Saudi Arabia’s Child-Rape Case: Female Activists Fight to Prevent Abuse, Child Abuse in America

[news reporter]

Saudi Arabia’s Child-Rape Case: Female Activists Fight to Prevent
Abuse Feb 8, 2013 Christopher Dickey

A monstrous case of abuse in Saudi Arabia shakes the kingdom and
strengthens the cause of Saudi women activists.

The torture and murder of 5-year-old Lama Al Ghamdi could hardly have
been more horrific—and news of it, repeated in countless Twitter
feeds, has enflamed opinion around the world. But the fact that this
story of one little girl’s death and one father’s monstrosity went
public is also a sign of just how hard women in Saudi Arabia are
working to fight the cruel misogyny embedded in the kingdom’s version
of Islamic law. And among those women is a daughter of the king....

Fayhan Al Ghamdi, a self-styled Islamic preacher who appears
occasionally on local TV shows pontificating about morality, was
arrested last year and charged with murder. He told authorities that
he had suspected his 5-year old daughter was not a virgin. He had even
taken her to a doctor to check. But apparently that had not satisfied
him....

Saudi law claims to follow a clear path (sharia) laid out in the
Quran, but in practice it’s based on a maze of sayings and traditions
(hadith) with as many baffling contradictions as the codes used by
lawyers anywhere. According to one reading, a father cannot be held
fully accountable for the death of his children; their loss is a
punishment for him. So the question arose in the proceedings whether
Al Ghamdi could simply pay the mother “blood money” for the loss of
her daughter and walk free....

The mother has said she will not accept payment. She has asked that
the stepmother be investigated as well, and she has told her advocates
that she wants to see her ex-husband executed, which in Saudi Arabia
means beheading.

Before the middle of the last decade, domestic violence and child
abuse in Saudi Arabia were treated mainly as family affairs. Nobody
wanted to talk about them, and if police did bother to investigate
suspected crimes, which was rare, they found proof very hard to come
by.

But it’s important to remember Saudi Arabia is not the only country
where domestic abuse is a hidden crime. Indeed, the United States has
the worst record in the industrialized world. According to the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, almost five children a day
die from neglect or abuse, but according to the U.S. Government
Accountability Office, those numbers almost certainly are
understated....

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/08/saudi-arabia-s-child-rape-case-female-activists-fight-to-prevent-abuse.html

Child Abuse in America
Children are suffering from a hidden epidemic of child abuse and
neglect. Every year 3.3 million reports of child abuse are made in the
United States involving nearly 6 million children (a report can
include multiple children). The United States has the worst record in
the industrialized nation – losing five children every day due to
abuse-related deaths....Approximately 80% of children that die from
abuse are under the age of 4.

http://www.childhelp.org/pages/statistics