Here we go, excuses, excuses. The Arizona Republic is trying very hard here to tell us that the four young boys who raped an 8 year-old neighbor girl in Phoenix last week have to be understood because they come from a culture of violence.
Liberian refugees who have fled the war-torn nation say the rape of an 8-year-old girl in Phoenix is a horrifying case of families trying to escape violence in their own country only to find it again in their new home. [Find it? Interesting spin from the reporter, didn’t they bring it!]
The attack, which police say was committed by four young Liberian boys, also exposed the darkest sides of the country’s long civil war. Boys were recruited to rape, kill and torture, and experts and government leaders said sexual violence remains a challenge as the West African country rebuilds.
The assault also has revealed cultural attitudes about women and assault victims that could take a generation to change. [A generation to change? Great!] Rape wasn’t even outlawed in Liberia until 2006, and victims are still made to feel shameful and even complicit in the attacks on them, aid workers say.
Phoenix police say the local case, which has garnered international attention, is no different. After the girl was attacked on July 16 in a shed at a Phoenix apartment complex, her parents told police to take her away, saying she had brought shame on the family.
Just a reminder that Liberia of all African nations had a chance to be something other than your average violent African backwater in the mid-1800’s when it became a country for freed American slaves and formed a government based on the US Constitution.
How many Liberians were resettled by the federal government to Arizona?
Many details remain unclear about when the families of the girl or the four boys accused in the attack settled in Phoenix. Nearly 1,200 Liberian refugees have settled in Arizona since fleeing the war, which ended in 2003, and its aftermath, according to the Arizona Refugee Resettlement Program.
The US State Department and whichever of the top ten government contractors did the resettling know when these families arrived. When I went to the stats I see we resettled 1030 Liberians in Arizona between 2001 and 2008 inclusive. The largest number (469) arrived in 2004. That year we resettled 7,047 Liberians throughout the US. A quick glance at the numbers tells me that Minnesota and New York got huge numbers of Liberians in comparison to Arizona.
So let’s assume these families arrived in about 2004 (5 years ago) and the alleged rapists now ages 9-14 would have been 4-9 years old. This next statement makes me wonder how much of the “rampant rape” in Liberia they could have picked up at that young age.
Ali Keita, a Liberian who immigrated to the U.S. in 1997, said many refugees he has worked with lived amid rampant rape and brutal violence in Liberia.
“Most of those boys (probably) grew up in very broken family situations,” said Keita, president of the Arizona Mandingo Association, a group that works with African immigrants.
Read the rest of the article because it strikes me (see if you get the same impression) that the political leaders in Liberia are distancing themselves from the excuses our media seems to be already crafting for why these boys raped the little girl and why the girl’s family is abandoning her. So, good for them!
I still would like to know what happened with that order to deport thousands of Liberians who had been invited to the US TEMPORARILY that I mentioned (here) back in February.