Lin Abdul Rahman, DrPH ’24, has spent a profession advocating for kids who’ve suffered sexual abuse, even whereas therapeutic from his personal childhood trauma.
January 30, 2023 – In 2014, Eirliani (“Lin”) Abdul Rahman awakened one morning with a daring concept: he would ski to the North Pole.
She was ending a three-year posting in India as a Singaporean diplomat and embarking on a brand new profession as an advocate in opposition to human trafficking and youngster sexual abuse. “The media like loopy concepts, proper?” she mentioned. “You would need to marvel why a diplomat from a tropical island would ski to the North Pole. After which he might inform my story.
Abdul Rahman has been passionately and surprisingly telling his story, and together with it the story of different survivors of sexual abuse and trafficking, to convey worldwide consideration to the problem. Her efforts have led to viral video campaigns considered by tens of millions of viewers on-line as she volunteered with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s nonprofit group, two books on the topic, the founding of her personal advocacy group survivors and a gathering final fall on the Vatican. with the Pope for the inauguration of the World Day for the Prevention and Therapeutic of Youngster Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence.
As a doctoral pupil on the Harvard TH Chan College of Public Well being, Abdul Rahman is now conducting analysis into the best way authorities report and deal with youngster trafficking, specializing in the thorny points round consent. “Once we rescue kids, we ask them the place they wish to go. They usually wish to return to their caregivers,” he mentioned. Sadly, those self same caregivers typically perpetrate the abuse and re-traffick the kids. “Kids’s voices have to be heard. Might we develop an idea of consent primarily based on a toddler’s evolving capacities?” requested Abdul Rahman, Prajna Management and Julio Frenk DrPH Fellow at Harvard Chan College.
In one other line of his analysis, he’s inspecting the ideas of “knowledgeable consent” round conducting analysis on youngster trafficking itself. Typically a survivor might consent to their info being utilized in one knowledge set in a single context, however then that nameless knowledge can be utilized with different knowledge units to make the survivor identifiable. “We have to perceive the ramifications of consent points in order that we don’t proceed the oppression and injustice dedicated in opposition to surviving kids,” mentioned Abdul Rahman.
Richard Siegrist, college director of Harvard Chan College’s DrPH program, mentioned Abdul Rahman exemplifies the dedication of DrPH college students to public well being advocacy. “Her intensive writing of him and his discourse on youngster sexual abuse, ladies’s empowerment and misinformation have influenced the narrative,” he mentioned. “I’m particularly impressed by his willingness to defend his public well being beliefs in tough conditions.”
Give voice to the unvoiced
Abdul Rahman is a survivor of kid sexual abuse, dedicated by somebody near her as a toddler. She recounted her expertise beneath a pen identify of hers in her 2021 e book, “The Forgotten Years,” which was nominated for the Singapore Literature Prize. When she was 17, she watched a documentary about dowry burning, a observe in India by which her husband’s household burns a bride to loss of life for inadequate dowry. He ignited one thing in her. “So I promised that I might give a voice to the unvoiced,” she mentioned.
After a decade within the Singaporean international service, with postings in Berlin and New Delhi, she obtained her break when she started volunteering for Satyarthi, a veteran anti-child labor activist. Abdul Rahman campaigned and helped produce a video on the problem that went viral on social media, reaching 18 million viewers in six weeks. This led to her turning into a founding member of Twitter’s Belief and Security Council to assist with on-line safety for kids. She later based her personal non-profit group, YAKIN (Youth, Grownup Survivors & Kin in Want), and co-authored the 2017 e book “Survivors: Breaking the Silence on Youngster Sexual Abuse,” which featured her interviews with 12 women and men who had been abused
When Abdul Rahman determined to ski to the North Pole, she had by no means skied earlier than. She so she linked with a number of nationally ranked skiers and educated in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, from January 2017 to February 2020, whereas persevering with her work in opposition to youngster exploitation. “I picked it up fairly shortly and now I find it irresistible,” she mentioned. She grew to become the primary Singaporean to circumnavigate Canada’s frozen Frobisher Bay and had deliberate to ski to the North Pole from Russia, however the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s warfare in opposition to Ukraine pressured her to place her desires on maintain. for now.
Final December, Abdul Rahman made world headlines when she and a number of other different members resigned from Twitter’s Belief and Security Council shortly after Elon Musk took management of the corporate. They had been alarmed by the meteoric rise of hate speech on the platform. “For me, it was untenable, I could not keep on the board in good conscience,” she mentioned. She spoke out in opposition to the adjustments on Twitter, together with in a December 12, 2022 interview on NPR. That very same day, Musk dissolved the council completely.
In additional optimistic information, Abdul Rahman was a part of the survivor-led coalition, the World Collaborative (GC), which lobbied the United Nations to determine a World Day for the Prevention and Therapeutic of Youngster Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence. The GC was based by Jennifer Wortham, a analysis affiliate in Harvard’s Human Empowerment Program, led by Tyler VanderWeele, John L. Loeb, and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology on the Harvard Chan College. Abdul Rahman took half in a panel dialogue on the brand new World Day on November 18 on the Vatican, and the subsequent day he had a non-public viewers with the Pope, utilizing his grandmother’s ring as a supply of power.
“She was a feminist and a power for good in our household,” she mentioned. “It was extremely transferring for me to hold her spirit with me.” For Abdul Rahman, the second was an indication of how far she had are available reclaiming her personal previous, as a girl of shade and a first-generation school pupil now incomes a Ph.D. at Harvard. “I hope that simply being me and being vocal,” she mentioned, “she’s going to enable different children that come after me to have a voice too.”
– michael blanding
Picture: Kent Dayton