Where do children go when society breaks down?

A farmer may sow the best seeds, water the field on time and wait for harvest with hope. But if the land itself has turned toxic, what can grow there?

A society is also cultivated. Children grow not only under law, family names and school routines, but inside a social soil made of trust, restraint, conscience, responsibility and collective care. When that soil weakens, a child may still have a home, a school, a neighbour, a relative and a community – but none of them necessarily remains a place of safety.

After the rape and killing of eight-year-old Ramisa Akter in Dhaka's Pallabi, the country erupted in anger. But Ramisa's case unsettled people not only because of the crime. It unsettled them because of where it happened.

She was not taken from a distant road or an unknown place. She lived with her family beside the accused couple's residence. Reports say that while her family was searching for her, one of her shoes was found near the neighbour's flat. Police later recovered her mutilated body from inside that flat. The main accused, Sohel Rana, was arrested and later gave a confessional statement before a Dhaka court, according to police and court officials.

The fear also enters ordinary family conversations. My mother recalls a childhood when children moved from one neighbourhood to another, climbed trees, played in open spaces and returned home when someone called them back. "We were scolded for playing too much or coming home late. Now parents are afraid of who their children are with," she said.

My own childhood had a different version of that freedom. Rooftops were once shared spaces where neighbours gathered, children played and families knew one another. Today, I barely visit my neighbours' homes; they do not come to ours. The social closeness that once made neighbourhoods feel familiar has thinned into distance and suspicion.

That loss of trust would be painful enough if it came from one case. But Ramisa is not an isolated wound. Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) said that from January to 20 May this year, at least 118 children were victims of rape, while 46 others faced attempted rape. During the same period, 14 children were killed following rape, three were killed after failed rape attempts, and two reportedly died by suicide after rape. ASK said these incidents expose severe weaknesses in the country's child protection system and reflect a broader crisis of social accountability.

Recent reports show the same fear spreading across familiar spaces. In Banasree, the death of a 10-year-old madrasa student is being investigated in a case involving rape allegations and abetment to suicide. In Munshiganj's Sirajdikhan, a man allegedly raped and strangled his 10-year-old niece. In Netrokona's Madan upazila, an 11-year-old madrasa student became pregnant after alleged rape by a madrasa teacher. A year earlier, eight-year-old Asiya died in Magura after being raped while visiting her elder sister's in-laws' house; a court later sentenced the prime accused to death.

If one case horrifies a nation, a chain of cases should force it to examine itself.

Yet the public conversation almost always returns to punishment. Death penalty. Speedy trial. Special tribunal. Maximum punishment. In some public discussions, even Sharia-based punishment is raised as an answer. The anger is understandable. People are tired of promises. They want fear to return to the mind of the offender. They want the state to show that a child's life cannot be destroyed without consequence.

But punishment answers only what should happen after the crime. It does not answer why the crime became possible in the first place.

This is where the question becomes deeper than law.

Bangladesh is not facing only a legal crisis. It is facing a crisis of social structure, conscience and restraint. The danger is repeatedly emerging from inside the circle of trust — relatives, neighbours, teachers, madrasa-linked figures, local youths and familiar adults.

A child is not supposed to feel unsafe with a father, brother, uncle, teacher or neighbour. These relationships are supposed to create protection. When they become sources of fear, the crack is not only in law enforcement. It is in the moral foundation of society.

This fear is no longer theoretical. It now appears in ordinary family conversations, in how mothers think about daughters, sons, schools, hostels and neighbourhoods.Three of my cousins bring different fears into focus. Juthi, whose daughter studies at a university and lives in a hostel, said a campus should mean learning and independence, but mothers now worry even from a distance whenever a disturbing incident makes news. "My daughter is grown up, but that does not end a mother's fear," she said. "Every time I hear of something happening to a girl, I start thinking whether my own child is safe where she is."

Jeba, whose son is still little, carries a different fear. "I want him to play, mix with people and grow normally," she said. "But now every ordinary thing makes me anxious – whose house he is entering, who is around him, whether someone is watching."

Joba, a mother of two boys, put the concern differently. "We always talk about protecting children, but we also have to talk about how boys are being raised," she said. "A child learns from home first – how to respect others, how to control himself, how to understand boundaries."

Experts also point to the same collapse of trust. Zobaida Nasreen, professor at the Department of Anthropology at Dhaka University, told TBS that children are particularly vulnerable because they often cannot tell anyone about abuse, and even when they do, people may not believe them. She said children are increasingly falling victim to acquaintances – "relatives, neighbours, teachers."

That observation should disturb the country more deeply than any slogan. It means the threat is not only outside society. It is being produced within society. A society can endure crime by strangers. But it begins to collapse when the familiar becomes frightening. When the known adult becomes dangerous, a child loses not only physical safety but the basic map of belonging. The home is no longer automatically safe. The school is no longer automatically safe. The neighbour is no longer automatically trusted. The community no longer works as a shield.

So the harder question is not only why crimes are increasing. The harder question is why restraints are decreasing.

Why is fear of law so weak? Why is shame so weak? Why is community intervention so weak? Why are schools and madrasas not built around safeguarding? Why do families still treat many risks as private matters? Why do neighbourhoods remain silent until a child is dead, missing, hospitalised or turned into a headline?

Psychology explains the collapse of inner restraint; criminology explains how that collapse turns into opportunity. Research on moral disengagement shows how people can detach harmful conduct from their own sense of right and wrong by minimising harm, shifting blame or denying the victim's full humanity. David Finkelhor's framework also looks at how an offender crosses barriers: motivation, overcoming conscience, bypassing outside protectors and exploiting a child's vulnerability. In plain language, such crimes do not happen only because of opportunity. They happen when internal restraint collapses, external protection is missing, and the offender sees a child as powerless.

Criminology gives another way to understand this collapse. Routine activity theory says a predatory crime becomes possible when three things meet: a motivated offender, a vulnerable target and the absence of a capable guardian. In simple terms, that means an offender, a child made vulnerable by access or circumstances, and the failure of people or institutions that should have been able to notice, stop or discourage the crime. In Bangladesh's case, the problem is not only the offender. It is also the weakening of that protective circle – inside buildings, classrooms, madrasas, neighbourhoods and sometimes even families.

The answer, then, is not one thing. It is psychological, moral and social at once – power, entitlement, opportunity, silence, impunity, weak institutions and the failure of moral restraint all working together. Moral decay does not usually begin with one sudden collapse. It grows when people learn that power can be used without consequence, when children are treated as weak dependants rather than full human beings, when violence inside families is normalised, when shame protects the powerful, and when law feels distant.

A child is targeted not because of anything the child does, but because the offender sees vulnerability, access and low risk. Over time, the inner voice that should say "this is a child, this is forbidden, this is unthinkable" becomes weaker in some people, while the outer barriers around the child also weaken. That is the brutal meaning of social breakdown: the weakest person becomes the easiest target.

Dr Towhidul Haque, a criminology expert and associate professor at the Institute of Social Welfare and Research at Dhaka University, told TBS that violence against children is not only increasing in number but also becoming more brutal. He said lengthy trials, weak enforcement and a society that is not child-friendly are helping such violence continue.

The same erosion is visible outside the home as well, in neighbourhoods that no longer feel protective. The rise of so-called kishor gangs is not the same issue as violence against children, but it reflects the same erosion of local protection. In many areas, local boys who should have grown into a community's future have become part of its fear. Dhaka Tribune reported fear in Mohammadpur and Adabor amid teen gangs, extortion and street crime, with residents saying victims often avoid complaints out of fear.

This is why law alone cannot repair the soil. Enforcement is necessary, but protection has to begin earlier – in how institutions screen adults, how schools handle complaints, how madrasas are monitored, how building communities know who has access to children, how families talk about risk, and how quickly people can seek help without stigma or fear.

Punishment allows society to locate the crime in one person – the accused. But foundation forces society to look at itself. It asks why a neighbour could become a threat, why a teacher could abuse trust, why a relative could turn a family space into danger, why a local youth could grow into a source of fear, and why communities often wake up only after a child has been harmed or killed.

Ramisa's killing has brought people to the streets. Asiya's death did the same a year earlier. The names change, the slogans return, the promises are repeated. But if each outrage ends only in punishment, the soil remains poisoned. Amid the calls for justice, few are asking where we stand as a society – and what has broken within us.

Justice is necessary. But justice after death cannot be the only protection a child receives.

The country must now ask the question it has avoided for too long: where is our foundation, if children are unsafe not only outside the home, but also inside the very relationships that were meant to protect them?