At 5 p.m. on a Saturday night, Rabeea Ahmed ’14 is working on her website when she receives an email from a sexual assault victim halfway around the world.
For Ahmed, the rest of the night will be spent in a back-and-forth that she describes as part counseling session and part suicide-prevention.
Born and raised in Pakistan, Ahmed has run a sexual assault support group for over four years, carrying her work over with her to Harvard.
Trying to exude a sense of calm to the woman on the receiving end of the email exchange, Ahmed retains her composure. Emotionally draining as it is, she says, she left her computer only when the woman on the other end wrote she was going to sleep.
“Sometimes, you have to stay up with them to prevent them from committing suicide or hurting themselves,” she says. “I have not lost anyone yet, but there is that danger, and I take that very seriously,” she says.
The Pakistani woman’s recollections of her sexual abuse were preventing her from sleeping the entire night, Ahmed says. The guilt and lack of support from her family pushed her to considering suicide, the victim told Ahmed.
Ahmed says her service, 7,000 miles away, provided the victim her sole support system.
On April 11, Ahmed launched a website, speaknowsmileagain.wordpress.com, to help reach out to sexual abuse victims across Pakistan.
She says she drew inspiration from the website for the American organization, Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.
“Many of the victims that I worked with have never found any site that was Pakistan specific and dealt with the social stigma specific to Pakistan,” she says. “When these victims go to rainn.org they do find help, but it’s not always something specific to their own circumstances.”
So Ahmed decided in the fall to create her own website, which today features posts from anonymous victims and professionals such as psychologists, as well as support resources and contact information.
WE DON’T BELIEVE YOU
“It’s normal.” “Don’t tell anyone.” “We don’t believe you.”
For young women in Pakistan, says Ahmed, these are the first words they hear when they reveal to their parents that they have been sexually abused.
To Ahmed’s surprise, abuse victims included young women and men within her own circle of friends from her native Islamabad—a fact she learned when they began approaching her for help.
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