Our research included a detailed survey with 63 social support workers who are on the frontline of supporting boys subjected to sexual exploitation and abuse. Inaccessible education and poverty are widely established as vulnerability factors for sexual exploitation, with boys known to be especially at risk when engaged in hawking, begging, scavenging, and other informal work.
In Pakistan, rigidly defined gender norms present that males are characterised by strength, dominance, and the ability to protect themselves. As a result, boys are led to ignore or minimise emotional pain, and refrain from help-seeking. Anger may be one of the few socially acceptable emotions. The surveyed support workers confirmed the impact of social and gender norms and noted that boys tended to be referred for support for anger and acting out behaviours, as opposed to support for s exual exploitation.
In Pakistan, boys are more likely to be found engag ed in child labor and street situations compared to girls. In these settings they are vulnerable to sexual exploitation, with Pakistani boy laborers recorded as subjected to sexual exploitation in factories, mines, and workshops. Support workers reiterated the links between sexual exploitation of boys and child labour:. Support workers were asked about the most commonly observed types of relationships that were involved with the sexual exploitation of boys:.
It takes a lot of sessions and a lot of reassurance of privacy [and] confidentiality before the client [is] eventually [able to] open up about it. Support workers noted that they faced additional struggles in building rapport with boys , and identifying sexual abuse amidst numerous other intersecting challenges. This was especially relevant for boys working in exploitative or high-risk environments, such as those living or working on the street.
Support workers agreed that social support systems are underdeveloped in Pakistan. Policies and procedures need further work, particularly support for their implementation in reality. However, the impact of social and gender norms was regularly flagged by many support workers as an underlying reason for this underdevelopment. Several noted that the sexual exploitation of boys is not seen publicly as a child protection issue, thus is not prioritised in services.
