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.
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)
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| Mount Robson Gorge |
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)
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