'The first time I was sexually harassed was...' goes viral

A growing number of sexual harassment incidents have recently been reported by several media outlets. As most of the cases happened to be little kids, this encouraged a group of social media users to launch a hashtag entitled: “The first time I was sexually harassed was…" telling their stories of the first time they were subjected to verbal and physical sexual harassment.

Surprisngly the hasthag went viral, sharing several shocking stories of girls who have experienced physical and verbal sexual harassment when they were not more than 5 years old, mostly from people close to them and family members. The stories were told not only by 'females', as some boys were courageous enough to tell people that they too were harassed when they were young: "My father's friend put his hand into my short pants when I was 5," one of the hashtag supporters said.

What's worse is that several stories showed poor parent's reactions when told: they were either angry and blamed their kid for not telling them earlier, or accused the child of being guilty for letting the harasser abuse him or her; and sometimes parents did not believe their children's stories, particularly if the abuser was a close friend or a relative who is supposed to be a "trusted person".

“I did not want to narrate what happened but it’s the perfect timing to do so; I was 9 years old and my parents were fighting for more than one month. My father used to sleep next to me everyday, and one day I was sexually harassed by him. At that time I did not realize that this is sexual assault, but even if I had known, I would've never imagined that my own father was harassing me” said 'meme nassaer', a Facebook user, on her account.

While Sohaila serag eldin said that the first time she was harassed was when she was 9 year old, she was buying bread from the bakery and someone bumped her shoulder very hard; then, as he apologized, he touched her body. She ran home and was frightened. Her fear of men in general lasted for a very long time and was scared that anyone would touch her again.

"My cousin was sexually assaulting me for several years when I was eight, I was afraid to tell my father because he was very strict; but at last I told my mother who told me I was the guilty one, because I did not tell them earlier," another hashtag supporter said.

While Nada Hamd said that the first attempt when she was four years old was from her cousin; the second one, she was 10 when her father's friend who aged 55 years old tried to assault her and the third attempt was from her uncle.

“I can remember everything until now, I was 11 years old; I went to the zoo during Eid vacation along with my sister and cousin. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by 5 to 8 men and every one of them was touching a part of my body, my cousin and my sister were yelling at people to save me, but nobody cared,” said a Facebook user.

That day she returned home emotionally devastated and hugged her mother for many hours with tears on her face, saying “I will never again hang out in Eid vacation for the rest of my life!”

While Mayam Mahmoud said that she was harassed when she was 4-year-old; "On my way back from the nursery one day, there was standing water on the street and I was watching young boys playing with it, one of them saw me and suddenly grabbed me and tried to kiss me, I pushed him and I ran home."

"I told my mother what happened, but the most painful part of the story was her first comment to me, she said: “Did any of the neighbors see you?!' ”

Mustafa Al-Tayeb also posted on the hashtag, telling his story, saying that that the first sexual harassment attempt he suffered was when he was 5 years old: “Not only girls are harassed. Stop hiding the issue, we are older now and we realized what happened to us,” he commented.

Hala Hammad, a professor of psychiatry said that whoever harasses a child is an abnormal person, noting that it is a moral disorder, not a psychological one. In an interview with Al-Hayat Al-Youm, she said that studies showed that harassers typically abuse around 20 people in their lifetime, pointing out that 60 percent of the incidents of child sexual abuse are from relatives or acquaintances.

“A person who harasses children is doubtlessly suffering a psychological disorder; he might be antisocial or psychopathic because he lacks emotion and feeling during his harassment attempt,” Gamal Farweiz a psychiatrist told Egypt Independent. Farweiz believes that the harasser will not stop; he will go on repeating the attempts with several people, his sister, friend, cousin, and maybe even his own kids, pointing out that most of the children who have been sexually assaulted have been assaulted by their relatives.

Farweiz said that the increase in the number of children's sexual assaults is mainly due to the media and to the lack of culture in the society; “Our country ignored culture many years ago, and now people are making their personalities from media and movies, which unfortunately lacks principals and morals,” he said.

He explained that we are currently suffering a painful deterioration in the cinema industry as most of the movies are about the same scenario that includes a belly dancer and a bully; the movies include many inappropriate sexual contents and several harassing scenes by the leading actor, which may affect people’s perception about sexual harassment.

According to Farweiz, the spread of media websites throughout the country played a pivotal role in increasing the incidents of sexual harassment, as the frequent coverage of sexual harassment on a daily basis encourages harassers to repeat the act as if it would seem common and popular.

Meanwhile, speaking to Al-Kahera Wel Nas television channel, Sara Aziz, a certified counselor for children who are victims of molestation, said that those who abuse children are often people they already play with, know and have a concrete friendship with. "He could be the uncle, the father, the grandfather, the neighbor, the brother, the house guard, the sports trainer or the teacher,” Aziz said.

Aziz is the founder an Egyptian NGO called "SAFE", which is seeking to tackle the problem head on, by raising awareness among both children and parents; encouraging victims to speak up and start a process of healing.

“We don’t have statistics, but the occurrence of child sexual abuse is noticeable in Egypt. In most of these incidents, the abuser is a family member, and 93 percent of the world’s statistics reflect that,” Aziz said.

“Unfortunately, most of the incidents happen to victims between the ages of three and nine years,” Mariam Nader, project manager for SAFE, tells Egypt Independent.

SAFE gives informative sessions to children and parents to raise their awareness about sexual abuse, while offering psychotherapy sessions for children who have already been sexually abused.