ABSTRACT
Many recent sexual abuse scandals involving boys, beyond those within the Catholic Church, have occurred in schools and youth organizations that explicitly or implicitly celebrate ideals of male mentorship originating with the ancient Greeks. Many in the West were first exposed to bacha bazi through The Kite Runner, both the 2003 novel by Khaled Hosseini. Even bacha bazi, however, pales beside the rape of boys and men as an institutionalized weapon of warfare in genocidal conflicts, most recently in Africa, but documented in many other countries as well. Coinciding with the Sandusky revelations in 2012, Boy Scouts organizations in the United States, Canada, and Australia were exposed for decades-long cover-ups of sexual abuse designed to preserve the reputation of Scouting as an institution. Jennifer Freyd has spent her career developing and researching theories of "betrayal trauma" and "betrayal blindness", especially in relation to the sexual abuse of children.
