Undoubtedly the most grotesque story to come out of this civilized little country lately is that of the 12 year old girl who went on a school excusion, complained of stomach pains and then to the horror of staff and medical personnel, proceeded to give birth.
The child and her baby have both been handed over to a foster family and a social worker has been assigned to their case. It turns out that the girl’s father is also the father of her baby daughter. Her mother it seems is living out of the country so she’s been living with her father. The bit that makes it really hard to comprehend is that the man - father and grandfather in this case - has already got a history of having sexually abused his elder daughter. Which means that the 12 year old was put in the sole care of a parent who was already known to the authorities for incest and child abuse.
I’m still trying to work out how that can actually happen anywhere, let alone in this highly regulated place. I mean my daughter - who is nearly as old as this child mother I shudder to realize - is studying all sorts of conflict resolution and wellness techniques at school. Family courts are insistent on putting the rights of the child beyond anything else. Children get called up for regular vaccinations, they get free braces, the playgrounds are marvellous.
In short, childhood is a respected and beloved thing here. Children are nurtured.
Yet - oh yet - a campaign has just been launched to find more people willing to be foster parents. There are 25,000 kids who need temporary or longer term homes. An anomaly in a place where local adoption is non existant and foreign adoption has become something just short of a lottery.
I’ve talked to a doctor about his experience working in an ultra calvanistic region of the country - where people aren’t allowed to do the washing or drive their car on Sundays, a day where they have to make sure they don’t take more footsteps than is permissable (measured as the number needed to move a person from home to church). Incest is apparently not such an uncommon phenomenon in the more repressive communties.
I look at my daughters skinny grazed legs, watch her watching cartoons with rapt attention, and struggling to read a digital clock. Ready for motherhood? How on earth can one prepare a child this age for such a thing?
on Apr 6th, 2011 at 1:06 pm
A woman is always at risk-at every age-from everyone…Remember, the customs devised by Oriental societies are to protect the females from predating males-in the house and outside the house, what today’s people call repressive measures against women. The purdah at home and outside, and dressing modestly, was a way to shield the vulnerable women from the eyes of these wolves. But a wolf will be a wolf, so the women have to protect themselves from getting humiliated/abused by these wolves in every society.
on Apr 11th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
I think purdah is no answer - and this argument that a woman must cover herself to stop a man’s lust makes me want to answer that the man should be the one to cover his eyes or learn to discipline his own body. But this story is not about a woman showing herself and a man / wolf being seduced - but about a little girl whose father saw his own child as an object of sexual gratification. That’s an illness pure and simple and considered wrong in pretty much every society in the world today.
on Apr 12th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
I agree! And I liked your idea of blindfolding men….will solve all the problems women face!…;)…