni said that her father changed five years ago when he became mentally deranged after finding out a woman he loved back in Pakistan had been murdered. “He began breaking things around the house, and hitting himself,” she said, adding that he continued behaving like that for more than a year.

“At the time my grandmother did some black magic on him to make him better. It appeared that he was improving and then shortly after, he began abusing me and blaming me saying that I reminded him of his dead lover in Pakistan,” said Zarni.

Zarni’s neighbor Umm Abdul Aziz, a Pakistani national, found out about Zarni’s cries for help through other neighbors. “I was informed a week ago by a neighbor that she was running hysterically in the street, crying out for help,” said Umm Abdul Aziz.

Umm Abdul Aziz has a tendency of helping such troubled women and offered to help the young woman. The case is now going to be brought up before the NSHR.

Tears filled Zarni’s eyes when she said: “I have tried to commit suicide a number of times.”