The Boy Child and the Cycle of Violence: Why Rape Prevention Requires Looking at Male Vulnerability
The writer argues that while advocacy for the girl child is necessary and important, a parallel neglect of the boy child—particularly vulnerable boys in poverty, conflict, and street life—has created a generation of men shaped by victimhood and deprivation. Real prevention of sexual violence, the piece contends, requires understanding the conditions that produce perpetrators, not only protecting targets.
"I think it is time to start a new campaign to mould the boy child. The new generation of boys seem to be posing much danger to the advocacies for the girl child over time."
The above is a quote from a post talking about a girl that was murdered by four men after resisting their attempts to rape her. Rape will never be justifiable no matter the case but I want you to read that statement above again especially where it talks about "advocacies for the girl child."
For a very long time, the world has recognized the vulnerability of the girl child and many organizations have been formed to protect these girls from exploitation especially by "grown" men. In that time, the boy child has been left with no one to look out for him.
When Boko Haram abducted some girls, the whole world was on #bringbackourgirls and rightfully so. BUT We easily forget that the largest victims by far of those terrorist organizations were young boys with thousands of them forced to become child soldiers. How many organizations are out here particularly focused on looking out for vulnerable young boys? I am certain the number pales in comparison to those with programs specifically to help young girls and women.
Today, even as statistics across the world show more women graduating from college compared to men, one would have thought it is time to start looking at the boys too but that is not the case. A larger number of street children continue to be boys. Boys who are also victims and will grow up to be the men raping our girls and women violently amongst other crimes. You may ask me here not to sympathize with these rapists and I won't but I can empathize. I can see how they ended up there.
Maybe if we start looking at these new generation of men as some sort of victims left with no choice but to victimize others, we will start finding solutions - real solutions.
This does not cover all the types of rape that can occur in anyway but the violent ones I think come from males who are likely to be victims themselves.
Written in June 2020, amid renewed global attention to sexual violence and gender-based harm, the piece responds to a specific case of femicide and the call for 'boy-child moulding' as a remedy. It reflects a moment when gender advocacy in Cameroon and globally was increasingly polarized, with gains for girls' education and protection coexisting with minimal institutional attention to boys in precarious circumstances.
The piece refuses easy moral clarity without abandoning it—acknowledging rape as unjustifiable while insisting that prevention requires empathy for the material and social conditions that shape perpetrators. It remains urgent because it names a structural silence: the boy child left to fend for himself in contexts of poverty, conflict, and displacement often becomes both victim and perpetrator, yet receives neither protection nor intervention. The argument challenges advocacy frameworks that protect one group by implicitly writing off another.