If you want to talk about Epstein, start here

Every time a global child-sex scandal breaks, men here line up to perform outrage -- loud condemnations, moral chest-thumping and long sermons about how “we are not like that”.

Except we are; just without an island or a jet.

In Bangladesh, sexual abuse of children is not rare, not imported, nor exceptional -- it is hidden in plain sight. The predators here don’t need passports or private planes, they need access. And we hand that to them every day through silence, denial, marriage contracts, and a culture that refuses to name what it is doing to its children.

Let’s start with the numbers we prefer not to say out loud.

A four-year analysis of child abuse indicators in Bangladesh shows a sharp rise in reported sexual violence against children, alongside a dramatic increase in help-seeking through the national 1098 child helpline.

Read more

Sexual abuse is part of life for street children

Calls related to abuse jumped from just over 8,000 in 2022 to more than 26,000 by 2025. These are not rumours or “western conspiracies”. These are our own children calling for help, often after the abuse has already happened, and always by our own men.

And here’s the part that makes people uncomfortable: most child sexual abuse is not committed by strangers. It happens at home, in schools, in madrasas, in neighbourhoods -- by relatives, teachers, family friends, and authority figures, men that children are taught to trust.

So, when people scoff and say, “At least we don’t have Epsteins”, what they really mean is, “Our abusers are respectable. They don’t make headlines.”

Then there is child marriage -- the most socially accepted form of child abuse in this country. And please, let’s stop pretending otherwise.

When a girl under 18 is married to an adult man, consent is a legal fiction. Her body is not ready, her mind is not ready, her ability to say “no” does not exist. Every sexual act within that marriage is coerced by age, power, and dependence.

Rights organisations estimate that despite legal prohibitions, a significant proportion of Bangladeshi girls are still, to this day, married before adulthood, often to much older men. These marriages are defended loudly in the name of morality, yet they expose girls to early pregnancy, marital rape, lifelong trauma, and loss of education.

If a 12-year-old girl cannot legally vote, drive, or sign a contract, what moral gymnastics allow her to be handed over for sex and pregnancy?

Call it what it is. Child abuse.

International and local child-rights groups have repeatedly warned that child marriage functions as a pipeline for sexual exploitation. Once a girl is married, abuse becomes invisible. There are no helplines or even laws for their “marital rights”.

And this is where the hypocrisy peaks.

Read more

Protect children from rape, sexual abuse

The same voices that roar against western predators fall silent -- or worse, defensive -- when the predator is a husband, a teacher, or a “respected” member of society. Suddenly, the conversation shifts to “values”, “discipline”, and “protecting family honour”. Suddenly, the child disappears from the frame.

Bangladesh’s own data now acknowledges that child abuse has reached crisis proportions -- with rights organisations calling it a national crisis just last year. But crisis language means nothing if we keep carefully avoiding the words sexual violence and sexual exploitation. Sex with children, we must confront.

And confrontation requires honesty.

It requires men to stop pretending that predators look like movie villains; they can look like community leaders, like uncles, like grooms, like politicians and even scholars.

So, no, we do not get to feel superior because our abusers are not famous. We do not get to hide behind outrage about distant islands while ignoring the bedrooms, classrooms, and marriages where children are being violated every day in our own country.

If you want to talk about Epstein, start here. Start with the men who never needed a plane ticket; start with the laws we refuse to enforce; start with the girls we keep marrying off under the sickening guise of “protection”.

Get off your high horses, because we have our predators at home.

We have our own “Epsteins”, minus the international headlines and private jets.