The Highest Price of Ignorance

Last night while switching channels I stopped to hear the most horrific story on Oprah. The story being ran was on child abuse, but the story being told went far beyond what any one person could fathom.

What I heard was a tale of infant/child rape and the numbers were staggering. In South Africa nearly 60 children a day are raped and it is not isolated to older children as more and more infants are being brutually raped. As I stared dumbfounded at the tv, with tears streaming down my face it was almost more unbearable to learn the reason this is happening. South African men have been told that they can cure themselves of AIDS/HIV by having sex with a virgin. Essentially passing the disease onto these children. Because the victims of these horrendous acts of violence cannot speak up only scream from the fear and agony of what has happened to them their rapists generally go unpunished for their crimes.

In 2003 Amnesty International submitted their report to the South African government working to pass stricter criminal laws in regards to sexual offenses (http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/document.do?id=E2F89E976E03D6B980256DA50056E645) . In this report, they sited nearly 40% of all rape victims are girls under the age of 18, but that number could be higher as many of these case go unreported. It also notes that in South Africa 1 out of 20 children between the ages of 2-14 are HIV positive and that most of these cases cannot be linked back to mother-child transmition.

The men that attack these children with such brutality leave them for dead, and for many that is how they are found. Others are found screaming, which never seems to end for them. The worst case that was reported and actually made the headlines was of a 9 month baby girl being raped by 5 men. For this little girl the story has a happier ending. She thankfully was adopted by an American woman living in South Africa and has been able to over come the attack through complete unconditional love from her new family. Many other children are not that lucky, they are abandoned and taken to group homes with other children that have suffered the same fate.

While all this is happening the Bush Administration as yet to fulfill his financial committment he made back in 2001 to help. Not only are the Republican's not living up to our committment, Bush has used this as another opportunity to line the pockets of his 'base' as he reneged on his agreement to create exceptions to the internation patent laws that would then allow these nations to import less expensive generic alternatives. Bush also doesn't want to look at the real cause of epidemic but rather funds programs to teach abstinence.

As the President and his constituients like to point out they believe in the culture of life and yet this is the same group turning a blind eye to the destruction of so much young life in this world. For a group so determined to take away family planning alternatives and eduction programs he is personally dooming more and more children to die both a physical and emotional death.

As you can tell I'm only touching on a small part of a huge problem. It is far bigger then I'm prepared to talk about as I just don't know. What I do know is that we need to demand that Bush fund these programs and keep his promise to these nations. Please help these children, they have no voice that our President will hear.

Fact Sheet: The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic - UPDATE
http://www.kff.org/hivaids/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=49626