Sexual aberration at its worst

Sex crimes have all the making of an epidemic in the country. Not a single day passes without a report on sexual predatoriness from some corner of this land that emerged independent at the cost of the ultimate dishonour of about 300,000 women and girls alongside the sacrifice of 3.0 million lives. If this is a cause for serious concern, the increasing contagiousness of the sex offence in educational institutions from primary school to highest seats of learning should give society a nightmarish time.

A number of charges of sexual assaults or harassment brought against teachers of different universities give the impression that some sex predators have infiltrated the revered profession. In the latest case, the main accusation is not levelled against any teacher but a classmate by now deceased Fairuj Sadaf Abantika, a student of the department of law at the Jagannath University. However, what really acted as an additional instigation for the girl to commit suicide is the role of an assistant proctor of the varsity. Instead of helping the girl, the assistant proctor supported the accused and behaved rudely with her.

Only last week two teachers including the head of the human resource management department of Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University (JKKNIU), Trishal were permanently removed from service in the face of protest by students. The charge against them is similar with the only difference that the main accused here was an assistant professor whom the chairman of the department supported rather than taking the complaint of the victim, a girl student of the same department, of sexual harassment seriously.

In both cases, the senior teachers became a party to the sexual maltreatment by default. Fortunately, the student of JKKNIU did not end her life prematurely like the student of the Jagannath University. Last month also saw the termination of job of a teacher of the chemistry department of Chittagong University for attempted rape of a girl student while submitting her thesis paper. Before that a teacher of the mass communication and journalism department of the University of Dhaka was sent on a three-month break for his alleged sexual and mental harassment of a female student of the department.

There has been a slew of similar incidents over the past few years but the latest spate of sexual aberrations at the highest seats of learning has surpassed all past records. So far as the abhorrent records are concerned, no university can beat that of Jahangirnagar University (JU) in Savar. An assistant professor of public health and informatics department of that university was also removed from service for 'moral turpitude' last month. An intimate photo and his indecent conversation with a girl student leaked online were considered 'moral turpitude'.

Actually, the JU has a long legacy of sexual perversion as exhibited by students, the latest of which took place in a room of the dormitory. Then years ago when such incidents were almost unheard of came the vilest --- but boastful as he announced --- admission by a student leader that he had completed a century of rapes. How did the university authorities feel when he made the public announcement of his shameful sexual spoils, the majority of those supposedly constituting students of that university?

Now a section of teachers seems to have turned predators because of their sexual overdrive. This is highly concerning. The good thing is that general students are protesting such moral deviation and the authorities are taking as stringent measures as the offences call for. But those measures, it seems, are not acting as a deterrent to the sexual aberrations. If a university teacher stoops so low as to give in to predatory instincts, the nation surely stares into a moral chasm it may fall to its doom.   

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