A Kick in the Stomach for American Rape Victims

It takes about 11 hours of driving to pull my travel trailer from Abbotsford, B.C. to Edmonton, Alberta. Having satellite radio makes the ride much more pleasant as we can sing to the oldies, since we are a couple of oldies, all the way. Sometimes we stop overnight at Mount Robson National Park, but not this time.

Mount Robson Gorge

Yesterday, while driving, we took a break from the music and listened to talk radio. A program was on from the US which talked about the huge stockpile of rape-kits that have accumulated all across America.

Rape-kits are a very unpleasant ordeal that most reported rape victims endure in a hospital setting. The kits are then turned over to the local police, ostensibly for use in catching the rapist. As if the victims hadn't already endured enough, we find out now that most police forces simply stockpile the kits, never processing them. The police really never made much of an effort to find the rapists in hundreds of thousands of cases. A kick in the stomach to the poor woman or girl who has already been brutalized.

There are movements now to process these kits as cold cases, however, many of them lead to the rapist, but the statute of limitations has run out for so many and they cannot be charged. Another kick while the victim is down. The American justice system does a lot better job of protecting rapists than their victims.

Meanwhile, these girls have suffered through another symptom of sexual abuse not mentioned in the prodigious list of symptoms in "Save A Child". This symptom is the lack of hope that their rapist will ever be found - the nearly complete lack of accountability, as though the victims count for nothing.

In the US, only 6% of rapists are ever caught and prosecuted. I don't imagine the numbers are much better elsewhere in the world. It's not just the police and prosecutors, it's all of us who need to scream blue murder at our police and politicians until rape and child molestations are no longer tolerated.

Christians know that the rapists will not escape punishment, but that gives us no excuse for ignoring the pain our women and children are in now.

Please, pray. (see, Save A Child)

What God Did

The message on our shirts is to pray for a cure for PH - Pulmonary hypertension. My wife, Patricia, was diagnosed with PH last fall. Read what God did when we prayed: God Answers Prayer

God Answers Prayer

Almost exactly one year ago, my wife, Patricia, had knee replacement surgery. After the surgery she developed pulmonary embolisms (blood clots in the lungs). Over the summer this turned into pulmonary hypertension – a significant increase in the blood pressure as it flows from the lungs to the heart. This causes damage to the left ventricle of the heart, and, if left untreated, will usually kill you in 2 to 3 years.

Pat was diagnosed in October, last year, and as fall turned into winter and winter ever-so-reluctantly into spring, the symptoms worsened. In late winter, I had to take her to emergency because of atrial fibrillation.

In early spring we were in Edmonton. We were invited to a senior’s function at the church we had attended a few years ago. Several days before the function, I felt God impress on me that we should attend and ask some of the seniors to pray for Pat.

On the day of the event Pat was having a very difficult time breathing. As we got ready to go, it was a question of whether we go to the event or to emergency. We decided to go to emergency. As we headed to the truck I was questioning God, "Didn't You want me to take her to the event so to have people pray for her? If you do, then You will have to make it happen, otherwise, we are going to emergency." Immediately, Pat announced that the fresh air seemed to help a lot. So, we went to the seniors function instead, promising to go to emerg if she has trouble breathing again.

Pat was fine through the event but as it was ending the breathing difficulty returned. I asked the remaining seniors to pray for my wife. A half dozen of us, all very good friends and very committed Christians laid hands on her and prayed fervent, heart-felt prayers. During the prayer, Pat felt something in her chest, as though she was doing an interior sit-up. Immediately, she could breathe much better.

What had God done? She suffered very little in the way of breathing problems since but still had considerable fatigue and some other symptoms. So, she went through another battery of tests with a new Respirologist here in Abbotsford. Yesterday, we got the results: Pulmonary Hypertension is completely gone! The symptoms she is still feeling are probably from the medication she is on. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.

God answers prayers, sometimes in spectacular ways. Prayer should be our first resort. Your prayers can make the world a better place. Please pray.

The sign on our shirts says: 'Pray PHor a Cure'! We did and Pat was cured, instantly. Thank You, Lord. 

Please pray for the many other men, women and children who suffer from this debilitating disease. Nothing short of a lung transplant can cure it, except for a miracle-working God.

The Disgrace of Residential Schools

A Canadian aboriginal woman suffered extreme physical, emotional and sexual abuse all her life. After being sentenced to jail for theft, instead of getting the badly needed psychological and spiritual help, she was restricted to solitary confinement, 23 hours a day, for three and a half years. People who suffer sexual abuse or any kind of childhood abuse need help, not solitary confinement.

Far too many native children suffer from sexual abuse and much of it relates back to Canada's Residential School system. Many parents and grandparents of today's children were sexually abused in those schools and some of them, too many of them, became abusers of children themselves. It's a never-ending cycle unless something is done.

The following is an excerpt from my yet to be finished book, "God, Are You Kidding"

Residential school classroom

The Residential School system was one of Canada’s great horror stories for which an official apology was given by the federal government just a few years ago, and in 2009 the Pope expressed sorrow and sympathy for the victims.

Children were forcibly removed from their families and many never saw them again as the badly underfunded church-run institutions suffered from unsanitary conditions, and an inordinate number of children died from diseases. Various studies have indicated death rates between 30 and 60% over five years, mostly from tuberculosis. In fact, one doctor found children in a Residential School near Calgary who were near death and were still forced to sit in classrooms and take instruction.

Children were forbidden to speak in their native tongue or to practice any native rituals, and they had to work very hard to contribute to their own keeping. To make matters worse, they were physically and emotionally abused, and many were sexually abused, resulting in large monetary settlements in recent years.

Attendance ceased to be compulsory in 1948, but the legacy of the attempt to “kill the Indian in the child” will continue to haunt First Nations peoples for some time to come. Unfortunately for many, turning to our Savior, our Redeemer and our Healer is not an option as so many still associate Christianity with pain, loneliness, abuse, and all the things real Christianity should stand against. Residential Schools are not only Canada’s disgrace, but Christendom’s as well. Forced conversion is more the style of militant Islam than Christianity.

Many residential schools were run by Catholic Orders

What can we do? We can, at least, pray and begin the process of change. One never knows what will come of prayer.

Free Will and Child Sex Abuse

God gave man free will when He created Him in the garden. That means that man could choose evil and God would not intervene to prevent him from doing so. But God also gave man dominion over the earth meaning that man must suffer the consequences of his own evil. Although the use of the word ‘man’ here is misleading because, in the case of this blog, it’s children who suffer the consequences of man’s evil.

75% of them are abused multiple times - some thousands of times

I believe that a strong-willed man will prevail over a weak-willed man every time. Men obsessed with sexually molesting a child are driven by strong passions and there are, at least, tens of millions of them. That is a lot of will to counteract. But it can be done if enough of us pray daily, and pray hard.

If you don’t pray, then concentrate your mind on this problem for 3 minutes a day, willing that it will stop. If you do pray, then pray hard. Remember the fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. That means you need to get into the prayer by identifying with the victim. Ask God to help you to love that child whoever he or she may be. Identifying with the victim is also identifying with Christ in His sufferings.