I think that any blog about this tragedy should be focused on the inadequacies of the police departments of the world, but there is definitely something to be said about women and their intense vulnerability in this world. When someone can be kidnapped, held hostage and raped repeatedly from 1991 until the present, even after attaining adulthood, our world as women becomes a much scarier place. Will it happen to me? Will it happen to my daughter? My granddaughter? We may scoff at countries that allow their daughters to be married at age 9, yet this girl right here literally in our own backyards was raped at a similar age and bore two children while a minor. This is not just a failure of the justice system, but a failure of the social system that anyone could think they could treat a girl / woman this way in our country today, after all the progress and increases in women's rights and women's safety that has happened so far.
The Sacramento Bee's full story is here.
What gets me the most about this story is Nancy Garrido, who didn't just know about the kidnapping but participated in it--she was the one who pulled little Jaycee into the car. We live in a world in which women are complicit in the victimization of other women.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't an exception to the rule, either, although it's a rather blatant example. Women who are victims of child abuse by a family member often encounter a similar complicity: mom ignores and discounts her child's report of the abuse and turns a blind eye to the abuser's behavior. To me, this is a powerful illustration of the fact that men are not the only ones responsible for the perpetuation of violence and rape culture.