A Liberian Family Blames Their 8 yr. Old Daughter For Being The Victim Of A Gang Rape!

What has happened to a little 8 yr. old Liberian girl in Phoenix,Arizona is absolutely deplorable!She was gang-raped by 4 teenage boys at the apartment complex that she lives at.

As if that was not horrific enough,her parents have placed the blame for this awful incident squarely on her shoulders.Apparently,they feel that their daughter's rape brings shame to the family name.

Here's more on this incident from azcentral.com:

"The summer scene at a west Phoenix apartment complex was tranquil Wednesday evening. Parents and children chatted on their stoops as the sun set. They bought ice cream from a vendor's push cart.

One week ago, around the same time of day, residents of the complex were startled by the screams of a partially clothed 8-year-old girl who ran screaming from a storage shed at a vacant unit.

Phoenix police on Wednesday announced that they arrested four neighborhood boys in connection with the incident, in which investigators said the group lured the girl into the shed with chewing gum, held her down and sexually assaulted her.

Phoenix police Sgt. Andy Hill, a longtime public-information officer, described the case as "one of the worst crimes we have come across in Phoenix in quite some time," given the ages of the victim and the suspects, as well as the circumstances of the reported attack.

The girl and the four suspects are refugees from the war-torn West African country of Liberia, which, according to investigators, would complicate authenticating names and dates of birth.

Arizona Child Protective Services took custody of the girl after the July 16 incident at the apartment complex after her parents disowned her.

Hill said the parents blamed her for being victimized and bringing shame to the family."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here.

Changing some Liberian's attitude toward rape is an ongoing process.There are some activists who are working diligently to do just that!Here's more info on what they doing about the extremely serious rape issue in Liberia from HULIQ:

"Chief prosecutor for the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia, Esther Seton Cee, says many rape victims and parents of rape victims are discouraged from reporting the crime because the overworked court system is slow to prosecute.

Cee says she believes the answer is to create a new court for rape cases.

"We have advocated for a specialized court that would be able to carry out judication faster. That is what we are waiting on," she said.

Cee says parents of rape victims often settle out of court for money with the accused rapist because they believe they are protecting their child from public embarrassment. She says this slows down and undermines the judicial process.

Cee says sensitizing parents to the true nature of rape could encourage them to push forward with prosecutions. Groups have used public awareness campaigns, including radio jingles, aiming to empower women, girls and families against sexual abuse.

"When the parents understand the nature of the crime that is involved, they will stop compromising," she said.

During the country's civil war many young girls and women were forcibly taken to act as cooks, cleaners and sex slaves for the fighters.

Liberia's rape law has been a focus point for President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has said that no rapists would go unpunished. Human rights organizations say the ineffective implementation of the rape law reflects badly needed reform in the entire judicial system."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the whole article here.

The Oldest Woman To Give Birth Dies & Leaves 2-yr. Old Twins Behind!

A 66 yr. woman who gave birth to twins has died.The oldest woman to give birth has left behind 2-yr. old twins.She created a lot of controversy because people did not believe that she would be around long enough to raise those twins into adulthood.

But,Maria del Carmen Bousada lied about her age & received fertility treatments because she thought that she would live for a long time.After all,her mother died at 101.So,there is some logic behind her reasoning.Unfortunately,she was wrong.And now there are two more orphans in this world when there did not have to be.

Like octomom,this is another case where fertility treatments should not have been administered!

Here's more on this story from The AP:

"When she revealed last November she had stomach cancer, Bousada said she did not regret having children late in life and that her sons would be well-cared for no matter what happened to their mother.

Addressing her mortality and her children's tender age, she told Spanish television station Antena 3: "I hope God does not ... I want to hang on at least until they are 18."

But, she added, the boys would always have "their godfather, their custodian."

Women undergoing in vitro fertilization have their hormone systems manipulated by doctors, typically injecting themselves with hormones several times a day. The procedure increases the chance of a multiple birth, which heightens the risk of complications during pregnancy.

Bousada lived with her mother most of her life in Cadiz and worked in a department store before retiring. She decided to have children after her mother died in 2005 and initially kept her plan secret from her family.

She sold her house to raise $59,000 to pay for in vitro fertilization in Los Angeles, she told the News of the World.

Spanish law on assisted reproduction sets no age limit, but state-funded and private clinics have an informal agreement establishing 50 as the cutoff, based on recommendations from the scientific community, according to the Health Ministry.

There is no U.S. law regulating the age of in vitro candidates, but Sahakian said his clinic won't take older women because "I would like the mother ... to basically survive until the kids reach 18."

When Bousada told her relatives she was two months pregnant, they thought she was joking, she said.

"Yes, I am old of course, but if I live as long as my mom did, imagine, I could even have grandchildren," she said after the birth.

Allan Pacey, secretary of the British Fertility Society, said the organization recommends that assisted conception generally not be provided to women beyond the natural age of menopause at about 50.

"The rationale ... is that nature didn't design women to have assisted conception beyond the age of the natural menopause, he said. "Once you get into the mid-50s, I think nature is trying to tell us something."

"I think many people would worry about providing fertility treatment to women in their 60s. I think as a general rule, to embark on pregnancy when you may not see your child go to university is potentially a very difficult situation."

Adriana Iliescu, a Romanian who also gave birth at 66, although she was 130 days younger than Bousada, said she was pained to hear of the Spanish woman's death and what it would mean for her sons.

"It is a great sadness when kids are orphans but civil society will help these children," she told the AP."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the entire story here.

CNN Talks About The Cultural Differences Between African-Americans & Africans

As an African-American,I can totally relate to certain aspects of the article(and this video) that CNN did on the cultural division between Africans & African-Americans.I have experienced firsthand the disdain that some Africans feel towards their American counterparts.

For instance,I once was on a date with a very successful African man who seemed to think that most African-Americans are champions of failure.I mean,we had an intense conversation about whether or not African-Americans hung out in front of liquor stores all day gambling,drinking 40's,& smoking weed.

He spent our entire time together trying to convince me that I was lucky that he had even bothered to pay attention to me at all.Because according to him,African-Americans are the dregs of society.It was like being on a date with a white supremacist.Needless to say,that was the last I saw of him!

Of course,there are a lot of blacks who do not want to be associated with Africans at all.They carry their own stereotypes,which the article on CNN.com discusses,about Africans.Some African-Americans really do think that all Africans are primitive,tribal peoples who have yet to enter into modern society.

It really does go both ways.And this great article that I have posted an excerpt from talks about the divide between Africans & African-Americans.Here's more from CNN:

"Nkosi's American classmates acknowledge their misconceptions. Cydney Smith, 17, of Nashville, Tennessee, said she once believed Africa was populated with "uncivilized tribes."

Raphael Craig, 17, of Hyattsville, Maryland, said the television misinformed him as well.

Before Craig visited the continent in 2005 and 2006, he thought of Africans as "half-naked, running around with tigers in the jungle," Craig said, confessing he was unaware tigers roam only Asia.

But in Ghana and Nigeria, Craig saw children playing the same games he and his siblings played. He saw many signs of modernity, including Mercedes and other brands of cars found in the United States.

"OK, this country is running how we're running, just two different schools," Craig recalled thinking. "It really opened my eyes to the point that everything you see on TV is not always the actual thing."

If the Western media are doing Africans no favors, then the African media are also a disservice to African-Americans because it portrays them as criminals, some immigrants say.

Sandi Litia, 19, a Piney Woods graduate from Limulunga, Zambia, said she was initially scared of African-Americans because the African media show them "wearing clothes like gangsters and killing each other."

Nkosi concurred that African media "made it seem as if they were these aggressive people that did nothing constructive with their lives except occupy prison space."

Trying to fit in

Chinedu Ezeamuzie, 21, of Athens, Georgia, arrived in 2003. He had spent the majority of his life in Jabriya, Kuwait, and came to the U.S. to pursue his education.

The recent Georgia Tech graduate said he considers himself Nigerian because his parents -- both from the village of Uga -- instilled in their four children strong Nigerian values of family, community, spirituality and self-betterment.

In Athens, Ezeamuzie found his ideals at odds with those who shared his skin color at Clarke Central High School, his first stint in a public school."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the article in its full context here.