I am always shocked, outraged, and saddened in a way I cannot explain when I hear stories of the rape, abuse, exploitation of children (and women) and hear that another woman is involved. I just read about the case of the California woman, abducted at 11, who was recently discovered by police. She is now 29 and has two teenagers for the 58-year-old-man who kidnapped her 18 years ago. The first thing that came to my mind was, how many people are being held hostage (around the world) under these same circumstances? But then I read that his wife, who met him while he was in jail serving 10 years of a 50 year sentence for rape and abduction, was there when he kidnapped the girl 18 years ago, and lived with him as husband as wife, while he kept this young woman as his sex slave and mother of his children. This is reminiscent of the Karla Homolka case, where a woman takes part in the abduction of younger girls (though that case was gruesome on levels I pray I will never be able to fully comprehend). This case also reminds me of the Austria case of the father who drugged and held captive his own daughter for 20 years, making numerous babies with her, and her own mother (his wife) lived a seemingly clueless life upstairs. How about the recent case of the little Stratford Ontario girl lured away and kidnapped by the 18 year-old girl then handed over to the girl's boyfriend and later murdered. The sight of that innocent little child holding the young woman's hand and skipping away with her will never leave me.
I remember the time when I was still naive and believed that the safest place to run if you were in danger was to another woman, an older woman. Unfortunately, I understand that they can sometimes be as dangerous as the men. What makes them so dangerous is the fact that we do not question women in regards to their part in the abuse of children and other women.
There is also this disturbing thing that happens amongst some women where they either turn a blind eye to the abuse happening right under their nose or they get resentful and competitive with the child being sexually abused and neglect them all together. I am so tired of these women saying, "I didn't know what he was doing..." I see so many instances where women are so preoccupied with who their husbands and boyfriends are looking at on the street, flirting with on my-space, hitting on at work, but they never seem to ask what is my husband doing after he watches that internet porn. What is he doing when he gets up at night for twenty minutes? Why is my child acting differently? One of the most chilling stories I ever heard was when a sex chat worker said she finished a call with a man and said to him, "Now you can go wake up your wife and have a little fun." And he said, "My wife's sleeping. I'm going to my daughter." She said she was so traumatized by this event she stopped working as a sex worker and became an activist.
I recently learned about a case where a New York Rabbi had sexually abused his own daughter, serious, serious abuse, for many many years. He seemed to have a fixation with her and went to great lengths to continue the abuse even when she went off to a private school for high school. She is now in her twenties and had the courage to go to the police and report the abuse after her mother encouraged her to do so. What is shocking about this case is the mother testified that she had walked into her daughter's room, and found her husband and their daughter in bed under the covers. He admitted they were naked from he waist down but said nothing was happening. She left the room shocked but never brought it up again. This man had raped, sodomized, and abused this girl for years and the mother knew. She denied what she knew but she knew and later after they were divorced she encouraged the daughter to report it. If I found a man or a woman with any child like that I would be calling 911 so fast their head would spin. And this is if I had enough self control not to attack them first.
I am glad that the law is beginning to recognize the complicated relationship between male predators and the women who love them, because in some cases these women are predators themselves and should not escape punishment simply because they are women who pretend not to have known.
Comments