An update on the case of the Liberian girl who was raped in Arizona: The police are seeking felony child abuse charges against the parents, who allegedly said they were ashamed of their daughter for being raped. A few weeks ago, the girl was taken into protective custody.
Dove, who has worked on gender-based violence issues in Liberia and the US, thinks the girl should have remained with her family. She said:
The parents having an initially unsupportive reaction is not abnormal. No parent is prepared to accept that something so awful has happened to their child. In all of my years of GBV work, I could count on one hand the number of parents of victims who did not deny, excuse, or minimize what had happened to their child. While this initial reaction is not helpful, it is understandable. Our minds are resistant to believing something so upsetting, or to acknowledging that we have failed to protect our child.
But before we criticize the decision to seek felony charges against the parents, it’s worth noting that police have documented a series of incidents of abuse and neglect against the girl. In fact it seems surprising that charges haven’t been filed against the parents previously. This AP article goes through these incidents:
…the girl had injuries consistent with child abuse after school officials called them. Officials removed her for the weekend before allowing her to return home…the girl took a steak from a neighbor’s grill and Phoenix police officers found her hungry and wandering around by herself…police got a report that the girl was seen being dragged into the family apartment. Eleven days later, an officer found her lost and wandering the neighborhood and wrote a child neglect report…a Phoenix officer found her wandering around begging for food.
Thanks for the update, Shelby. I hadn’t seen the AP article nor heard much since the incident came to light several weeks ago.
To clarify, I was responding to he initial reporting last month on this situation (including the treatment of the perpetrators) seemed to reflect a lack of cultural awareness at best and, at worst, feed into racist … Read Moreand anti-immigrant stereotypes. I didn’t know enough about the case to say whether the girl should have stayed with her family. My concern was the way that this case was being treated quite differently than the many other cases that I have seen, and that jerking a child out of her family only for a statement like that seemed quite extreme.
Addressing a history of neglect and abuse with appropriate action is a different matter altogether. I am heartened by the AZ Child Protective Services spokesman’s comment that the law requires the agency to provide resources to try to keep the family together. Clearly, they do need help and support.