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Old October 18, 2003, 17:17   #1
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South Africa's Dirty Little Secret
In South Africa, 60 children a day are raped. Before she was a year old, this girl became one of them

No one here can explain why violence, especially sexual violence, is so out of control. As STEPHANIE NOLEN reports, the crisis -- especially the unique horror of infant rape -- has spoiled the hopes of the 'rainbow nation' 10 years after apartheid


By STEPHANIE NOLEN


Saturday, Oct. 18, 2003

Claudia Ford has a story she tells her daughter, Princess, before bedtime.

"You're my special girl," she begins, and Princess squirms with delight. "Do you know why?" Ms. Ford asks. "Because I saw you in the hospital, and I said, 'Look at that special baby. I want to take her home with me.' "

Princess, an eagle-eyed two-year-old, loves the part about how she's special. And Ms. Ford tells her each night, in her calm and measured voice. But she is braced for the day when Princess will ask the natural question: "Why was I in the hospital?"

Princess was brought to the hospital by her biological mother on Dec. 2, 2001, with massive internal injuries. Horrified staff determined that her perineum had been cut open with a piece of a glass bottle and she had been raped repeatedly. It later emerged that her mother had been drunk and left her in a seedy hotel with two male acquaintances; she came home hours later to find the baby screaming and bleeding.

The surgeon who tried to repair the damage to the baby's genitals and digestive system later told Ms. Ford that he could hardly tell what he was doing, so massive was the trauma. "He said, 'I just sewed, did the best I could and prayed,' " Ms. Ford recalls. She heard about the five-month-old on the news, and went to the hospital with a group of others to visit the baby eight days later.

Princess's mother, who was still in a drunken daze when she brought the baby in, had disappeared; police were hunting for her and investigating the rape. Ms. Ford heard there were plans to discharge Princess to an orphanage. "I thought, 'No way. Not after what she's been through.' " And so at the age of 48, with her own sons already in their teens and 20s, she found herself mother to a massively traumatized infant.

Ms. Ford, an American-born development researcher who now teaches at Johannesburg's University of the Witswatersrand, has become something of an expert on the horrifying phenomenon of infant rape in the course of caring for Princess (who has had a final round of reconstructive surgery, tested negative for HIV after a six-week course of drugs, and is today a remarkably cheerful and well-adjusted toddler).

Ms. Ford speaks out on the issue because, she says, so many South African mothers cannot talk publicly about the sexual assault of their children.

Two rapes of babies were reported outside Cape Town this week, one of a nine-month-old, one of a girl just shy of 2. The nine-month-old baby has been dubbed Baby M. Her grandmother says she found her bloodied and screaming in her township shack. The mother had disappeared; a 35-year-old man appeared in court charged with the rape on Wednesday; the baby remains in hospital. Police are still investigating the rape of the two-year-old, who has been discharged from hospital.

The infant rapes make headlines here -- they are the most shocking examples of South Africa's epidemic levels of rape and other violent crime. But rapes and assaults on women and older children are now so common as to pass unremarked. There can be no question that something is terribly wrong.

It is 10 years since the end of apartheid, since the moment when newly democratic South Africa was held up as a beacon of hope to the world. In 1994, this country had the highest rate of rape in the world; that is still true today. South Africa also has the world's highest rate of child rape, 60 a day -- a 400-per-cent increase in reported assaults in the past eight years. Only 5 per cent of perpetrators are convicted.

Black South Africans never rose up in the mass rampage against whites that some predicted at the end of the apartheid years -- the rage has taken another form, the vast majority of it assaults by black men on black women and children, committed in squalid township shacks.

"It's not saying good things about the rainbow nation," says a grim Mike Earl-Taylor, a researcher in the MTN Centre for Crime Prevention at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. "It seriously tarnishes the image."

Government ministers, police, doctors and sociologists all say they are baffled by the gratuitous level of violence, especially sexual violence, that is the hallmark of crime here.

"What is causing the serious and violent crime?" Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula asked when the latest crime figures were released. "Why do people who go into a house to steal, then murder those who are in the house -- even the elderly, or children? This is the challenge we must give to our sociologists and our psychologists. I don't understand it."

Ask Mr. Earl-Taylor, who studies the perpetrators: "The actual psychological motivation for that is at the moment beyond our understanding."

Ask Tina Sideris, an expert on gender and violence. "Some of these things are in the realm of the incomprehensible."

Ask Ms. Ford, who soothed her gang-raped baby by holding her in front of a garden fountain for hours. "Sometimes you have to believe in absolute evil."

There are some theories about violent crime in South Africa. Mr. Nqakula outlined a handful: Overcrowding, rampant substance abuse and grim living conditions in the squatter camps and townships outside the cities; an extreme gap between rich and poor South Africans, the widest such polarization in the world; the proliferation of firearms in the past decade; the large presence of organized crime, including international drug cartels.

As well, everyone agrees that part of the reason rates have increased so sharply is that much more of the crime that has always existed is now being reported, as people gain faith in the police service. And South Africa's crime statistics are routinely compared with those of countries such as Canada, not its African neighbours such as Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there is no such record-keeping.

But for South Africa, Mr. Nqakula's question is the crucial one: Why, for example, do car-jackers routinely execute the drivers of the Hondas they want, instead of simply pulling them out of the car? Why do burglars drag women around the house by their hair before raping them in front of their partners? Why do home invaders open the diapers of sleeping babies, looking for girls?

The minister blamed "the degeneration of moral fibres of our society." Last year, his government launched a national "moral regeneration campaign" in an effort to instill values in young people. "We believe that something is wrong within the fabric of our society," said deputy president Jacob Zuma, kicking off the effort. He spoke of this as an unexpected threat to South Africa's "hard-won freedom and democracy."

Prof. Sideris, of the Wits Institute on Social and Economic Research, begins her attempt at an explanation by noting that "this has always been a very violent society." Luke Lamprecht, who runs the Teddy Bear Clinic for Abused Children in Johannesburg, specifically cites the legacy of the war fought on South Africa's borders in the apartheid years, and of the unnamed civil war that raged here in the years up to the first democratic election in 1994, as the African National Congress and the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party fought savagely for power.

He notes, too, that with that election, South Africa went from being one of the world's most restricted societies to one in which suddenly all kinds of things were permitted, a shift many people are still struggling with.

"But what sets us apart is the high level of sexual violence," says Superintendent André Neethling, provincial co-ordinator for the police family violence, child abuse and sexual offences unit in Gauteng, the province that contains Johannesburg. There were 52,000 reported rapes in South Africa from April, 2002, to April, 2003; police estimate that perhaps one in eight assaults is actually brought to their attention.

"We are a rape-prone society," says Mr. Earl-Taylor, describing a "culture of entitlement" to the sexuality of women and children, who are regarded as possessions. In the apartheid years, women in the black townships were terrorized by a phenomenon called "jackrolling," the abduction and gang rape of women, usually by groups of armed youths, who assaulted their victims in public places and made no attempt to hide their identities. While township crimes were rarely policed or reported in the apartheid years, the police have in recent years made a specific effort to encourage reporting of child and family violence.

At the same time, traditional ideas about women's place in society have changed dramatically in the past decade. A government affirmative-action program has pushed women into new educational and employment opportunities -- and there is a corresponding level of resentment from men, Mr. Lamprecht says.

Furthermore, he says, the first democratic election brought "a promise of sudden equality," but many men haven't seen it come true, especially the overwhelmingly black ranks of the 50 per cent of the population who are unemployed.

"There is a felt experience among many men of insecurity and vulnerability," Prof Sideris says. "And it may be one of the factors that plays into violence in an intimate sphere. Unemployment, no hope for future, no place in society -- intimate relationships are where one might be able to assert some kind of authority."

In almost 90 per cent of rapes reported in the past year, the victims knew their attackers. Prof. Sideris hastens to add, though, that plenty of men in difficult situations do not rape women or children, and so this is only a limited explanation.

Mr. Earl-Taylor says his study of the crime statistics suggests that the sharpest rise in violence against women comes in areas where women were, until recently, most tightly controlled.

But why the rapes of children? "Most of us who work in criminology can understand the economic basis for some crimes, the burglary and stealing -- where people are hungry, where there is no work, no way out," he says. "But apartheid can't cause someone to rape a six-month-old baby."

Fourteen per cent of rape victims here are younger than 12, but the statistics do not separate the 10-year-olds from the 1-year-olds, even though, as Supt. Neetland points out, the pathologies of the rapist in those cases are quite different. An estimated 85 per cent of the assaults of children here occur in intimate situations -- assaults by uncles, scoutmasters or teachers -- statistics similar to Canada's.

But Mr. Earl-Taylor says the number of opportunistic attacks -- like the two rapes in Cape Town this week -- is climbing steadily.

One factor is the so-called "virgin cure," the idea that sex with a virgin will either cure HIV or prevent a man from contracting it. It is not a new idea; in Europe 400 years ago, men tried to cure syphilis by having sex with virgins, and recently it has been reported as a factor in child rape in Thailand, Cambodia and across southern Africa.

"It can't be discounted as a factor here," Mr. Earl-Taylor says. "Some of these men are motivated by the factor that there is no cure and the government here is doing nothing."

Certainly, the AIDS crisis adds to the air of desperation. South Africa has more infected people than any other nation -- about five million. Six hundred of them die here every day, and 45 per cent of those arrested for rape test positive. However, Mr. Lamprecht says that of the 250 assaulted children he dealt with last year, there was only one case where the "AIDS cure" was the cause.

But what about cases like Princess, or Baby M (who took a few cautious first steps in the Cape Town hospital on Thursday, after surgery to rebuild her anus)? In Mr. Earl-Taylor's research and Supt. Neetland's experience, the baby rapes happen in a particular environment: The offenders are ill-educated, unemployed members of the lowest economic groups. They are usually drunk when they commit the attack. The victims' caregivers come from similar backgrounds, also abuse alcohol, and leave the children poorly supervised.

Infant rape presents particular challenges for the police: The victim is too young to provide a description, and the chemicals in diapers that are designed to keep babies dry also serve to destroy possible DNA evidence.

The pathology of it is different, too. "To be blunt, if it is committed with a penis, it has to be painful for the perpetrator as well," the police officer said.

The best explanation anyone can come up with for the baby rapes is vengeance -- not on the infant, but on the whole society.

"There is this kind of hate, of wanting to punish someone by raping a baby," says Supt. Neetland, who has been investigating these crimes for 12 years.

The situation with the home-invader rapists is similar, he says. "It's not because they feel like sex at this stage. It's giving expression to their hate, saying, 'You, Mr. Rich Man, here's how much I hate you, here's how powerful I am.' I'm very sure there is some kind of motive of revenge."

Mr. Lamprecht told of groups of township teens who go after young women who are seen as "wanting to be white" by dressing better, speaking better and going to school. "They can't get them in the traditional ways and so they take them. . . . It's a way of saying, 'This is how desperate we are.' And it's not just for money. There is no fiscal gain -- it has a pure vengeance motive," he says.

David Potse, the Louisville township man who was convicted of raping a nine-month-old baby in a high-profile case last year, had dated the infant's 17-year-old mother the previous year. "He told me that something will happen to me one day to make me regret ever leaving him," she told the court. "There was anger all over his face."

In addition, men who are abused in childhood are at increased risk of becoming abusers. The national children's rights group Childline reported that in 43 per cent of the cases it saw in 2000, the assailants were under 18, nearly children themselves.

After she took Princess home, Claudia Ford helped to heal her sliced perineum with daily applications of olive oil and comfrey tea, using skills she had learned as a midwife. She rocked the baby when she woke up screaming hysterically in the night, and held the little legs down with her own when it was time for a painful change of the tiny colostomy bag.

Today, Ms. Ford tries to keep the issue of rape of children in the public domain here, wondering if anyone will have found the answers when Princess is 6 or 10 or 14, and wants to know, "Why did they do this to me?"

"I gave up trying to figure out why on some levels," Ms. Ford says. "On the other hand, I know I'm going to have to answer that question.

"The horror of it doesn't really recede."

Stephanie Nolen is The Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent.



© 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...ent/TopStories

------------------------------------------------------

My sister lives in South Africa. She carries a gun in her purse. Can anyone blame her?
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Old October 18, 2003, 17:19   #2
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This is disgusting. My heart goes out to those who have suffered at the hands of this madness.
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Old October 18, 2003, 17:23   #3
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As a father of a 3 year old girl, its impossible to understand the mindset of a person who is capable of such madness. If there is a hell, its waiting for them.

I can only assume that Drugs are at the centre of this, as a sane person could not surely be so evil ????
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Old October 18, 2003, 17:23   #4
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I actually physically shook and my limbs cringed with disgust. This is revolting.
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Old October 18, 2003, 17:29   #5
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and people here doubt the existence of evil

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Old October 18, 2003, 17:30   #6
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I actually physically shook and my limbs cringed with disgust. This is revolting.
As did I.

What kind of a mindset is necessary to do this to those so young ?!


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Old October 18, 2003, 20:43   #7
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Originally posted by Jon Miller
and people here doubt the existence of evil

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Sounds more like stupidity to me...

Anyways, we who don't like the notion of evil much do so because we map the world to a different set of concepts. Colours can be described as bright/dark, but they can also be described as red/green/blue, red/yellow/blue, ROYGBIV, saturated/moderately saturated/unsaturated etc.

From the point of view of someone whose worldview is shaped by physics and biology, the idea of evil is alien and absurdly egotistical.
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Old October 18, 2003, 20:59   #8
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This is absolutely horrible :vomit:

I really hope the sociologists and psychologists will find the causes, and that the politicians will adress it promptly
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Old October 18, 2003, 21:03   #9
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Sounds more like stupidity to me...
How so?
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Old October 18, 2003, 21:05   #10
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Monstrous, utterly.
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Old October 18, 2003, 21:08   #11
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I don't know that I'd be too interested in waiting for the politicians to address it.

The people who do that sorta stuff are *fine* candidates for just bein' beaten to death.



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Old October 18, 2003, 21:15   #12
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I can't believe anyone would rape an infant.
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Old October 18, 2003, 21:17   #13
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Old October 18, 2003, 21:44   #14
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Why is it 'South Africa's dirty little secret'? It is indeed dirty (a wonderful phrase which speaks to racial connotations) , it is certainly not 'little', and it hardly a secret. In fact this severe problem has been known of for quite a while.

I can understand that many feel disappointed that South Africa has not experienced that total breakdown in order and decended into chaos, as undoubtedly many conservatives had wished for. After all Mandela has indeed been made into a favorite whipping boy of the bushites. Also this story fits ever so well with the more vile elements of Western society's image of the 'brutish savage'. Nevertheless it is a serious issue, and indeed it is perhaps a good sign that it is dealt with in an open and democratic fashion. Even though perhaps a lot of hysteria and false accusations is probably to be expected. furthermore it is not as if the west has anything to be particularily proud of on the issue of child rape. Fortunately for the children in the west, perpetrators have the luxurury of travel and can so administer their anger on children in the third world. Most notably Asia and Latin America, where people are sorely lacking in funds to meet the most basic of human needs.
However, this is how our democracies have decided it to be. That is our 'dirty little secret'.
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Old October 18, 2003, 22:01   #15
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Quote:
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The people who do that sorta stuff are *fine* candidates for just bein' beaten to death.
As much as I'd enjoy seeing a culprit of infant rape being beaten and quartered, it isn't enough. If there are so many rapes and infant rapes in South Africa, so many gratuitous violence there much more than anywhere else, there must be reasons. I mean, other reasons than the evilness of the individual culprits.

Beating the crap out of a culprit never solves a deep society's issue (it can help to some extent though, but it never brings a solution by itself)
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Old October 18, 2003, 22:07   #16
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I dunno, Spiff. Beat one or two to death, here and there, and you're right.

Start turning it into a sport tho, and those kiddie rapists will get the message. I'm sure anybody with a bit of gumption could figure a way to track these bastards....find out who they are, and if they're the sort who vent their rage and hatred in this manner, I'm doubting they'd be much of a match against a pissed off and vengeful father of one of these little girls.

Yeah. I'd very much like to see that fight.

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Old October 18, 2003, 22:19   #17
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Why do people always respond to this issue of child rape with tiresome tirades of beating the perpetrators to bloody pulp?

Will it solve anything? No.

Is it legal? No.

Will it make you feel better? No.



Will a scientific approach to the problem help you understand the issue? Yes.

Will it then be possible to combat the problem? Yes.

Will it make you feel better? Yes.
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Old October 18, 2003, 22:21   #18
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I understand that South Africa has extremely high incidents of alcohol abuse. During apartied many white farmers partially paid black laborers in liquor or wine so that after 100 years a VERY LARGE portion of the black population is addicted to alcohol (not that the white population is much better but they never had institutionalized drug addiction).

That's why South Africa has one of the highest rates of fetal alcohol syndrome and I suspect many of the other social ills can be traced to this as well. Of course the unemployment rate is sky high in the black community so maybe I'd start to drink out of dispare as well.
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Old October 18, 2003, 22:23   #19
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Not *entirely* correct, Tripledoc...using your approach, while you're studiously applying the scientific method to the problem, the yahoos doing the deed are continuing to do it.

When you come up with the answer, I'm sure all the little girls no longer being raped will really, really appreciate it. The ones that continue getting that treatment while you're studying....well, too bad for them I suppose.

The beauty of vigilante justice in this particular case, you see, is that the ones getting the treatment prescribed above certainly WILL NOT be doing it again, and with continued application, word will begin to spread....giving YOU time to continue your research without sacrificing more kids. See?

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Old October 18, 2003, 22:30   #20
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I can only assume that Drugs are at the centre of this, as a sane person could not surely be so evil ????
No no No, drugs were responsible for 9/11. Btw, are you suggesting insanity would not exist if there were no "drugs"? The absence of a conscience is not insanity.

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South Africa also has the world's highest rate of child rape, 60 a day -- a 400-per-cent increase in reported assaults in the past eight years. Only 5 per cent of perpetrators are convicted.
Ahem... there's one reason... The deterrant is almost non-existent. Also, this is probably a cultural and racial phenomenon... The violence and evil one group can perpetrate on another never ceases to amaze me. But as AIDS, wars and crime deplete the male population and with an ineffective legal system, women and small children have fewer male relatives around for protection. But I suspect this is largely racial, I believe even under Apartheid there were at least two competing "tribes" and the hatred they had for each other didn't disappear when blacks rose to power.
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Old October 18, 2003, 22:40   #21
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Why do people always respond to this issue of child rape with tiresome tirades of beating the perpetrators to bloody pulp?

Will it solve anything? No.

Is it legal? No.
Given the conviction rate, it should be legal. If ~50% of the scumbags who pulled this **** got their heads stomped in, the rape rate would drop like a cannonball.
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Old October 18, 2003, 22:43   #22
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Quote:
Originally posted by Tripledoc
Why do people always respond to this issue of child rape with tiresome tirades of beating the perpetrators to bloody pulp?
Will it make you feel better?
A little.
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Old October 18, 2003, 22:47   #23
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DD!

Simple math. There are only a finite number of people doing this kina thing. Take one out of that population, you get less of that crime. Rinse and repeat, the rate drops.

I don't even pretend to know the mindset of these folks, but I assume that they pick their targets because they are helpless and can't fight back. No risk.

But if there's suddenly a real risk to life and limb, I'm betting these cowards wouldn't be NEARLY as game to try.

-=Vel=-
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Old October 18, 2003, 22:51   #24
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I think Oerdin has explained some possible path towards an explanation. Of course not all alcoholics are child rapists, neither are all child rapists alcoholics. However surely the level of alcohol intake and the level of sexual abuse of children is co-related. Indeed in Greenland where there is also a high level of alcohol abuse there is also a corresponding level of child abuse.


I am not an expert on the issue, however I fail to see how this socalled 'vigilante justice' should prevent child abuse. After all if there are 60 reported cases a day then the amount of offenders would mean the culling of maybe a rather large number of people. And how is one to make sure that indeed all are guilty of the crime. Also I fail to see how the police and judiciary are not doing enough to solve the problem. Indeed the police officer interviewed in the article seems to be fairly experienced in this issue. Now, allowing for vigilante actions, would simply divert a lot of time from solving the cases to solving murder cases instead. And there is no knowlegde of how many of the perpetrators are repeat offenders and how many are simply one time offenders. then off-hand killing would hardly solve anything. Also if the terror of death should inhibit humans from doing crime, then there is in fact no litterature supporting that notion.

I find the notion that research into the issue would somehow lead to the 'sacrifice of children' as Velirex puts it preposterous. Whether someone does any research on the subject will, in the mean time, not add nor subract from the level of crime.

To the contrary people saying, and not really meaning it, that they will kill them certainly will not solve anything.
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Old October 18, 2003, 22:52   #25
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Quote:
Originally posted by Tripledoc
Why do people always respond to this issue of child rape with tiresome tirades of beating the perpetrators to bloody pulp?

Will it solve anything? No.

Is it legal? No.

Will it make you feel better? No.



Will a scientific approach to the problem help you understand the issue? Yes.

Will it then be possible to combat the problem? Yes.

Will it make you feel better? Yes.
a very plausible scientific solution to reducing some crimes is to jackup the penalty. ask singapore. one of the problems w/ jacking up the penalty is ppl go all liberal on u and u get a drastically reduced conviction rate.

but I don't think thats a problem when u rape a 2 year old
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Old October 18, 2003, 23:03   #26
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Obviously this thread has become a place where people with fascist convictions are spewing their bile.
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Old October 18, 2003, 23:13   #27
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(BS I don't feel like responding to snipped)South Africa has not experienced that total breakdown in order and decended into chaos, (BS I don't feel like responding to snipped)
What would you call it? I'm only sadened the aparthied government in such a mess before thier eventual fall.
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Old October 18, 2003, 23:14   #28
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Tripledoc...you may find it preposterous, but you said it yourself.

The rate is 60 a day.

While you're researching and not out there busting the heads of those doing it...the rate is....? Guesses? 60 a day? BINGO!

Research is all well and good, but that's not gonna do the first thing to solve the IMMEDIATE, 60/day problem. So...what are you gonna tell the 60 little girls that get raped tomorrow while you're researching? "Sorry, we're working on it?"

Somehow I think they'll take little comfort in that.

On the other hand, if someone, or a group of someone's turns knocking the rapists' heads into a crusade, that might get that 60/day number down a bit till you can figure out a better solution.

That's fascist?

-=Vel=-
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Old October 18, 2003, 23:21   #29
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Old October 18, 2003, 23:47   #30
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Quote:
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Obviously this thread has become a place where people with fascist convictions are spewing their bile.

So everyone that don't agree with you are fascist?



It's so easy to talk of rational approaches as long as the victims are merely someone else. Let it happen to you or yours and I think you may change your outlook. If it doesnt, then there is something seriously wrong with you. I'm not gonna even pretend to take the highground on this issue. When the goverment's justice can't or don't respond, then all you have left is what you yourself can do. It's not cool and it may not be morally right, but if you can't protect your family then you are nothing. Like Vel said, go back to studying the issue, and let those who can deal with it do what they must.
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