Dreadful news

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It's a slippery slope between reading/watching the news in order to stay reasonably informed about current events and rubbernecking. I must admit I'm attracted to the dreadful. Like the woman who had a baby in a portapotty and just dumped it there while she went back to her BBQ (a few weeks ago) to the lady who hit a guy in her car, and parked the car in her garage--with the guy still alive stuck in the windshield for days until he died (that one gave me nightmares).

And this one about the recent rape of a 9 year old girl in Phoenix by a group of boys. This kind of stuff makes me FURIOUS! Cultural validity to rape does not make it right!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/23/...ult/index.html

The victim and the boys charged are all from refugee families that have come to the United States from the war-torn West African nation of Liberia, police said.

the girl's 23-year-old sister, who said she was baby-sitting the girl at the time of the alleged attack.

The sister, who was not identified by name by the station, expressed mixed feelings about her sister's attack. "I came to her and said it's not good for you to be following guys because you are still little," the sister told KTVK. She also said that she wanted the suspects to be released from jail because "we are the same people."

"When she comes back I'm going to tell her don't ever do that again because all of us, we are the same family, we are from the same place. Now she is just bringing confusion among us. Now the other people, they don't want to see her," the sister told KTVK.

Tony Weedor, a Liberian who fled civil war with his family and now lives in the Denver, Colorado, area, told CNN that cultural aspects are deep in the case. In Liberia rape was not against the law until 2006, he said.

"The family [believes they] have been shamed by her, not a crime, but the name of the family has been degraded and news will get back to Liberia. And they're more concerned about that than the crime . . .

I hope those people are taught a lesson.