Rape as Weapon, Not a Spoil, of War
First, I want to thank my many readers (90 so far) who have posted comments in response to my blog about the four child barbarians from Liberia who gang-raped an 8-year-old-girl in Phoenix. As more than one reader noted, even in (imperfect) America, the gang-rape of a child, even by other children, is considered a crime and prosecuted as such.
Thus, Phoenix prosecutors have charged 14-year-old, Steven Tuopeh, as an adult, while the other boys, who range in age from nine to thirteen, have been charged in juvenile court. In addition, the 10- and 13-year-olds also have been charged with kidnapping. Their identities are being withheld because of their ages.
According to the Phoenix police, calls have come in from all over the United States offering money; some people have offered to adopt the young girl. The girl’s family has been admonished by the President of Liberia, who is a woman, who said that she herself had been the victim of an attempted rape during the Civil War and that now, in Liberia, rape victims are no longer blamed, the shame does not belong to them but to the criminals who sexually violate them.
Google records nearly 60,000 articles about the case (some are repeats of course), from all over the world. People are interested in the issues this case raises. How we understand these issues will determine our destiny as a nation and as a modern, civilized culture.
When a Western country accepts immigrants from a non-Western country, where war zones exist on an almost permanent basis, we must understand that child soldiers, mainly boys, have been recruited to hate, rape, kill, and torture. Professor David M. Rosen has written a powerful book about child soldiers: Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism. Rosen, a professor of anthropology, compares Jewish children who fought against Nazis, child soldiers in Sierre Leone, and Palestinian child fighters and raises important ethical questions.
Traditionally, rape was a spoil, not a weapon of war. That’s all changed. On every continent today, when war is waged, repeated, public, mass, gang-rape has increasingly been used as a weapon of war, not as a spoil. For years now, I have called this “gender cleansing” because the repeated gang-rapes are meant to destroy the girl or woman’s soul and through her, the soul of her family and people. Many wartime rape victims kill themselves. Many are rejected by their own families. Some are killed by their own families. At best, the victims enter serious depressions which, if untreated, may last a lifetime.
I was once asked to accompany a Christian mission to Sudan to help the raped women. Unfortunately, I was unable to undertake the physical hardships that would have been involved but I suggested the creation of a private “Woman’s Tent” in which the rape victims could bare/bear their shame and sorrow in a comforting and consoling setting. I believe that just this, (and it’s little enough), could nevertheless save some minds and perhaps lives. Trained lay counselors who could speak the same language would have been required–and they would have had to understand rape in a very western and feminist way.
So much for the victims. I am not sure about the victimizers. Like batterers, rapists do not often change their ways through talk-therapy. They do not usually seek treatement and court-mandated treatment does not seem to work. Not even in the civilized West, not even in America. In America, more rapes are reported than in a Third World country where rape is shameful and sometimes leads to the family’s murder of the rape victim. Americans do prosecute rapists more than ever before (which is good) but prosecution and conviction do not necessarily lead to rehabilitation. When rapists are freed, they tend to rape again.
South Africa instituted a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in order to pre-emptively acquit former criminals so that the criminals might publicly acknowledge their former crimes and the nation might move forward. Well, perhaps this is a useful model; some mental health professionals would like to apply it to other kinds of crimes, including rape. I wonder if South Africa has focused on sexual violence as a crime, one deemed just as important as that of apartheid? I fear not because I have been told (by experts) that South Africa still has the highest rate of sexual violence in the world.
A genuinely apartheid regime in which both racism and torture prevail–all, theoretically, may be subject to change. Can sexual violence, mainly against girls and women also be ended with mass public hearings and pre-forgiven confessions? Is this possible in a patriarchal culture, either in Liberia, Rwanda, Congo, or Sierre Leone in Africa; or on Main Street, USA?
Full disclosure: I received my first serious death threat way back in 1971 when I dared to publicly suggest, that, in terms of rape, we consider taking the weapon away from the offender. However, I was wrong. Rape, is a crime of power, not passion, and it takes place mainly in the imagination. A rapist can rape with an object. It is not a crime of sexual lust, and is not due to sexual deprivation–it is the calculated use of power over another human being; the victim’s pain and humiliation is literally enjoyed by her attacker. And yes, men also rape boys and other men and the harm done is equally grave and long lasting.
So dear and gentle readers: Any ideas out there about how to end the epidemic of rapes that plague our planet? In war zones surely, but also everywhere else in times of so-called peace?
I still don’t know what we, as a nation, should do in terms of accepting immigrants from non-Western countries, especially those who have survived wars. Previous immigrants (as many of my readers pointed out), came from Western cultures and very much wanted to become assimilated Americans. In the case of Liberia, we are dealing with immigrants who may be Christians, Christian-animists, or Muslims. We may also be dealing with war-traumatized peoples, which includes male children who were forced to rape and murder in order to remain alive. Do we extend compassion to both victim and victimizer? Can we do so without impoverishing or endangering ourselves?
Like Europe, we are now facing a very different kind of immigrant. Some do not value a modern western education and acheivement; some do. Some persecuted their countrymen and women in the Old Country and are only now pretending to be victims; some really are their victims, but they are traumatized, they have been touched by evil.
Even if one has not grown up in a war-zone, non-Western cultures are really “different” from our own. Some say that some of the “differences” are positive, like strong family connectedness, obedience to one’s father, religious faith. Others say that non-Western tribalism and religions also condone (or do not punish) what we consider crimes, even human rights atrocities, and that this belief system is very hard and very expensive to change.
Ancient Jewish Wisdom: Compassion towards the cruel will result in cruelty towards the innocent.
As I said: How we handle this will determine our future as a nation and as a culture.
I get sick to my stomach when I read this. We have no idea at all what we have unleashed upon the unsuspecting citizens of our nation.
Phyllis, I have tried to respond to your last few articles and have been so moved by them, I could not even think of a thing to say about man’s inhumanity to man. It is people like you who are unafraid to speak up about these horrors who will put a stop to the insanity. Thank you for what you do and for not letting us forget that evil cannot and must not be ignored.
Rape is an offshoot of patriarchy as well as misogyny . These go together, though in civilized nations patriarchal privilege has been curtailed. Sadly its adjunct, misogyny, has not been. The power over women that has been curtailed in advanced nations through education, equal rights and equal opportunity has not sufficed to abolish misogyny. One could argue that misogyny and female oppression date back to the earliest human societies, where women’s power was curtailed because so much of their life was tied up in pregnancy, nursing, weaning and nurturing young children, and where other responsibilities might negatively impact these important functions.Other primitive emotions like religious and ethnic prejudice and hatred and/or fear of foreigners date back to tribal times too. These primitive emotions once may have had an adaptive function but today they do not, and their expression is channeled into anti-social and violent tendencies. Curbing them means insuring that males understand them and also understand that severe penalties will be imposed on violations, penalties that match other violent crimes like murder. Less civilized countries are therefore less likely to recognize much less impose commensurately stringent punishment on them because these countries have not curtailed or abolished patriarchy. And patriarchy will not end until women have achieved equal status and opportunity in education, economic standing and civil rights. The western nations have moved closer and will continue to do so. In the interim, we must look to much more severe punishment such as life imprisonment without parole for rape. Less than that demeans women and is little deterrence. Convincing men in the west to work for tougher punishment is crucial.
“Like batterers, rapists do not often change their ways through talk-therapy. They do not usually seek treatement and court-mandated treatment does not seem to work.”
And because the above is absolutely true, the only “cure,” such as it is, would seem to be life without parole or execution, and the age of the rapist should not be a factor in the sentencing. If that sounds a bit extreme (executing a 14 year-old), consider that these rapists and killers are recruited and trained at such a young age precisely so as to engrain such behavior in them for life. The proverb that teaches us to “train a child up in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” can sometimes be inverted to horrific effect. And they will TRULY not depart from it when they are older.
Phyllis
The issues you have been raising about children who rape other children, child soldiers who have been abused into becoming monsters and need proper treatment to be returned to their own humanity, and the extent to which civilized nations can receive into their midst refugees who may at the same time bring unwanted and uncontrolled behaviours into the host nation are absolutely central to the new world we have discovered since 9/11.
In a time of financial stress, moreover, the limits of tolerance clash with the limits of social feasibility.
I refrain from making specific suggestions for the people in the United States because I don’t live there and therefore do not have to live with the issues and their real-life consequences. Our own variations exist here at the bottom of the world.
The moral terms are clear enough: the practical actions are not.
All I can say is, we all have to recognize the problem for what it is–not a local, personal matter; and we have to recognize that such moral issues require responsible reactions.
Norman
Rude perhaps, but within our own country, as Sir Charles James Napier Said about Suttee: “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.” Punishment for mistreatment of rape victims by their families should occur, that will get the point across. For “honor” killings, too. (Unfortunately, some won’t respect anything but physical summary justice– as would likely get our police jailed here– but that’s how such barbarous folk are. Liberia’s attempt at a Truth & Reconcilliation Commission is woefully ineffectual; with only a fraction of expected participation, its sessions frequently turn into “blamestorming” decided villains who’ve fled the country and, as virtually everyone’s dirty and evidence is sketchy, no one confesses to anything– something seems to have gotten lost in translation.) Understanding doesn’t work; evil and stupidity should bring hurt to their possessors. Judgemental? Perhaps; civilization, you know.
I tried to ask this question earlier, but the page disappeared. If this is a duplicate, I apologize.
I’m trying to run down a story on a mass marriage by Hamas. 450 bridegrooms with what appear to be preschool to middle school-aged brides.
AFP, China news, etc. ran the story but don’t mention the age of the brides, only that they are among the audience.
Here’s the URL for the Live Leak video:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a4b_1249043706
Can you give me your considered opinion? My email is above…
BTW, notice the comment section under the video assumes these young girls in fancy white gowns are indeed “brides”.
If I can’t find any info to corroborate, I will post the information with some qualifications since we don’t know for sure.
HOwever, your considered opinion would be most welcome.
I don’t have any answers as to the problem of how to solve rape in general. That’s a problem moralists, and philosophers, have wrestled with, for centuries. I no longer have any faith that contemporary feminism can help solve it, or that it even wants to.
As to the particulars. . . since rapists are not amendable to counseling, therapy, or being changed at all, then isn’t the United States being incredibly foolish in allowing in immigrants from countries whose cultures have contempt for females, which use rape as a weapon and consider women property?
And, to be blunt, I think teaching women self-defense, and how to use weapons, would help a lot more than “crying tents”, or trying to get the rapists to confess, and say they’re sorry.
Thanks for the article. Hopefully articles such as yours reach a wide enough audience that the next time some elitist in this nation tries to claim that their multicultural ideas are morally superior to ours, we can look at them and point out the sheer lunancy based on the knowledge gained from this story and others. Keep up the good work.
What to do? I believe the answer lies in Mosaic law. Capital punishment is the only solution in cases of murder, rape, and treason. They gotta go. I don’t care if they’re kids. The world is better off without them.
As for the immigration question, only persecuted religious minorities whose values are in line with ours should be granted asylum, and even then they should be very carefully vetted. If, for example, Jew-hating Islamochristians are being ethnically cleansed from Gaza, awesome. Fewer Sirhan-Sirhan Nazis. Just because people are persecuted does not make them decent or even tolerable human beings. Pakistani Christians are horribly persecuted, but only those who are not racist or misogynist should be given asylum, and that’s a minority within a minority. Asylum should be easily revoked as well. Mohammedans should never be given asylum because they bring with them everything they seek to escape. There is no such thing as an anti-Sharia Mohammedan. Let them all kill each other.
Call me insensitive or brutal or whatever. It’s just simple human decency.
The solution is obvious but is not politically feasible – finally put an authorative end to illegal immigration (rape trees, a huge disproportionate percentage of child molestors in America are illegal aliens) and legal immigration from the 3rd world – especially islamists. Only allow the best and brightest from around the world to obtain American citizenship – if there’s a legitimate national need for them. For too long the Western world has acted like an orphanage for the scum of the 3rd world. In developed countries like Germany they let in tens of millions of unskilled and uneducated immigrants from backwards nations such as Turkey who even a generation later still speak very poor German, harrass and even gang rape Western women, commit most of the crime, drop out of school, don’t work and live off of welfare. Now almost 50% of Germans under the age of 18 are the children of arab muslim immigrants which means Germany is demographically going to have a devaststaing culture shift whether they like it or not. The Western world needs to totally throw away this religion of multiculturalism and start waking up to the realities of a hostile and backwards 3rd world immigrant population.
If we are to protect our children, then the unfortunate reality is that we are unable to provide refuge to these children. Even in the unlikely event that the rapists are given lenghty prison sentences, they will not be better for that experience. The little girl is going to have such a very difficult recovery.
I don’t think US taxpayers should have to foot the bill for this. There are many hard working people with Western values who come here to improve their lives and our country.
I am not saying America should throw out everyone. My family isn’t Native American, but we came here(7 generations ago) wanting to be Americans. They adapted to this culture. People who don’t want to shouldn’t be here.
Dymphna, what else would the little girls possibly be, if not brides? Look at the way they’re dressed, look how they’re walking hand in hand with their “husbands.”
As for the ages, I don’t believe specific ages are mentioned in the video itself, but it’s obvious that the girls are much, much younger than their bridegrooms. Look at the scene where they’re walking along side by side.
Atlas Shrugs posted about this, just recently. So did Jihadwatch.
Well I can offer a couple of clues.
Looking at this matter through the lens of feminine caring and theraputic “understanding” is unlikely to produce deference or respect from the perpetrators, or even meaningful insight for the observer.
We’re talking law-of-the-jungle here, or perhaps, as Chesler points out above, with something even worse.
This is a macho matter, best understood in macho terms and dealt with in a macho fashion.
Short of that all else is guaranteed to fail, first time, every time — always does.
The only thing that history has demonstrated to be effective in such matters is inescapable, swift, cruel, overwhelming, terrifying and extreme brutality.
These people must, in the words of the Koran “feel themselves subdued”.
And they’re tough bastards. That won’t be easy, polite or pleasant work.
That works.
Always has.
Nothing else does.
if not for this bizarre administration we would not even consider allowing these miscreants entry. everything in bizarro world is sickening and rotten, watch your back when you smell that stink.
I love reading your articles! However, I was struck by the quote you had at the end of the article”
“Compassion towards the cruel will result in cruelty towards the innocent.”
So true. So true.
Phyllis, the sad reality to all this is, does anyone care? about women, children, for that matter our men? this is a world gone crazy, with crazies running it. You might say, awe that’s been going on for years! but not until the past 50 years have we as a nation treated the unborn in such a barbaric fashion. With disregard for human life in it’s infancy, the ease at which an infant can be ripped from it’s mothers womb, is bizarre to me. What else can we expect from our society? When human life has no value, when we value the wildlife, or fish more than our own children? It makes it easy to kill, to rape, and with no accountability. Some may go to prison. But, most won’t. It will not stop until there is such a cry heard from the streets, when women and men stand up for humanity, and won’t take the spoon feeding anymore.
It has become harder to ignore the evidence that societies experience an upsurge in crime and especially sexual violence when previously disenfranchised males achieve equal rights, or at least recognition and sympathy for their oppression. South Africa is only the most extreme case. Violence against women and crime become self-perpetuating expressions of liberation itself.
Meanwhile, male immigrants to Western countries seem to commit acts of violence against all women in direct relation to the amount of reinforcement they receive for seeing themselves as victims in their transplanted homes.
It isn’t too difficult to hash out the reasons for this — reduced sense of responsibility due to historical discrimination meets enhanced sense of entitlement (native or adopted) in an environment where women’s autonomy and rights are always and everywhere the one thing freedom fighters and their allies are willing to push off the plate or openly oppose in the interest of selective “cultural sensitivity.”
Blame the rights organizations for replicating this formula for disaster: selective (male) liberation plus delegitimizing of legal systems that previously practiced discrimination (or stand accused of doing so) equals widespread crime and violence against women. This applies in the United States, too, where offenders are viewed by the ruling party as the only real victims anymore, and violent crime is on the rise in many places despite many factors that should be suppressing it.
What is most tragic is the fact the little girl was subsequently rejected by her family.How can such mores be reconciled with western values?
In Israel, rape of Jewish gilrs and women is used as a weapon to traumtise Jewish society. Rape and murder are the main cause of disappearance of young women, and generally, once the perp is caught, its an Arab. Arabs never acknowledge or rue the rape. they actually think it is their due, as the master faith, supreme over the canaile, the Jews.
And, to be blunt, I think teaching women self-defense, and how to use weapons, would help a lot more than “crying tents”, or trying to get the rapists to confess, and say they’re sorry.
For once I agree with Betty Blue. For centuries, women in the western world, like women in third world countries today, were taught that they must never inflict violence, not even in self defense. They were taught to rely on a man, or the state, to defend them. The right to defend themselves, a right that nature gives every being, bugs, birds, even the lowliest ameoba, was denied to women.
In the western world, women are finally allowing themselves to have the same rights as bugs, cats, and amoebas. This is real and amazing progress. Women in the third world, especially in the Islamic world, still have fewer rights than the average cat.
By any standard, Islamic Sharia laws, especially the criminal hudud laws, are apartheid laws which violate our human and civil rights. Most Islamist organizations like CAIR, ISNA, the MAS, etc. are recognized to be criminal organizations, comparable to Mafia groups, which were dismembered thanks to RICO statutes.
In America, we have the resources to dismantle the Saudi-supported Islamist power structure. We also have the resources necessary to empower third world women. We just need to apply them. Our government, and it’s dependence on our “friendship” with the Saudi sponsors of 9/11 is one barrier to the destruction of political Islam in America and in the third world. The majority of terror support comes from our Saudi friends. If we are going to keep any immigrants (and their money) out, the Saudis must go first.
Permit me a slight digression: The solution to “child soldiers” is to make them into real soldiers. Teach them to pit themselves against armed and capable foes rather than terrorizing the helpless.
When this is done, the compulsive power trip of rape, etc will (largely) disappear. The remainder can be minimized by arranging the equivalent of banzai charges.
It will also expose those who take children and pervert them into murderers under the guise of being soldiers. These we eliminate by whatever means happen to be practical.
The history of armies is quite clear on this subject. Valor and rape (etc) are NOT found in the same package. Proceed accordingly.
Why is rape “shameful” in these cultures? Because it’s regarded as the woman’s fault. She was somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be, she was not dressed appropriately, she was the wrong tribe — and most importantly, she had no male protector(s) willing to respond with overwhelming force.
In this primitive, tribal dynamic, most often seen in Islamic cultures and other societies horribly distorted by Muslim exploitation and colonization, rape is a technique used by men against men. For Muslims and those men affected by Islamic thought, rape is not only a pleasurable prize literally guaranteed by the Koran and the personal rape-slavery examples of their prophet, but also a point against the enemy. In the Islamist’s perfect Koranic world, the woman would not only be your victim, but your slave. This “enemy” could be anyone.
In the short term, “war-refugee” immigration should be put on a moratorium, especially from those cultures controlled or infused by Islamic attitudes toward women as tribal property. The entire extended families of rape perpetrators already present here should be immediately repatriated as a continuing, immanent threat to the physical safety of our citizens.
To bring the point across, immigrant-community leaders and clerics should be instructed on how equal rights and dignity works, with a very real threat of repatriation should they not convincingly convey the message to their followers — as would be shown by events like those in the article. Put the onus on the folks who control their “community’s” money and behavior, and things should change.
Dear lady: I am 60 yrs old…I stood on the front lines with my ex-wife with whom I went thorough med school/a residency/private practice/birth of 4 daughters( I am blessed )-with an emphasis on women’s issues attended to by a woman(physician)-what’s my point? WHERE THE HELL ARE THE SANCTIMONIOUS-MISSING-IN-ACTION-POLITICALLY-CORRECT( yes! you Mz.G.Steinem/G.Greer/J.Fonda etc.et al)-MENDACIOUS WOMEN LIBBERS? REMEMBER THAT TERM?I AM SHAMED BY ALL THOSE WOMEN MISSING IN ACTION…IT WAS SAFE AND EASY HERE IN AMERICA, WASN’T IT- BUT WHEN THE HEAVY LIFTING IS REQUIRED THOSE BRA-BURNING FRAUDS ARE ABSENT- absolutely hollow human beings, mendacious fools. BUT! politically correct,24/7. Fools.
There is only 1 way for women, or a single women, to have a fair chance whether it be in Chicago, IL, the Sudan, Mexico, or even the “liberal” utopia of the UK.
She (they) must have arms (firearms) and no how to use them, and be WILLING to use them.
Depending on your gov’t (or anyone) to defend oneself is foolish, non-empowering, and in many parts of the world a guarantee that you will become eventually a victim of violence.
The best thing that could be done in the Sudan, or Liberia, or Mexico, is to provide handguns (and perhaps even rifles) to the women, ammunition, and teach them how to use them.
There are after all, things worse than death.
To take on the leftist, apologist people in europe, put sharia now. Make gay, lesbian , music, movie punishable by death. Force non-muslims to wear a identity batch with letter ‘K’. As now muslims are 5%, so let rest 95% of non-muslims face the sharia and dhimmi law for a certain period on an experimental basis. The elite need to get the shock treatment. Let all women wear burga and ban women from all government posts and force them home. I am sure within a month there would be no leftist ideology and apologist will remain.
Supporting Islam is a fashionable thing, but living under it is hell. Many intellectuals have visualized what an Islamic society will be if Islam wins in europe by comparing all other islamic countries, but the major mass of people think that in multiculturism all culture all good. Just like one rotten fruit destroys all other fruits if packed with them, so is Islam and it would destroy any culture on which it can lay its hand.
I’m also not concerned with the military threat of Islam. Even atomic weapons in Iran and Pakistan will not offer them military conquest.
Islam has choked itself off into a stagnant society with little hope of effectively competing against modern countries on the battlefield or the board room. In my opinion, Islam is a biting flea. Yes, we can expect more 9/11s… but we need not fear attacks that are genuinely effective, strategically speaking.
To my observations, Saudi oil is a much bigger threat than Iran’s bombs. Saudi oil bankrolls Islam, and grants them a respect of sorts they could not otherwise have.
For instance, I suspect France is entirely dependent on foreign oil. Whatever their moral take on their Islamic population, France cannot afford to offend the Saudis…. who look upon French Muslims as victims.
Even if a country does not buy directly from Muslims, Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves can affect world pricing.
I believe that Saudi Arabia is also Islam’s achilles heel. The idols of the Haj are vulnerable to conventional attack. I believe the idols (The Kaaba, etc) could be held hostage for Islamic good behavior all over the globe.
If the US were to destroy that well, or the pillars they like to throw stones at, we would have done something Muslims cannot believe is possible. Islam would be in theological trouble.
Then we could hold the Kaaba hostage. “One more bomb, one more killing anywhere, and the Kaaba is dust”.
And then, of course, there would be a violent Muslim reaction… and yes, we should then destroy the Kaaba.
The Hadj requires the good will of the world. Without the wealth of Saudi Arabia, Western cultures could destroy the Kaaba with impunity, and blockade against the Haj for fifty years.
I believe energy independence from oil could be the end of Islam as a biting flea. It is the only course I can see for actually defeating Islam.
I’ve long known your name, Ms. Chesler, but just now discovered your web site and writings; thank you.
Several decades ago, I did substantial journalistic research on various treatment programs for sex offenders — rapists and pedophiles — then being tried out in the U.S., including medication (Depoprovera)to suppress sexual desire and behavior in offenders, psychodynamic therapy/support groups to try to effect insight and change, and behavior modification therapy. I believe it is the case that after decades, unfortunately, none have been found to be particularly effective.
However, I have long remembered what the nurse who assisted with the Depoprovera program said when I challenged her mildly by offeringd what I’d often heard said, that rape is, at base, a crime of power, not of sex (so how could chemical suppression of male desire help?): “Yes, but remember, they’ve got to get that thing up, and for most of them, using a stick is not what it’s about, not at all.” That is, sexual desire was, she said, central to most offenders’ behavior, even if that was not the PC take on it.
Whether that observation, by a woman in a better position than most to know pretty well what was going on in the rapists’ hearts and minds and, yes, groins, applies equally to individual U.S. offenders and to the kind of rapist who, say, forwards the agenda of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, as you discuss above, I have no idea. I did make it through Samantha Power’s Pulitzer-winning treatise on 20th Century genocide, “A Proglem From Hell.” (I know well that she has a bad case of anti-Israel jaundice, if I may put it that way. Still her contribution is important.) While making perfectly clear that the removal of people from their homeland with nowhere to go, without actually killing them off, can constitute genocide, she makes little to no mention of the subject matter you have introduced, if my memory serves. So I think you have opened or re-opened for discussion an important and neglected aspect of the workings of genocide.
I was one the fortunate teachers in the public school that 14 year old Steven Tuopeh attended. He was in one of my classes for a brief time but removed after he complained that “I didn’t like him.” I was, in fact, one of the few who attempted to make him toe the line. He was in perpetual trouble for academics and behavior. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Our school, and many others in the Phoenix area, are being deluded by “refugee” families coming from all parts of the globe. The children are placed in our schools due to school borders – where they live is where the go to school. Families are placed in low-rent apartments whose slumlords are guaranteed 3 solid months rent (paid for by you and me, the American taxpayer). After they are flown here on the taxpayers dollar, they are given 3 months of government assistance for food and living expenses, lots of charity donations by local churches, and help locating work. They are NOT given social/psychological support or counseling and are essentially abandoned after the initial three months of governmental assistance. Most of the children have had little, if any, formal education and are bringing with them baggage none of us could attempt to comprehend. Often, ages are misrepresented or simply unknown and children are misplaced in our traditional age-appropriate grade system. We had a 9 year old placed in 8th grade for an entire year because the paperwork was incorrect!
Bottom line: I appreciate helping others less fortunate than ourselves – that is why I choose to teach in an inner city environment. However, bringing immigrants from other countries into our borders whose background is filled with trauma without the necessary psycho-emotional support creates n environment less than optimal all concerned!