--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Archer" <r...@...> wrote: > > Hey Raunch, do I get brownie points for posting this? >
Rick, thanks for posting the Amnesty International petition. It's one the few organizations I regularly donate to. I would hope that you posted it as a person of conscience and not as the disingenuous person posing in your comment. Violence against women is a serious business. I wasn't going to write about this, but your post is just a reminder of what my family has been dealing with the past few days. My brother's daughter, 28 years-old, is the mother of three boys by three different men. The first boy is 12 his father is African American. The second boy is 6 his father is also African American. The third boy is 1 his father is a Lebanese American Muslim. Last Friday night, father number three, choked, raped and sodomized my niece. She spent two days in the hospital recovering from injuries. All I can feel is overwhelming sadness for her and unbelievable rage washing over my heart like hot ice. I don't dwell on it but now that I'm talking about it, I'm feeling the rawness of it all. Everyone experiences family loss and tragedy. I'm no different from anyone else in that respect. I don't expect pity or reproach for telling this story. It just is what it is, another example of tragic everyday violence against women. When images come to my awareness of the rapist boyfriend holding my precious niece against her will, forcing himself on her while she screams and his baby cries for her, I want to claw his face to shreds and kill the fucker with my bare hands. He's lucky he's in jail. My brother feels the same way as I do. I worry he really would beat the shit out of this guy and probably end up in jail himself. I have a very low tolerance for drama in my personal relationships. Life is good. My niece and the other hand, has had one dramatic event in her life after another, living with a series of jackass boyfriends who beat her up. Now that it has come to this, extreme violence bordering on homicide is it reasonable to ask: Was she asking for it? What did she do or say to provoke him? Did they have too much to drink? Why does she always pick violent men? Why doesn't she have more self respect? What kind of a mother would allow her child to live in a violent home? The onus is always on the woman. Why is that? I'm interested to hear what others think. I comfort my mother and pray for my brother. Violence against women isn't so far away. It's in our homes, quietly hidden in families too afraid or ashamed to tell anyone about it. I'm talking and it's damn painful. I don't have the any answers for my niece, but I do have a responsibility to speak on her behalf and tell her story, here and now just to see if I'm alone in the echo chamber or resonating with someone out there I don't know. Women of courage are not silent. Hillary was the first person to say, women's rights are human rights. It was such an obvious statement to me, but it was considered bold and controversial in China and the world received it as if it was an amazing revelation. It's a damn sick society we live in. It's sick that we have to twist Congress' arm just to do the right thing and support the International Violence against Women Act. What say you?
