For many who experience sexual abuse as children, the incident can remain difficult to speak about even into adulthood. Fear, shame, family pressure, and uncertainty about whom to share with can leave experiences undocumented, even when they have lasting effects on the victim.
This makes it difficult to understand the scale of childhood sexual abuse in Bangladesh. Cases that reach the police, courts, or news media represent only a portion of what happens, while many others remain within families, schools, and other closed environments.
A new website, awaz.bd, is attempting to address part of that information gap by allowing people to anonymously document experiences of sexual abuse during childhood. The submissions are presented as aggregated statistics rather than identifiable accusations. The platform says it does not publish names, photographs, or other identifying information, and the submitted information is not stored anywhere.
The website describes itself as an awareness platform rather than a legal or support service. Within 72 hours of its launch at 4 pm on September 7, 124 people had submitted accounts, according to the platform's creators.
The proposition is relatively simple: if many experiences of childhood sexual abuse remain private, could an anonymous platform make some of those experiences visible enough to reveal patterns?
Awaz.bd was primarily developed by Rakibul Hasan, 27, and Salahuddin Jahangir, 42. Rakibul studied international relations at Dhaka University and works as an online entrepreneur, while Jahangir is pursuing an MPhil at Islamic University in Kushtia and works for a private organisation.
Rakibul told The Daily Star that the idea emerged after several cases involving the sexual abuse of boys, particularly in madrasahs, came to light. The initial plan was therefore to document cases involving boys in madrasahs, but the platform received accounts from people of different genders and from different types of educational institutions after its launch.
The creators were also influenced by the response to GhushSite, a recently built online platform that collects anonymous reports of alleged bribe demands. Their thinking was that a similar model could be used to document an issue that is often difficult to measure, because many victims never formally report what happened to them.
Rakibul said the objective is not to provide legal assistance or operate as a reporting authority, but to create awareness and put pressure on institutions and policymakers to address child sexual abuse. The distinction matters because an anonymous account can document a person's experience, but it cannot by itself establish that an allegation is true.
Since its launch, awaz.bd has continued to collect anonymous accounts of childhood sexual abuse, with the number of submissions now reaching 124. The platform's growing dataset offers a broader picture of the circumstances in which respondents say the abuse took place. However, it remains a self-selected collection of accounts rather than a representative survey of Bangladesh.
The platform creators shared that as of the current time of writing, the reports are almost evenly divided by gender, with boys accounting for 66 reports, or 53%, and girls 58, or 47%. The largest age group among boys was 10–12, with 31 reports, or 32%. Among girls, those aged seven to nine accounted for nine reports, also 32%.
The data suggests that abuse is not confined to strangers or institutions. 10% of respondents said they were abused by family members, with the figure rising to 18% among girls.
Home was the most commonly reported location, accounting for 49% of submissions. Religious and educational institutions accounted for another 33%, followed by open or public places at 10% and commercial or transport locations at 7%.
Among religious and educational institutions, Qawmi madrasahs represented the largest category, with 21 reports, or 51% of reports in that group. Mosques accounted for seven reports and schools six.
The frequency of incidents is also notable. Nearly half of the submissions, 59 reports or 48%, describe abuse occurring multiple times. One-time incidents accounted for 36%, while 16% were categorised as long-term. Dhaka has recorded the highest number of submissions, with 26 reports, followed by Chattogram with 10 and Cumilla with 8.
Educational institutions account for another significant part of the platform's dataset. 36% of respondents said they experienced sexual abuse at educational institutions. Among those reports, 56% were associated with Qawmi madrasahs and 19% with schools, while Alia madrasahs, mosques, and universities were also mentioned.
Some accounts describe residential settings where children lived alongside older students. Others involve teachers or adults who had access to children outside regular classroom settings.
One respondent described being abused while studying at a Qawmi madrasah. Another said they were abused several times by an older student while staying at a village school.
The accounts point to a broader challenge in institutional safeguarding: children may spend significant periods away from their parents while remaining dependent on adults and older students for supervision and care.
But the platform's data cannot establish whether particular institutions failed to protect children or whether an individual accused in an anonymous submission committed an offence. Those questions require independent investigation.
The behaviour awaz.bd is attempting to document is not necessarily visible through official statistics.
A person who experiences abuse may tell a family member, a friend, or nobody at all. Families may choose not to report an incident. Children may not understand what happened to them at the time, while fear or social stigma can prevent them from speaking later. As a result, formal complaints capture only those cases that enter a reporting or legal system.
The creators of the platform say that Awaz.bd changes the form in which such experiences can be recorded. Instead of requiring a victim to identify themselves publicly or approach an institution, it provides an anonymous channel through which an account can become part of an aggregated dataset.
That does not turn an anonymous account into verified evidence. It does, however, create the possibility of identifying recurring patterns that might otherwise remain scattered across individual memories and private conversations.
For the platform's creators, that visibility is the main objective.
Rakibul said they want the government and madrasah boards to take active steps to prevent sexual abuse in madrasahs and that they hope awaz.bd can create public pressure for action.
The usefulness of awaz.bd will ultimately depend on what happens beyond the collection of accounts.
An anonymous platform can lower the barrier to speaking about an experience, but anonymity also makes verification difficult. The initial 124 accounts cannot be treated as a national estimate of childhood sexual abuse, nor can individual allegations be treated as established facts.
There is also a distinction between documenting an experience and helping someone who has experienced abuse. Awaz.bd currently describes itself as an awareness platform, not a help centre or legal assistance service. That means its role is narrower than that of child protection organisations, law enforcement agencies, healthcare providers, or legal services. If the information it collects is to lead to meaningful action, there would need to be mechanisms beyond the platform for prevention, reporting, investigation, and support.
Awaz.bd cannot establish the full scale of that crisis through 45 anonymous accounts. Nor can a database replace formal investigations or child protection systems. What it can do, at least in its current form, is make experiences that often remain private easier to see collectively.
Whether that visibility can translate into better protection for children will depend on what our institutions, policymakers, and society do with the information once it is visible.
