The crime has set off an unprecedented national bout of soul-searching and outrage from the public.

KASUR, Pakistan — The second-grader’s homework assignment on Jan. 4 was to describe herself. “I am a girl,” wrote Zainab Amin, who had a perky smile and a pageboy haircut. “I am seven years old. I live in Kasur. I love mangoes.”

A poster of 7-year-old Zainab Amin, whose rape and murder in Kasur, Pakistan, shocked the nation, have been appearing throughout her community. Washington Post/Pamela Constable

Muhammad Amin Ansari, right, the father of Zainab Amin, reviews a police map tracing the girl's last known movements before her brutal death. Washington Post/Pamela Constable

The next morning, while walking to a Quran class at her aunt’s house, the little girl vanished. Five days later, her battered corpse was discovered in a garbage dump nearby. The medical examiner’s terse report hinted at the horrors she had endured while the community was frantically searching for her.

There was “mud, fecal matter, and blood on the body,” it said. There were strangulation marks on her neck. There was semen and other “signs of sexual assault,” including sodomy.

Zainab’s gruesome rape and murder followed several waves of child abductions, murders and sexual abuse that earned this economically struggling city a macabre reputation as Pakistan’s capital of child sex abuse. But it also triggered an unprecedented national bout of soul-searching, outrage and public confessions from victims of sexual abuse. Pakistan is a conservative Muslim society; child abuse is common but rarely reported, and sex education is too controversial for public schools.

‘PAKISTAN’S SHAME!’

Rape victims are often charged with adultery and jailed, and tribal councils – part of a traditional parallel justice system – have sentenced women and girls to be raped as retribution for forbidden dalliances or elopement committed by their male relatives. In most instances, state authorities do not intervene unless the case is especially egregious and attracts news coverage.

But Zainab’s case, which coincided with the #MeToo phenomenon in the United States, thrust a long-verboten topic into the public arena. Headlines screamed “Pakistan’s Shame!” The #JusticeforZainab hashtag went viral. Celebrities sent out tweets revealing childhood secrets of being molested by older men. Clerics from competing Muslim groups rushed to lead funeral prayers and protests. Provincial government officials, facing calls for their resignations, fired Kasur’s police chief and offered a reward of about $100,000 for information about the culprit.

“There is no shame in having been a victim of abuse,” tweeted Frieha Altaf, a silver-haired public relations star who confided that she had been molested by her family’s cook at age 6. She said the experience “scarred me for life” but that she had remained silent until now because the issue was a social taboo in Pakistan, “shushed away by victims’ families.”

Fashion designer Maheem Khan reported on social media that she had been sexually abused as a child by a Muslim cleric “who came to teach me the Quran. I froze in fear day after day.” She urged her fellow Pakistanis to “take a look at ourselves as a society” and parents to “listen to your children, teach them, warn them, talk to them openly about what is appropriate and what isn’t.”

Zainab’s death set off three days of violent rioting in Kasur, a gritty industrial city near the border with India where residents were already on edge after a spate of similar crimes – including a video porn ring that reportedly targeted nearly 300 children. Most cases were never solved, and some suspects were freed by the courts. Last week, as anger at authorities boiled over, three protesters were shot dead.

Rights activists said they fear that the furor will die down and little will change, though, largely because of the entrenched political interests, clan loyalties, legal limits and cultural taboos that work against justice in such cases. Witnesses often refuse to testify, police are discouraged from investigating, and courts routinely free accused abusers. There is almost no sex education in public schools, and it was not until two years ago that sexual abuse of minors was made a criminal offense.

ANOTHER CASE

Already, in the days since Zainab’s abduction, a similar case has come to light in northwest Pakistan – this time with an even younger victim, a girl of 4 named Asma. Her body was found in a sugar cane field with signs of strangulation and rape. Her father was away at the time, working as a construction laborer in the Middle East.

“The whole society has reacted strongly in Zainab’s case, but only punishment will deter the recurrence of such crimes,” said Manizeh Bano, executive director of Sahil, a nonprofit group that fights child abuse. In the 2015 pedophile porn case, rights groups claimed that as many as 280 children were abducted and forced to participate in videotaped sex acts. There were protests and calls for justice, but an investigative panel found no evidence of abuse and said the accusations stemmed from a land dispute.

Bano, whose group found that most cases of child sexual abuse are never reported, said she was encouraged by the surge of about 100 reported cases since Zainab’s abduction. But in Kasur, she said there were “powerful circles” protecting the abusers, reportedly including politicians and police. “Unless such circles are broken, it will be difficult to prevent such cases in the future,” she said.

On Thursday, in a working-class district of Kasur, TV satellite trucks and police vehicles clogged alleys leading to the Amins’ modest home across from a textile factory. A makeshift press podium had been set up in a vacant lot, and posters had been put up showing Zainab’s face surrounded by bloody palm prints.

‘WE NEED JUSTICE’

Her father, a soft-spoken school supply custodian named Muhammad Amin Ansari, received a stream of well-wishers. He and his wife were in Saudi Arabia on a Muslim pilgrimage when their daughter vanished, and they had asked an uncle to look after her.

“I was in Mecca praying for my children, and I came back to this,” said Ansari, 50. He said he was frustrated by the lack of police progress in finding Zainab’s killer but that he hoped the tragedy would help prevent similar crimes in the future. “We need justice for all such cases,” he said.

His wife, Nusrat, 42, described Zainab, the youngest of her four children, as a studious girl who loved to get up early to study the Quran before school. “I want to look in the eyes of the person who did this so he can see what I suffered during those five days we were all looking for her,” she said.

So far, though, no progress in the case has been announced, although a special investigative team has been working around the clock. Officials said that DNA samples suggest that at least half of the 11 other girls found raped and killed in the city over the past two years were victims of the same attacker, raising the fearsome specter of a serial predator at large.

“Our job is to arrest the culprit, and we will not rest until he is caught,” said Zahid Marwat, the newly named police chief. “More children could be in danger. Society is in a panic, and people feel very insecure.He did not comment on police actions before his arrival but said everything possible is now being done to find Zainab’s attacker. There is no way we would take this lightly.”

But community leaders complained that police had failed to take serious action after the girl was reported missing and security camera tapes showed her walking with a man whose face was clearly visible. Volunteers combed the area for five days, finding nothing until the morning of Jan. 10, when her remains were discovered.

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