Bacha Bazi

Bacha bazi, Persian for boy play, is a pederastic practice in which men exploit and enslave adolescent boys, sometimes for sexual abuse, or coerce them into cross-dressing in clothing traditionally worn only by women and girls and dancing for entertainment. The men who exploit the boys are called bacha baz, meaning boy player, and the boys themselves, known as bacha, frequently come from vulnerable circumstances, often as street children or as children abducted from their families, while some families facing extreme poverty sell their young sons to such men or allow them to be informally adopted in exchange for money or basic sustenance. Beyond cross-dressing and sexual entertainment, the boys have also been used for everyday wartime labor and as bodyguards, and victims face serious psychological consequences including social stigma, sexual abuse and lasting emotional trauma that frequently leads to substance abuse.