I am depressed. Or I should say I find very many aspects of life depressing. One morning last week, I woke up super early to get ready for a client meeting. Something popped up on my feed and to my own devastation, I read the news.
It was a report about a child sexual abuse court case. The father was given 15 years and stripped of political rights for 3 years, and the mother given 9 years and stripped of political rights for a year. Both are banned from seeing their children anymore. I could feel my heart cringe up in knots as I read the article, and even though I told myself to stop reading because it would make me sick, I could not stop reading.
The parents left the rural areas to go find work in the city, and left the kids to grandparents back at the rural home. A common occurence in this country. One summer, the kids went to the city to visit their parents. Then hell descended upon the eldest daughter, then 14 years old. Father raped her, and while she was screaming, the mother put her hand over the daughter’s mouth to stop the girl from being too loud. Apparently, the mother had told the girl, that it was her and her sister’s duty to service the father.
I puked inside. I didn’t know whether to cry because I felt so hurt for the girl, or to be furious about the adults’ heartlessness. I thought the sentence was very mild – those parents should be paraded down the streets, have stones thrown at them, publicly shamed, and then hung.
