I have just read a story on the BBC website that makes me want to throw up. An eight year old Liberian girl in Arizona was lured into a shed, attacked and gang-raped by four Liberian boys aged nine to 14. Her parents have disowned her, saying she has brought shame on the family.
She is in the care of the local authorities who say they have had several offers of help and even adoption. That’s great. But the one person a traumatised eight-year-old girl really needs is her mother. I cannot believe that any mother, whatever her misguided social or religious convictions might be, would be this cruel. I can only assume it is the men in the family forcing her to reject her child.
I can’t stop thinking about the poor girl. What a tragedy. The boys have been arrested and will be punished. I suppose we should be thankful they live in a society where the law is thus. But surely it is time for people like this girl’s family to realise that in a case of rape it is the rapist who should be shunned, and not the victim.
Societies like ours have an obligation to force those who move to our shores to adopt our laws and moral guidelines. Forget being politically correct. Forget about trying not to upset them. This is about what is so obviously wrong against what is right. If they are too ignorant to see it, we have to educate them, for the sake of this little girl and thousands of victims of “honour” crimes across the world.
Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009
I absolutely agree!
Poor girl, it’s like a double crime against her.
The idea that this girl has “brought” anything on her family by this crime (of which she is unfortunately the victim) is as bizarre as the idea that somebody “does” something to “deserve” to be raped. This kind of thinking only allows the perpetrators of these crimes, to some extent, off the hook, whether convicted or not.
If you are born a girl on the wrong side of the fence, you might be subjected to all kinds of physical and emotional abuse. Look at the sexual mutilation of young girls in Mali. These are Human Rights issues. If we talk about it, write about it, we might make things progress in the right direction, and hope to see some results in the next century.
Thank you for posting this. It is a shame most people are too disturbed by this sort of sexual/racial abuse to actually address it. I respect that you did. I did a brief post on Congolese rape here: http://belljarmelissa.blogspot.com/2009/04/we-have-to-do-more.html
Rape is becoming the woman of mass destruction of the future. It spreads disease/death, kills/emotionally destroys the women, dishonors and demoralizes the fathers/husbands and has created an entire generation of “rape babies” who are raising themselves, being discarded by their mothers out of social pressure. This cannot be ignored any longer.
edit: weapon not woman. haha 🙂