I’m not allowed to watch the news at night. Erik doesn’t let me watch any local or state news because of all the children hurt and killed, mostly by their own family it seems. The local news always leads with children, I’ve noticed, so even if I’m just finishing watching a TV show and it ends, before commercials the news anchor drops in with “next on Channel 13: News at 9…” Erik will hear that from the other room and come crashing through the living room, jumping over couches and linebackering his way to the remote to hurry and change the station, because he knows if I see a little bit I have to see it all, but if I see none, it won’t hurt. So I can understand how it is that I haven’t heard from the news about this 11 year old girl in Texas that got gang raped by 18 boys. But what I can’t understand is how I haven’t heard about it from friends and family and coworkers and radio talk show hosts and breaking news in the middle of Hawaii 5-0. Why is this not everywhere? I found out today when an article in the Huffington Post said that “In wake of Texas gang rape, Florida lawmaker proposes school dress code legislation”.
Florida State Rep. Kathleen Passidomo: "There was an article about an 11 year old girl who was gang raped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed like a 21-year-old prostitute," Passidomo declared. "And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think its incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn't happen to our students."
I’ve tried to start my day and I can’t, I’m completely stalled out by the coverage that this story is getting, it’s all wrong. Every single article in every single paper online has a quote by this woman saying "It's just destroyed our community," said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. "These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives."
THE BOYS HAVE TO LIVE WITH IT?!? They raped a child! They shouldn’t get it easy. They should be put into some manual labor camp for the rest of their lives and think of nothing else but the fact that they raped a child. They shouldn’t live with it, they should be forced to subsist on nothing but the knowledge of that child’s terror and humiliation and pain and distress for ever.
A child. She is 11 years old. A baby.
And don’t let me get started on the Chronicle and the bang up job they are doing of reporting the story.
I really don’t care how that child was dressed, or what her Facebook page looked like. There is no such thing as consensual sex with an 11 year old girl. No such thing. And for the paper to use the term “had sex with” and not RAPE is wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.
The New York Times has issued what I think was supposed to be an apology for their initial coverage of the story, but it ended up just being a “we just printed what the community quoted” BS and it made me even angrier. Like because the community of Cleveland, Texas isn’t behind the defense of a child who was raped that we shouldn’t be either.
I’m sick over this. Physically ill. It’s monstrous the way people are reacting and not reacting to this story. I want to do something. I was someone to name names with these 18 men who raped a child, I want their pictures posted everywhere, in every magazine, on the windows of stores and shops, I want them known for what they are. Child rapists. They should be shamed publicly. They should.
I've been reading about this all morning and I'm just sad over the fact that newspapers are trying to be "fair and balanced" about this story. There is no balancing 18 men to one child. There is no balance here. No fairness.
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