So I've read...

Sam Jones

Two boys aged 10 and 11 were today found guilty of attempting to rape an eight-year-old girl, but were cleared of raping her.

The boys, who have sat next to their mothers in the well of a court at the Old Bailey for the last two weeks, were among the youngest ever to be charged with rape in England and Wales.

A jury found them not guilty on two charges each of raping the girl in Hayes, west London, in October last year. They were later found guilty of two charges each of attempted rape, by majorities of 10 to two.

As a concession to the defendants' age, the judge and counsel dispensed with wigs and gowns and reporters were asked to spread out around the court rather than congregate in an intimidating huddle on the press bench.

Proceedings were also kept short to help the boys follow what was going on; the day was divided into two 40-minute sessions in the morning and two 30-minute sessions in the afternoon to mimic a primary school timetable.

Opening the case almost a fortnight ago, Rosina Cottage, prosecuting, told the six-man, six-woman jury that they would hear evidence of a most serious crime.

"This case concerns rape by two boys still at primary school of a girl even younger than them," she said.

"Together they took her to different locations near where they lived in order to find a sufficiently secluded spot to assault her. The events leading to the alleged rapes all took place in and around a block of flats and they ended in a field."

Cottage told the court the girl had been playing with a five-year-old friend near her home in Hayes on 27 October when the defendants arrived and suggested visiting another friend.

But Cottage said that when the four children arrived at the block of flats where the friend lived, the defendants pulled down their pants and those of the girl.

After the scene was repeated in the lift of the block of flats, the girl and her younger friend were trapped by the older boys in a shed that held rubbish bins, Cottage said.

Once again, said Cottage, the girl's pants were pulled down and she was sexually assaulted before eventually being taken to a nearby field and allegedly raped.

The jury was then shown a recorded interview shot by specially trained police officers the day after the alleged assaults.

In it, the girl played with a teddy bear she had named Mr Happy while she told one of the officers how the boys had exposed themselves, pulled down her pants and raped her.

However, the girl's story changed radically when she was cross-examined via a videolink.

She said she had lied to her mother because she had been "naughty" and was worried she would not get any sweets.

In a series of questions, she was asked if any parts of her body had been penetrated by the boys. She replied each time: "No."

She also admitted that she had agreed to play with the boys and had pulled down her own underwear while the boys exposed themselves to her.

Linda Strudwick, defending the older boy, asked her: "Did you ever tell your mum it was not you but it was [the boys] who took your knickers down? You didn't want your mum to think you had been naughty?"

The girl replied: "Yeah."

The judge asked what the girl had been worried about and she replied: "No sweets if it [sic] found out I had been naughty."

The problem, as one of the defence barristers told the jury, was that everything hinged on the girl's testimony.

"Apart from saying that the girl said it had happened so it must have, Ms Cottage provided you with absolutely nothing to support the allegation of rape and attempted rape," said Chetna Patel, counsel for the younger boy.

"No useful medical evidence, no DNA evidence and no forensic evidence: nothing."

Strudwick said that her client was "a normal boy … not a monster", adding that a children's game appeared to have got out of hand.

"What this case is about is not a serious crime," she said. "It is about children. There is a game called 'You show me yours and I will show you mine'.

"Maybe it went too far, maybe it went to touching, maybe they were doing something they had seen on television, maybe they were playing that age-old game, doctors and nurses.

"They are kids. If [my client] had been a few months younger, he could not have been charged."

But in her closing speech, Cottage warned the jury not to trivialise what had taken place.

"On the face of it, wouldn't it be so much easier and so much nicer to believe that this was all a case of innocent sexual experimentation, a game of you show me yours and I will show you mine, a case of [the girl] misunderstanding what had happened and innocently exaggerating it?" she said.

"Just because it would be easier, just because we don't really want to consider that these things really did happen, is not the way to decide this case. You have to look at the evidence."

BY ROSEMARY BLACK

When I was little I was obsessed with sex.

I hope you find this precious and not creepy.

According to a psychotherapist I used to know, I had an “intellectual obsession with sex.”

My first crush was at age 4. It was a tie between Bruce Lee and Mikhail Barishnikov.

There is a part in the 1964 comedy “Good Neighbor Sam” starring Jack Lemmon and Romy Schneider where Lemmon bursts into Schneider’s bedroom and passionately kisses up and down her arm. I watched this 30 second scene over and over and over again. This took dedication as I had to keep rewinding as silently as possible in order to avoid discovery (there is apparently no rhyme or reason to what I am embarrassed by as you will soon find out).

My parents amuse themselves by recounting the beginning of this youthful fascination: Whenever we would go into bookstores I would vanish. After the first few times they knew where to find me: In the Harlequin Romance section, staring excitedly at the paperback covers. So many men in puffy shirts, so little time. So many hot white ladies with torn bodices, SO LITTLE TIME!!!

This was a habit of mine when I was 5 or so. At 8 things got better. I had a friend who would occasionally steal an erotic fiction book from her parents’ room and this reading inspired me to create my own book of erotica. It was copied pretty much word for word from the stories I had read. Sidenote: This is the first time I learned about the words “cunt” and “cock”. To this day, whenever I hear or read those words I can smell the mulch that lined the sidewalks where this girlfriend and I would do our secret reading.

But moving on.

My father is an academic and has an extensive library at home. When I was 9 or so I would spend a good deal of time secretly going through all these books searching for anything that had anything to do with sex. I flipped impatiently through Anthony Trollope (zzz), Euripides, Richard Wright, Herman Hesse, The Guide to the Great Railroad Trips of North America (leave no stone unturned), Harriet Jacobs Diary of a Slave Girl (I know), Churchill biographies (no luck there), and many, many more. When I had the good fortune of finding a sentence or two, I would fold the corner of the page and revisit it later. This eventually led to one of my most bizarre life decisions:

The night was cool and the tree frogs chirped. Rosy cheeked children the world over dreamed of birthday cake and going to the pool. Angora bunnies piled on top of each other and were the coziest things ever. A man with a hat sat in his window somewhere and played a tune on his saxophone, and I, snug in my pajamas, quietly poured over book after book looking for the word “nipple”.

It was during this particular adventure that I stumbled across a little gem called Sexual Politics by Kate Millett. Sidenote: Interestingly enough, as I scan the book now, I am reminded of the intense need to pee. Why is it that you always have to piss when you’re in the middle of doing something sneaky? I want you to think about that. Maybe there’s a juicy answer.

But moving on.

I had no idea what this book was. I had no idea it was a landmark of feminist literature. All I knew is that if I flipped through it to the parts where the print was smaller than normal and indented, I would find something reallllllllly good. These were of course block quotes from books Millett referenced. I no longer had to scrounge around for hours just to find: “Siddartha felt his blood kindle, and as he recognized his dream again at that moment, he stooped a little towards the woman and kissed the brown tip of her breast.”

Pshhhh. Hesse is no match for this:

“She was like a bitch in heat . . . wriggling like a worm on the hook . . . . Mara twisted like an eel. She wasn’t any longer a woman in heat, she wasn’t even a woman; she was just a mass of indefinable contours wriggling and squirming like a piece of fresh bait . . . . groaning, grunting, squealing like a pig . . . fornicating with a rabbit . . . . She crouched on all fours like a she animal, quivering and whinnying . . . . She looked like a crazed animal.”*

DING DING DING DING. JACKPOT.

I was so overwhelmed by my discovery that I guess I lost my mind and decided to tell my parents all about it. They were both downstairs in the living room (probably watching Poirot). They didn’t scold me. They were amused. I assume that they, having an understanding of the book, found it a little ironic, hilarious, or both.

But no no, it did not stop there. In my eagerness I decided I wanted to recite my favorite parts out loud to my parents.

I remember this vividly, and of course I would, because I am horrified by it. I started off reading the following (from Henry Miller’s Black Spring) confidently:

“You never wear any undies do you. You’re a slut do you know it?”

I pulled her dress up and made her sit that way while I finished my coffee.

“Play with it a bit while I finish this.”

“You’re filthy,” she cried, but she did as I told her.

“Take your two fingers and open it up. I like the color of it.”

…With this I reached for a candle on the dresser at my side and handed it to her

Annnnddddd at this point the incredible and horrible awkwardness of the situation began to dawn on me.

Let’s see if you can get it in all the way.

And by that line, I found myself stranded on the island of The Worst Idea Ever.

I shut the book, said “Uhhh I don’t want to read anymore,” and without making any eye contact, went back upstairs.

The house was silent. The worst kind of silence. The kind that takes over a room when your parents are embarrassed about sex.

Or when you talk to them about a woman sticking a candle up her vagina. Who knows.

In conclusion choose your own moral of this story:

A) Feminist texts are wasted on the young.

B) No one likes to have their Poirot episode interrupted.

C) Progressive type parents will occasionally be hoisted by their own petard.

The next year I found Fanny Hill. Game over.

* From Henry Miller’s Sexus

JEDDAH: In an unprecedented twist, a court in Buraidah recently granted a 12-year-old Saudi girl a divorce from her 80-year-old husband.

According to reports, the girl was married against her will to her father’s cousin for a dowry of SR85,000.

Like many other cases involving child brides, this case also sparked debate in the Kingdom as well as attracting international media concern.

The girl and her mother, who is separated from the girl’s father, took the case to court seeking a divorce for the girl. The case prompted the governmental Human Rights Commission (HRC) to appoint a lawyer to assist the child bride.

An unexpected twist occurred, according to a source within the HRC, when the case was dropped by the girl’s mother in February when the girl failed to appear at a court hearing. Her failure surprised the HRC committee which had been formed to investigate the case.

The source also alleged in a previous interview with Arab News that the girl, her mother, and her mother’s lawyer had come to court and withdrawn the request for divorce. Other reports said that the mother had reconciled with the girl’s father, who had married her off and this is what led to the sudden dismissal of the case. There has been no independent confirmation of any of these developments.

Arab News spoke to Dr. Bandar Al-Iban, president of the Human Rights Commission (HRC), who said, “The case was dropped by the girl when she appeared in court in front of the judge, lawyers, and media along with her mother and legal representative to say that she didn’t have a case and that she wanted to get married and since there was no law prohibiting it, she believes that the HRC should not be involved and therefore the case should be dismissed,” he said, adding that everyone was shocked by the girl’s statement.

Al-Iban, commenting on the recent granting of divorce, said that the HRC had no information about how the divorce came about. “We don’t know how the girl and her husband were divorced as it was all done very quietly,” he said.

Less than a year ago, an eight-year-old Saudi girl from Onaizah won an annulment of marriage from her 58-year-old husband after receiving assistance from Qassim Gov. Prince Faisal bin Bandar and after she promised to return the SR 8,000 dowry her husband had given to her father.

Underage girls married to older men have been in the international news media recently. Barely two weeks ago, Elham Mahdi, a 12-year-old Yemeni girl, reportedly died of internal bleeding three days after marrying an older man.

“Her death is a painful reminder of the risks girls face when they are married too soon,” said Sigrid Kaag, UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

In many cases, the girls are married off to older men to settle the father’s “debt” and so that the girl will no longer be seen as a financial or moral burden on her family. In some cases, there are agreements made between the bride’s family and the groom to wait until she is older before consummation of marriage but this is not always the case.

A minimum age for girls to marry is still being debated in both Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The HRC and the Shoura Council have said openly said that they are working on a law setting a legal minimum age for marriage.

“We are still working to create a law setting a minimum age for marriage in Saudi Arabia,” Al Aiban told Arab News. “But it is very challenging as we are often dealing with conservative cultural bodies who do not believe that child marriage is a problem,” he added.

I’m watching The Vagina Monologues on HBO right now. I’ve read the book, but I never saw it being performed. It’s a good show, I like how this particular adaptation has mini interview with Eve Ensler and a group of women between each monologue. No matter how many times you hear these stories, they never lose their power to move.

The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could

Memory: December 1965: Five Years Old

My mama tells me in a scary, loud, life-threatening voice to stop scratching my coochi snorcher. I become terrified that I’ve scratched it off down there. I do not touch myself again, even in the bath. I am afraid of the water getting in and filling me up so I explode. I put Band-Aids over my coochi snorcher to the cover the hole, but they fall off in the water. I imagine a stopper, a bathtub plug up there to prevent things from entering me. I sleep with three pairs of happy heart-patterned cotton underpants underneath my snap-up pajamas. I still want to touch myself, but I don’t.

Memory: Seven Years Old

Edgar Montane, who is ten, gets angry at me and punches me with all his might between my legs. It feels like he breaks my entire self. I limp home. I can’t pee. My mama asks me what’s wrong with my coochi snorcher, and when I tell her what Edgar did to me she yells at me and says never to let anyone touch me down there again. I try to explain he didn’t touch it, Mama, he punched it.

Memory: Nine Years Old

I play on the bed, bouncing and falling, and impale my coochi snorcher on the bedpost. I make high-pitched screamy noises that come straight from my coochi snorcher’s mouth. I get taken to the hospital and they sew it up down there from where it’s been torn apart.

Memory: Ten Years Old

I’m at my father’s house and he’s having a party upstairs. Everyone’s drinking. I’m playing in the basement and I’m trying on my new white cotton bra and panties that my father’s girlfriend gave me. Suddenly my father’s best friend, this big man Alfred, comes up from behind and pulls my new underpants down and sticks his hard penis into my coochi snorcher. I scream.I kick. I try to fight him off, but he gets it in. My father’s there then and he has a gun and there’s a loud horrible noise and then there’s blood all over Alfred and me, lots of blood. I’m sure my coochi snorcher is finally falling out. Alfred is paralyzed for life and my mama doesn’t let me see my father for seven years.

Memory: Thirteen Years Old

My coochi snorcher is a very bad place, a place of pain, nastiness, punching, invasion, and blood. It’s a site for mishaps. It’s a bad-luck zone. I imagine a freeway between my legs and, girl, I am traveling, going far away from here.

Memory: Sixteen Years Old

There’s this gorgeous twenty-four-year-old woman in our neighborhood and I stare at her all the time. One day she invites me into her car. She asks me if I like kissing boys, and I tell her I do not like that. Then she says she wants to show me something, and she leans over me and kisses me so softly on the lips with her lips and then puts her tongue in my mouth. Wow. She asks me if I want to come over to her house, and then she kisses me again and tells me to relax, to feel it, to let our tongues feel it. She asks my mama if I can spend the night and my mother’s delighted that such a beautiful, successful woman has taken an interest in me. I’m scared but really I can’t wait. Her apartment’s fantastic. She’s got it hooked up. It’s the seventies: the beads, the fluffy pillows, the mood lights. I decide right there that I want to be a secretary like her when I grow up. She makes a vodka for herself and then she asks what I want to drink. I say the same as she’s drinking and she says she doesn’t think my mama would like me drinking vodka. I say she probably wouldn’t like me kissing girls, either and the pretty lady makes me a drink. The she changes into this chocolate satin teddy. She’s so beautiful, I always thought bulldaggers were ugly. I say, “You look great,” and she says,”So do you.: I say, “But I only have this white cotton bra and underpants.” The she dresses me, slowly, in another satin teddy. It’s lavender like the first soft days of spring. The alcohol has gone to me head and I’m loose and ready. I notice that there’s a picture over her bed of a naked black woman with a huge afro as she gently and slowly lays me on the bed. And just our bodies rubbing makes me come. The she does everything to me and my coochi snorcher that I always thought was nasty before, and wow. I’m so hot, so wold. She says, “Your vagina,untouched by man, smells so nice, so fresh, wish I could keep it that way forever.” I get crazy wild and then the phone rings and of course my mama. I’m sure she knows; she catches me at everything. I’m breathing so heavy and I try to act normal when I get on the phone and she asks me, “What’s wrong with you, have you been running?” I say, “No, Mama, exercising.” Then she tells the beautiful secretary to make sure I’m not around boys and the lady tells her, ”Trust me, there’s no boys around here.” Afterwards the gorgeous lady teaches me everything about my coochi snorcher. She makes me play with myself in front of her and she teaches me all the different ways to give myself pleasure . She’s very thorough. She tells me to always know how to give myself pleasure so I’ll never need a man. In the morning I am worried that I’ve become a butch because I’m so in love with her. She laughs, but I never see her again. I realized later she was my surprisingly, unexpected, politically incorrect salvation. She transformed my sorry-ass coochi snorcher and raised it up into a kind of heaven.

Martha is a shy, yet intelligent, 12-year-old girl. This year, she was supposed to earn her primary school leaving certificate (PSLC). Her teachers believed she would make it to high school, as she had been the best student in her class since the first grade. Last school term, she was also at the top of her class.

Bursting with confidence, she eagerly presented her exam report card to her father. Like any other child who has done extremely well in class, Martha was expecting to be showered with praise. But that wasn't to be; her father passively gazed at the piece of paper and folded it into his pocket.

What Martha didn't know was that her father had already found a suitor for her, and that within the next few days, she would be the new housewife of a man old enough to be her grandfather. And for Martha, despite her excellent academic record, this was to be her last term in school.

In Nsanje, where Concern Worldwide is working, this same scenario has abruptly cut short the dreams of many young girls. Some 12 percent of all females in the country are aged between six and 13 years, and it is estimated that 74 percent of the population here live below the poverty line.

Poverty and traditional customs allow parents to marry off their daughters when they think they have come of age. Since the suitor pays a bride price, the trend is now that the younger the girl, the higher the bride price.

Like Martha, many young girls in Nsanje have been caught in this vicious trap. Their dreams, hopes and aspirations have been destroyed by these negative cultural practices or by the pervasive daughter-with-cash bartering.

Negative cultural practices, which unfortunately, are widespread, have been the major contributing factor in preventing girls from receiving an education. For instance, it is believed that girls will gain respect if they marry early and have children.

In Malawi, approximately 17 percent of girls drop out of school as a result of forced marriages, and schools are not safe for girls due to sexual abuse by male teachers and men at large.

In extreme cases, the girls are subjected to the "tsempho" belief. Parents will have their daughters married young as they fear that they will become pregnant outside marriage and have an abortion. This, according to the tsempho belief, will bring death to the family.

The situation has been going on for some time but not without its consequences. Currently, Nsanje is one of the districts in Malawi where the drop-out rate for girls is far below the national average.

Despite the prevalence of the problem, few people have come out in the open to criticize these customs. Concern Worldwide has been holding meetings with community leaders and education officials in the district to highlight these problems. We are in the process of drafting an education program that seeks to change the prevailing views on education for girls.

Results from the awareness meetings held so far reveal that communities are now aware that educating girls is equally important to educating boys. Now there has been a call for urgent action from all sectors of the Nsanje society, something which will help to finally turn the situation around.

The overall goal of Concern Worldwide's five year educational program in Malawi is to improve access to quality education -- and to complete the primary education -- of 18,736 children, primarily girls and those most vulnerable, in 25 schools. This program is new, but the need is great, and we know that it will result in huge transformations in the lives of girls and the most vulnerable children, who deserve futures full of choices.

Panhandle top place in Florida for human trafficking

The room was dark when Shauna Newell, 17, woke up, her clothes torn from her, a man over her, raping her. Her hands were tied, crossed, behind her head. She yelled for them to stop, to leave her alone. She looked into the faces of the four men watching, looked to her friend Jana, looking for a sign that one of them would help her. Instead, she got a gun pressed to her head.

"Do you want to see your brains all over that wall?" one man asked. She was quiet.

Then she blacked out again. She woke up to the same horrifying nightmare again and again. But it was real. The pain told her it was happening.

As she faded in and out she heard, "He isn't ready yet…We have to stall longer...$300,000 in cash…Man in Texas."

Shauna is a real person. Shauna is her real name. She's 18 now, and she's lived in Pensacola as long as she can remember. She's white, middle-class. All her family is here. This all happened just over a year ago. She was held against her will for four days from April 29 to May 2, 2006.

Shauna is a victim of sex trafficking. Forced commercial sex and labor are called human trafficking, a form of modern-day slavery. Human trafficking is very real across the United States, especially in Florida, California, New York and Texas. And it's very real in Pensacola.

Sex trafficking means a commercial sex act has been induced by force, fraud or coercion, or the person induced to perform the act is under age 18, reports the National Human Trafficking Resource Center. Many times traffickers target young, female runaways, sweet talk them, earn their trust, then rape them and shame them into prostitution, saying things like, "You can't go home now. Your family will never take you back. I'm the only one who will watch out for you now. You're worthless."

Sex traffickers also bring in women from other countries, often from Central and South America, with promises of marriage, better jobs, a new life.

NO. 2 CRIME INDUSTRY
After drug dealing, trafficking of humans is tied with arms dealing as the second largest criminal industry in the world and is the fastest growing, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says. Many victims are forced to be prostitutes or strippers, but trafficking includes people forced or tricked into domestic servitude, construction work, restaurant work, janitorial work, sweatshop factory work and migrant agricultural work.

The Panhandle saw 33 rescued victims in the past month—plus 10 this week alone for a total of 43—and has 10 open cases involving 300 potential victims, says Anna Rodriguez, head of the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking. That's more than Miami or Orlando.

Brad Dennis of the KlaasKids foundation started helping human trafficking victims after Shauna's case. The Florida Coalition contacted him about her case, and he started working with them on other cases along the Gulf Coast. That grew into the Gulf Coast Coalition Against Human Trafficking, which he oversees.

"That doesn't happen in Pensacola." "She must have deserved it." "She asked for it." "That doesn't happen to girls who don't want it." "That's too unbelievable."

Shauna hears all those comments. And she'll be the first to tell you, she never thought it could happen either.

"I went to that house of my own free will," she says softly, "but I was not held there on my own free will. I told them plenty of times, 'Just let me go home!'

"I was aware stuff like that happens, but I never thought it'd happen to me," she adds. "I thought I could trust her."

BETRAYED AND RESCUED
She was betrayed by a friend, Jana, a girl she met at night school, a girl she thought was trustworthy. Shauna was two days away from earning her GED. Her stepdad had promised her a new car when she got it—she never did.

Shauna's friend Jana invited her to hang out at her dad's home, a house in Shauna's neighborhood, four blocks from her own home and less than a mile from the sheriff's office headquarters. It's a neighborhood where she always felt safe. She sees cops patrolling all the time.

Shauna had just talked to her mom on the phone. She'd be home by 10 p.m. But when they got to the house, Jana's "dad" turned out to be her pimp. He was out on an errand. Instead, Shauna found five men. She felt uncomfortable and asked for some water. She drank it. Then she blacked out.

She woke up in a pool of vomit in the bathroom. One of the men told her to take the pill he offered her. It'd make her feel better. Shauna doesn't know if she took it or not, because she blacked out again. The next time she regained consciousness was in the dark, during one of the rapes. Those went on for days.

When she was rescued after four days of rape, abuse, starvation and water deprivation, Shauna had lethal amounts of cocaine, crystal meth, marijuana, the date rape drug and ecstasy in her system, so much she had to take Life Flight to West Florida Hospital. No one thought she'd survive.

Shauna was rescued thanks to her mom, the Escambia County Sheriff's Department and the KlaasKids Foundation—that's where Dennis joined the hunt. The sheriff's office asked for Dennis' help, and he organized search parties, posted flyers and asked questions. He finally got a name of someone who knew who Shauna was with.

Repeated calls to Shauna's attackers—and Jana—led them to prop Shauna up between two men in the backseat of a car and start driving.

That's when Jana asked Shauna, "Did the water I gave you taste funny?" Jana told her she'd drugged her first glass of water with the date rape drug. Jana had been present almost constantly during the entire ordeal.

"She wasn't acting like she didn't want to be there," Shauna says flatly. "When I saw her running around, I was so mad. She set me up."

She didn't know where they were going, but she didn't have the strength to argue.

"My body was so low on energy I couldn't fight anymore," she says. "I couldn't if I wanted to. I could barely hold my head up. I know I definitely would've been sold, and I'd be someone's whore."

Ultimately, she was left in the parking lot of a convenience store in Perdido Key with a final threat: "If you say our names or what happened to you, we'll kill you and the rest of your family."

TERROR CONTINUES
That's why she hesitated to tell her story at first. But one of her friends held her hand and walked her through it. She told her mom what happened, then Dennis, who convinced her to talk to the police.

But to make her case, she had to sit alone with a detective and recall the horrifying four days. She couldn't even be alone in a room with her dad, but her mom wasn't allowed to sit through the interview with her, and a female detective wasn't available. So her case was closed, and many called her a liar then and now.

The medical evidence tells the truth on her behalf: internal bleeding that went on for days, ripping in the muscles up around her bladder. And she had a sexually transmitted disease called trichomonas from all the tearing in her vagina.

Shauna can't even estimate how many times she was raped—all she knows is what she has endured since then, emotionally and physically.

"They said it had to be a large number for all the bruising and the tearing," she says. "There were only five guys, and five guys couldn't do that much damage just doing it once or twice."

Shauna is tiny with shiny, shoulder-length brown hair. She did child modeling for 10 years. She used to want to be a nurse, but now she's just trying to keep up with daily life with her boyfriend and their new baby son. She is somber, honest and direct when she discusses her captivity, but lights up with smiles and laughter when she talks about her son.

For months, Shauna suffered nightmares and night terrors. She's still afraid of the dark. She can't be alone at night in places she doesn't know well. She always is more careful than she used to be.

She panicked when her brother walked into the room one day, because he was wearing the same cologne as one of the men who raped her. She had to move out of the state for a while. She moved to a different neighborhood.

She recognized one of her attackers in a car behind her in traffic a few months after her ordeal and panicked.

"One of the guys followed us, and my mom called and said, 'Don't come home—there're guys sitting out in front of the house.'" She and her boyfriend fled to his parents' house, where they now live. It's a quiet neighborhood away from where her ordeal happened. She feels safer—a little anyway.

"It might be old people, but we still have neighborhood watch!" Shauna says.

"I wouldn't exactly say I'm weak," Shauna explains. "I like to make new friends. I welcome you with open arms. And it got me in trouble."

ENDING SLAVERY?
That kind of "trouble" is not new. There are 2 million human trafficking victims in the United States, and Florida ranks second behind California in the highest percentage of those victims, the U.S. Department of Justice reports.

About 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders annually, with 14,000 to 20,000 people—of all nationalities—trafficked across U.S. borders annually, estimates the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Those are probably underestimates, Rodriguez says. She's been involved in the Florida Coalition since 1999, but really noticed an increase in awareness after the first international conference on human trafficking in 2004 in Florida. Since then, more research, funding and victims have come her way.

"As we've started getting people to come forward and rescuing people, almost on a daily basis, we're getting calls from people wanting to come forward," she says.

Many victims are scared, threatened and may not speak English. But the more word gets out, the more people they're able to help.

"Every 10 seconds there is a new victim of human trafficking," Rodriguez says.

Forty to 50 percent of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are at risk of human trafficking by force or coercion, people from the Americas, Europe and Asia. But alarmingly, the Panhandle is seeing a lot of U.S. human trafficking victims.

"I can tell you in Pensacola we have a lot of cases of underage U.S. citizens being used for sexual exploitation," Rodriguez says.

She admits it surprised her to see so many girls being recruited for human trafficking, because she expected the new Gulf Coast Coalition office to be her quietest.

But of all the offices across the state, the Gulf Coast Coalition Against Human Trafficking—run by Dennis after he helped rescue Shauna—is seeing the most victims. That's because Interstate 10, a major trafficking corridor, sends victims right through the Florida Panhandle. And picks them up there, too.

"(Dennis) has been finding a lot of U.S. citizens and that is scary," Rodriguez says, pointing out that trafficking affects citizens as much as immigrants. "We have been slammed. This is our office where we have the most victims right now in the state of Florida, so it is scary."

When Dennis encounters someone who may be a human trafficking victim, he gets them physical, emotional and legal help. After identifying them as a victim, he works to get them certified, which enables the government to help stabilize their immigration status, rebuild their life in the United States, and receive federally funded benefits like a refugee.

"We're trying to build an underground railroad just like in the days of slavery," Dennis says. "This is modern day slavery."

THE CIRCUIT
People are surprised to hear slavery still exists and some try to criminalize young runaways, who have been pressured into prostitution.

"That's not the case," Dennis says firmly. "They're victims."

He encounters girls who suffer beatings, rape, gang rape and punishments for not earning enough money. If a pimp tells his victim she must make $500 one day and she doesn't, she could be locked in a car trunk, room or closet, not allowed to shower or have clean clothes. Dennis says some women are forced to have sex up to 30 times a day.

Even more frightening, the average age of sex victims across the country is lowering because johns, men who use prostitutes, are afraid of catching sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS from women who've been in the business a long time. So pimps recruit younger and younger girls.

One case Dennis worked recently involved four girls between 13 and 16 years old, who were brought to Tallahassee from Illinois to work the South Florida circuit for their pimp.

Pimps bring girls they've recruited from bus stops, the mall and MySpace to New York or Atlanta and take them on a circuit: Atlanta—Jacksonville—Miami—Tampa—Orlando—Tallahassee—Panama City Beach—Pensacola—Mobile—New Orleans and back to Atlanta. Then after a break, it starts again.

"That's a pretty well-known circuit for all of this," Dennis says. "They can get more money from these kids than working them somewhere else."

People flock to the South for conventions, vacation and prostitutes, so it's an easy way for pimps to make more money than in their hometowns.

That's also why trafficking is on the rise, passing the illegal arms trade for most profitable crimes. Trafficking profits come in second only to the drug trade.

"Drugs you can only use once, but a human being you can use time and time again," Dennis says.

SAVING YOUNG GIRLS
The biggest challenge he faces in Pensacola? "Overcoming the opinion that they are criminals, not victims," Dennis says.

It's impossible to get help if no one thinks the Shaunas of the world are victims. But the 13- and 14-year-old girls he encounters have been stripped of their childhoods. "They were put into adulthood overnight." And they need help.

The Gulf Coast Coalition Against Human Trafficking works with local law enforcement, social services, community- and faith-based groups to provide that help.

A Child Abduction Response Team, or CARE, combines efforts of law enforcement agencies in Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton counties to get to missing or runaway children before traffickers do.

"A lot of times they do come hand in hand," says Investigator Troy Brown of the Escambia County Sheriff's Office Missing Persons Unit. "She'll not have anywhere to go and she'll be hungry and a friend will refer them to a pimp, if you want to call them that. They'll be sweet to them for a few days, then basically force them into sexual slavery. So it's important to us to stay on top of it."

Brown first got involved with human trafficking on a local case he worked more than a year ago. He received a call about an underage girl in a car who might be a prostitute.

"They determined it was not a prostitution thing, but because of her being a minor, they started digging deeper," Brown says.

The girl was actually a victim of a major trafficking ring based in Ohio. Her recruiters had gone to bus stops and truck stops looking for down-and-out, young women working for minimum wage.

"They kind of showered them with gifts and praise, then when they get them in a certain point they say, 'You're going to be a prostitute or we're gonna kill you.'"

From there, the victims were put on the circuit through the major tourist cities. It was two women doing the recruiting for the Ohio human trafficking ring. The man leading the ring was arrested and sentenced to 40 years in prison as part of the FBI's Operation Innocence Lost.

Brown says stopping traffickers requires being alert during patrols.

As for the 17-year-old girl, Brown guesses she probably would've ended up dead. Instead, she was reunited with her father.

"I'm a father. I have kids. If my kids run away, I'm gonna want somebody to go look for them, so I'm going to treat it the way I'd want someone to look for mine," he says.

HERE TO HELP
Sue Dees is a member of the Eden Fellowship Church in Pensacola where Dennis is pastor. She and other church members are joining the fight against trafficking by helping Dennis post flyers for missing people, talking to prostitutes about unusual or underage activity and opening their homes to rescued victims. They're committed to providing them safety, shelter, food, clothes—whatever they need.

"We weren't aware of the in-depth situations that are here in our environment, our community," Dees says. "It hits close to home. We're just doing our part to help these people get out from oppression. As a Christian, that's what we're supposed to do—love our neighbors and help them. Everybody wants a comfort zone…It would be easier to just close my eyes and look the other way, but people are suffering and hurting and this is the least I can do to help."

Human trafficking is at the same place awareness of domestic violence was 20 years ago, Dennis explains. Then it was people's dirty little secret they tried to hide from the neighbors and family, not the unacceptable behavior it is today with services available to victims. Trafficking is right at the same cusp and Dennis says he wants to raise awareness so trafficking victims can get help, too.

"It's just starting to come out," he says. "At a level where we're trying to spread the word, people are starting to take notice."

Trafficking victims could be the people mowing your lawn, the teenager standing alone on the street corner, the woman at the Laundromat. But it can hit even closer to home.

Law enforcement called Dennis recently to get his help on a case. When they told him the name of the missing girl, it was someone Dennis knew. It was a girl from his own neighborhood.

"If it's happening in my community, how dare I not do anything about it? For me, that's enough," Dennis says. "I know that my calling in life is to stand by these kids."

His dedication to standing by her may have saved Shauna's life. And now she wants to help save other girls, too.

"I've already been called a liar," as well as a drug addict and a runaway, Shauna says. "People think it doesn't happen because it doesn't happen to someone they know. If you say it's just another girl from Pensacola, people will say it didn't happen. But if you say, 'Shauna Newell was raped,' people will say, 'Hey, I know that girl. I see her at Starbucks. I went to school with her.'"

Nothing will stop her from telling her story as long as she can help one girl, one woman, one person.

"It gets easier every time," she says. "Now that I know I'm actually helping people, it helps me."

TRAFFICKING IN TEXAS, TOO

Monitoring the police scanner on the nighttime cop beat for the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times left little time to research stories I really wanted to write.

So, I surfed the 'Net on my 9 p.m. dinner break for ideas. I found stories about women and children being sold into slavery in the cold, impersonal wastelands of Eastern Europe.

I learned a lot about human trafficking and conditions that attract traffickers. Borders between very poor and very rich countries—borders people will do nearly anything to cross—are at risk.

The Corpus Christi newsroom is 150 miles from the border with Mexico and my brain got to ticking. But stuff like that doesn't happen in the U.S., right? RIGHT?

I started reporting this story when I met my first human trafficking victim a few days later on Jan. 11, 2006 at a protest of the proposed border wall between Texas and Mexico.

She took 40 days to walk from Honduras into Mexico. When she got there, Norma Morales was raped and beaten so badly she had to be taken to the hospital because her arm was broken and she couldn't walk.

During her recovery, doctors said she was pregnant from the rape. Less than a year later, Norma waded with her six-week-old infant through the Rio Grande and stopped in Corpus Christi.

Eight years later, Norma is now a documented immigrant. She goes to Laundromats and places in the city and looks for signs of abuse and fear in women's faces. She brings the women to the Coastal Bend Immigration Council in South Texas.

"These women, they won't even look us in the eye," says Santa Gonzales, director of the organization. She says Mexican, South American and Asian women are captives in Corpus Christi and South Texas.

I asked the two women if they knew anyone who was forced to stay in an abusive relationship with threats of deportation.

Norma covered her face with her hands. Tears dripped down her cheeks and onto the table. She had heard those threats before herself. And she knew others.

I asked if they knew anyone who was smuggled across the border, promised one job and then forced into prostitution, domestic work or other slave labor.

They looked at each other knowingly and Gonzales says, "We could tell you so many stories. Yes, we know those women."

Veterinarian Michael Vickers had just been named Texas State Director of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps—the sometimes-controversial eyes and ears of Border Patrol, which is now a separate group called Texas Border Volunteers—when I spoke with him in March 2006.

He has personal reasons for getting involved with border issues. He lives about 100 miles north of Mexico and his South Texas ranch has seen 60 deaths within 10 miles of his home. Vickers even found a dead woman's nude body less than 300 yards from his front door in September 2005. All those cases are reported to Border Patrol or local law enforcement for investigation.

"We know bad things are happening out there," Vickers says.

But he sees more than just human trafficking. He finds children as young as 8 wandering around lost, thirsty and starving. He finds women abandoned by the so-called coyotes who often charge a small fortune to smuggle people across the border, then leave them for dead. He found an African woman beaten and robbed.

People of all nationalities come across the Texas border desperate for work and safety. That's why they're at risk of human trafficking, even if they make it to U.S. soil on their own volition.

"These poor people are exploited beyond the scope of your wildest imagination," Vickers says. "This is just a way of life down here. I guess, you could say that's one of the reasons I'm a Minuteman. I just can't sit back and watch this human exploitation anymore."

This story never went to press a year ago at the Corpus Christi newspaper.

But it led me to Shauna's story of her horrifying experience in Pensacola and the threat of being sold into slavery to a man in Texas for $300,000.

Nowhere seems beyond the web of human trafficking.

GET INVOLVED
For info on how to help or items to include in a care package, call the local Coalition Against Human Trafficking: 525-4807

Send your tax-deductible donations to the Florida Coalition Against Human Trafficking to: 9260 Cove Ave., Pensacola, Fla., 32514

Dua kes perkahwinan kanak-kanak perempuan berumur 10 dan 11 tahun dengan lelaki berumur lebih 40 tahun telah sekali lagi menimbulkan persoalan tentang siapakah yang bertanggungjawab menjaga kepentingan agama dan orang Islam di negara kita ini. Dari aspek menyuarakan slogan dan retorik garang, sudah tentu ada. Ramai yang sanggup menggadai nyawa membela Islam. Tetapi apakah mereka ini akan membela nasib anak anak kecil yang dikahwinkan atau mereka hanya memilih isu isu “mudah dan sensasi”

Contohnya, ramai yang rasa tersinggung bila orang Kristian menggunakan kalimah “Allah” dalam akhbar mereka. Tapi yang anehnya, wira-wira ini tak pula kedengaran marah mereka sebelum kes akhbar Herald itu diputuskan oleh Mahkamah Tinggi akhir tahun lalu.Walhal larangan penggunaan kalimah itu dalam majalah tersebut telah dibuat pada tahun 2007. Dengan lain perkataan, sebelum bekas menteri Syed Hamid Albar mengiystiharkan larangan itu, berpuluh-puluh tahun lamanya “Allah” telah digunakan di Sabah dan Sarawak tanpa sesiapa pun naik marah dan tersinggung. Apakah ini bukan hipokrasi?

Sekarang biar kita tunggu siapa yang terasa tersinggung dan marah melihat kes 2 anak-anak kecil yang sepatutnya belajar A,B, C dan matematik di sekolah rendah tetapi telah dikahwinkan dengan dua orang “tua” yang berumur lebih 40 tahun. Sekarang kita tunggu siapa yang akan marah dan akan mengadakan tunjuk perasaan besar-besaran menentang kes yang melebihi 10,000 kasemuanya (mengikut sumber tertentu) melibatkan kes perkahwinan kanak-kanak di Malaysia. Apakah ia akan terjadi atau besar kemungkinan kita tidak akan mendengar apa-apa rungutan. Malah orang macam saya akan dihentam kerana menimbulkan isu ini, kononnya Islam membenarkan anak-anak kecil dikahwinkan. Jadi tak ada siapa yang patut mempersoalkan perkara ini, kata mereka.

Saya minta maaf. Anak-anak kecil hingusan yang belum tahu ikat tali kasut, yang belum layak tandatangan kontrak, yang belum boleh ada lesen motosikal atau kereta, yang tidak sampai 18 tahun; hanya semata-mata sudah sampai haid, tidak sepatunya dibenarkan berkahwin. Tidak adil dan dikra kejam terhadap anak-anak kecil ini. Mereka ada hak untuk mengalami hidup sebagai kanak-kanak sebaya, bermain, bergembira, berlari ke sana-sini, bersekolah dan banyak lagi yang sepatutnya dinikmati oleh anak-anak kecil. Apabila tiba zaman remaja atau lebih baik bila dewasa nanti, akan timbul naluri semulajadi untuk kahwin. Tidak perlu mengikut tradisi lama.

Usahlah beri alasan Rasulullah S.A.W. berkahwin dengan Sayidina Aishah waktu berusia 9 tahun. Janganlah samakan diri kita dengan Perutusan Allah yang mendapat wahyu dari Yang Maha Esa. Baginda adalah Rasul tetapi kita hanyalah manusia biasa. Manusia biasa akan menyalahkan kebebasan ini. Ada ramai juga pada masa ini merupakan pengganas seks atau “paedophilia “seks . Undang-undang negara kita mestilah melindungi anak-anak kecil dari penyangak seks dan “peodophile” ini yang suka mencabul kehormata kanak-kanak. Hari ini kita sangat bimbang dengan pengaruh internet yang dikatakan lucah; kita bimbang dengan kes sex remaja dan sebagai nya. Bukankah sampai masanya kita melindungi anak-anak kecil ini daripada pesalah laku yang liar ini?

Perlu kita ingat bahawa pada zaman Rasulullah dahulu ada sistem hamba abadi. Rasulullah tidak memiliki hamba, tetapi Baginda tidak melarangnya. Itu tidak bererti kita pun kena amalkan sistem hamba abdi semata-mata kerana ia wujud dalam zaman Rasulullah. Ini bukan bererti Islam tak sesuai; yang tak sesuai adalah sistem hamba abdi. Islam itu untuk sepanjang masa. Kalau pun zaman dulu orang arab boleh kahwin anak muda, amalan itu sudah tidak sesuai lagi pada zaman ini. Takkanlah ini pun susah untuk difahami?

Begitulah juga tanggungjawab kita kepada masyarakat, nasional dan dunia luar. Selain menjaga keselamatan anak-anak kecil, kita juga telah banyak menandatangani memorandum Konvensyen dan Undang-Undang Antarabangsa yang melarang perkahwinan anak kecil atau “child marriages”. Apa guna kita tandatangani Convention on Elimination Of All Frorms of Discrimination (CEDAW) dan “Convention of the Rights of the Child” dan banyak lagi konvensyen antarabangsa kalau kita takut berdepan dengan wira-wira agama, Jakim dan Jabatan Agama Islam negeri. Saya harap Ketua Agama Islam, iaitu Raja-Raja Melayu, mengambil berat tentang soal kahwin kanak-kanak ini. Sekali lagi kita menjadi perhatian serong dunia dan kita perlu bertindak serta merta.

Sisters in Islam calls for an end to child marriage as it is an unacceptable practice in the present day and age. It is shocking that this practice still exists in a country like Malaysia because of a loophole in the Islamic Family Law and a continuing belief that Muslim girls can be married off once they reach puberty.

Any campaign to reduce the practice of child marriage in Muslim societies face particular criticisms and challenges from conservative religious forces, as can be seen in the controversy over the two recent cases of child marriage in Kelantan.

It is argued that in Islam, a girl is allowed to marry once she reaches puberty, thus no law that sets a minimum age of marriage can apply to Muslims. The Islamic Family Law of Malaysia sets this at 16 years for girls and 18 for boys. But exceptions are allowed with the permission of the Shariah Court.

We argue, however, that the onset of puberty is no indication of sufficient maturity for marriage. While the Qur'an does not state a specific age as the age of marriage, Surah an-Nisa’ 4:6 requires that when orphans reach the “age of marriage” or “a marriageable age” they can be tested for “sound judgment” or “maturity of mind.” This indicates that a marriageable age is linked to soundness of judgment and maturity of mind. Puberty alone is not sufficient.

There are those who support child marriage on the basis of the practice of the Prophet s.a.w.. But why is the Prophet's marriage to Aishah selected as the exemplary age of marriage for Muslims while his marriage to Khadija, a widow 15 years older than him or his marriage to other widows and divorcees ignored as exemplary practices?

There is also new research based on Hadith and historical events in the life of the Prophet s.a.w. that questions the commonly held belief that the Prophet s.a.w. was betrothed to Aishah at the age of six and consummated the marriage at the age of nine. This should also be considered in using arguments to justify child marriage in Islam.

The Islamic Religious authorities and the Ministry for Women, Family and Community Development must investigate the cases of the 11-year-old girl married to a 41-year-old man in Kuala Krai, and the 10-year-old girl married to a 40-year-old man in Pasir Mas.

The girls are children protected under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Malaysia’s Child Act. Several of their rights and protections have been violated. Under the CRC, which Malaysia is a signatory, a child has an inherent right to life, health and education. The men could be prosecuted under the Penal Code for statutory rape if their marriage is illegal under the Islamic Family law. The minimum age of marriage for Muslim girls must be raised to 18 to be in compliance with the Child Act which defines children as those below the age of 18. The loophole in the Islamic Family law must also be closed to prevent marriages below the age of 18.

Many studies have shown that child marriage is harmful to children (meaning girls below the age of 18). Such marriages result in many consequences, including:

- Denial of childhood and adolescence: the loss of childhood and adolescence, the forced sexual relations and the denial of freedom and personal development have profound psychosocial and emotional consequences on girls.
- Denial of education: once married, girls tend not to go to school.
- Health problems: these include premature pregnancies which cause higher rates of maternal and infant mortality and cause hormonal and physical changes which confuse the girl child’s body growth. Teenage girls are also more vulnerable to sexually-transmitted infections, including HIV.
- Abuse: this is common in child marriages. Research in several countries found that women who marry before the age of 20 were more likely to report experiences of physical or sexual violence when they started living with their husbands.

We call upon the Malaysian government to take action to put a complete stop to the practice of child marriage as it entails many economic, social and health risks, and does not protect girls or secure their future. It also violates Malaysia’s laws and international obligations under CEDAW, CRC, Beijing Platform for Action and the Putrajaya Declaration of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir
On behalf of Board of Directors
Sisters in Islam
12 Mar 2010

A 10-year-old girl in Pasir Mas, Kelantan, was allegedly forced to marry her father’s friend, who is in his 30s, reported Harian Metro on its front page.

The nikah koboi (illegal marriage solemnisation ceremony) was appa­rently carried out in a car by the girl’s father who acted as wali (the guardian) and jurunikah (marriage registrar) without the presence of the bride and a witness on Feb 22.

The incident was related by the girl’s mother who wished to be known as Na, 33, to the daily after being informed by the girl, who was brought to a hotel after the ceremony.

However, the girl, who found out about the ceremony, excused herself and slept with a sweeper at the hotel before being sent home the following day.

According to the daily, Na’s husband had married off his daughter to his friend whom he met at the mosque for prayers.

Na lodged reports at the Pasir Mas police station on Feb 25 and at the Kelantan Islamic Religious Affairs Department following advice from her family.

Following that, her daughter was issued a mufarakah (live separately from her husband) order by the Kota Baru Syariah Lower Court last week.

> Kosmo! highlighted a report of Ahmad Nabil Ahmad, winner of Raja Lawak 2, denying talks that he was caught for khalwat (close proximity) with his girlfriend and local actress Irma Hasmie.

The comedian, who is facing a RM2mil legal suit by SDAF Pictures for trashing Lu Pikirlah Sendiri De Movie produced by the film company, quashed the controversy by saying that he would not do anything to put himself and his family to shame.

Nabil, however, admitted that he always visits Irma’s home to send food or to pick her up for dates. He claimed that at times, after sending food, he would perform his prayers at the surau near Irma’s house.

Other News & Views is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with this > sign, it denotes a separate news item.

A 12-year-old Saudi girl has unexpectedly dropped her application to divorce her 80-year-old second cousin, despite intervention from human rights groups.

According to reports, the girl had been married to the elderly relative under the wishes of her father, who received a dowry worth $22,665. The mother, who was separated from the father, did not approve the marriage, and accused the second cousin of raping her daughter.

A reporter for the Al-Riyadh newspaper, to whom the girl admitted the marriage had been consummated and asked for help, first discovered the girl's plight. Human Rights Commission had since stepped into help the girl, hiring a lawyer and bringing attention to the case.

However on Monday in a court in Buraidah, in Al-Qasim province, the girl dropped the case. "I agree to the marriage. I have no objection. This is in filial respect to my father and obedience to his wish," she said according to Saudi media reports.

Both her lawyer and HRC expressed shock at the sudden change of heart.

Due to the supremacy of Saudi Arabia's austere form of Sunni Islamic law, child marriage remains legal in the country. However, there has been a movement to ban the practice. In January, Sheikh Abdullah al-Manie, a member of the Council of Senior Ulema (scholars), told Saudi media that the Prophet Mohammed's marriage to a nine-year-old girl 14 centuries ago cannot be used to justify child marriage.

King Abdullah's daughter, Princess Adela bint Abdullah, also stepped in, telling Al-Riyadh newspaper, "I, personally, and many specialists in social and education fields, share the opinion" that it is in violation of children's rights.