Burn, pillage, rape!

I'm uncertain as to how historically accurate that heading is when it comes to the Viking invasions of the British Isles in the 9th to 11th centuries A.D.  However, the 'rape' aspect was much in the news yesterday with reports of  two Asian men who were jailed for subjecting a series of vulnerable girls to rapes and sexual assaults.  The men were the ring leaders of a gang that befriended girls aged from 12 to 18 in the Derby area and groomed them for sex.

Former Home Secretary, Jack Straw, claimed that while Pakistanis are not the only people who commit sexual offences, "... there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men ... who target vulnerable young white girls."  "... they see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in care ... who they think are easy meat.  And because they're vulnerable they ply them with gifts, they give them drugs, and then of course they're trapped."   I am not one of Mr Straw's natural defenders/supporters but, in this case, I am with him all the way.


That is more than can be said for his Labour Party colleague Mr Keith Vaz.  He, not unexpectedly, has stated that he does not believe there was a "cultural problem" and has called for a high-level investigation of such grooming across the UK.  Certainly, it is wrong to place the blame at just one national background/heritage; but even Mr Martin Narey, chief executive of the childrens' charity, Barnardos, stated that in the area of sexual abuse, "... there is an over-representation of people from minority ethnic groups – Afghans, people from Arabic nations."

None of this comes as a surprise to those of us who keep a watch on the situation of the persecuted church in some fifty countries around the world - many of them Arabic/Muslim countries.  We know that Christian girls, and young women, are systematically physically and sexually abused, and raped, by Muslim males from teenagers to grandfathers.  In many of these countries (Pakistan being one of them) such attacks are made with apparent impunity - as long as the female is from a Christian family, she is of no value!

In July, 2010, a third-year Christian student nurse was unconscious for 56 hours after a Muslim doctor and his accomplices allegedly beat, tortured and raped her at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Karachi, over several hours – then tried to silence her. The doctor was reported as having a history of abusing Christian nurses with impunity at the teaching hospital – an example of Christian women being treated as an under-class in Pakistan. The nurse's family reported that they had received threats from the doctor.

Two months earlier, a 14 year‐old girl was drugged and then raped by two Muslim boys after they had abducted her from her school in Kamboh colony, Lahore.  The girl was waiting for her younger sister after school when the two 17-year-olds overpowered her, took her away by motorbike, and forced her to consume a soft drink containing tranquilisers. Shortly after being raped by each boy she lost consciousness. She was found on the road near the school gate by a neighbour after her mother raised the alarm.

As one who has often stated that rape is a more heinous crime than even murder, I have every sympathy with the girls from the Derby area, and trust that they will each receive a measure of counselling that will enable them to recover from the crimes committed against them - psychologically and emotionally, as well as physically.  I also trust that their ordeal will have heightened public awareness of what is all too common-place in those countries where it is the Christian minority who are seen as "easy meat"!