Outrage is echoing around the world over news about an 8-year old Liberian girl raped in Phoenix, Arizona, by four boys aged 9 to 14.
As reported by MSNBC, the young girl was lured by promises of chewing gum. She was then allegedly raped in a shed by four boys barely older than her. There, they held her down and took turns assaulting her for 10 to 15 minutes, before her screams alerted officers nearby who found the partially-clothed girl and four young boys running away.
The oldest boy, a 14 year-old, will be tried as an adult on charges of kidnapping and sexual assault.
The other three boys – aged 9, 10, and 13 – were charged as juveniles with sexual assault and kidnapping.
Both the girl and the boys are Liberian immigrants.
The details of the case have shocked local officials and provoked outrage across the United States after the parents of the young victim disowned her on grounds she had “shamed” her family.
She has been placed under the care of the Arizona Child Protective Service (CPS) because her parents said they did not want her back.
Phoenix police said no charges will be filed against the parents. “They didn’t abandon the child,” police sergeant Andy Hill told AFP news agency. “They committed no crime. They just didn’t support the child, which led to CPS coming over there.”
“We’ve had young people who have been victims of sexual assault, but the thing that distinguishes this is the age of the victim, the age of the suspects and the response of the parents,” Hill said.
People from eight or nine US states had called wanting to adopt the girl or donate money. “It has been unbelievably fantastic in terms of support for the child,” he added.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, an outspoken anti-rape campaigner, told CNN,
“I think that family is wrong. They should help that child who has been traumatized.”
“They too need serious counseling because clearly they are doing something, something that is no longer acceptable in our society here,” she added.
For a country that has more than its share of rape stories everyday, I am sickened by the publicity this story continues to receive. This is a dysfunctional family and the young boys are legacies of a war. Nothing else. Liberians are friendly people and Liberia has one of the harshest rape laws in the world with life imprisonment for rape of someone under 18. Yet, one isolated incident and every “journalist” paints Liberia as a uncivilized place. If rape was the norm in Liberia before the war, many of us would have been rape victims. My sisters and I grew up in a tropical paradise and rape has always been frowned upon and dealt with harshly. This family is clearly uneducated and wants to justify the boys actions on tradition. Rape is a legacy of any country that has gone through war and not Liberia alone. Punish the young boys and the girls parents but do not tar every Liberian or our country with the same brush.
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