yup....goin ta hell in a hanbasket. Stuff like this has NEVER happened in the past.
:roll:
Sarcasm aside.... Yes, too true gerryh, indeed it did and worse. We ladies who are old enough to remember the bad old days remember all too well horrific things that happened to female friends, relatives, schoolmates, coworkers... Always hushed up and always the guilt and shame was endured by the female, no matter how illogical that was nor how blameless she was. Those that didn't 'disappear' - the family found out (Pregnant! You shameless slu*!!) and she'd be shipped out to other relatives far away or anywhere but her home (What will the neighbours say?!!), or one went to the funeral with a burning rage you swallowed down along with the tears. I'm not talking centuries, it was like that well into the early seventies when women started talking about it and fighting back.
Approx. just six years or so ago a trial judge in Abbotsford, infamous for letting wife beaters and rapists off, let a group of guys off for much the same thing except there was no "audience" and no photo's. He lectured the seventeen year old girl victim on "dressing decently, not provocatively in brief shorts and short T-shirt [summertime], on how she must have known being at a party looking that way with normal lusty young men, she would be seen as asking for sex....". There were demonstrations, demands for his removal from the bench. Nothing happened to him, he's still a judge in the same town. A town BTW that has a long history of violence including murders against women but prides itself on being a deeply religious community (a church on every block, really!) I dunno if the religiousity of the town has any relevance or not these days, it certainly did when it came to not providing resourses, counselling, sex ed, aid centres, police training, etc. It's now the #1 town in BC for violence and murder. :-( Same town where I would take my car to the same dealership for years for mechanical repairs, where the mechanics would be friendly and joking with me and either or both of my teenage daughters who would happen to be with me, knew them by name - friendly helpful guys. Two of them grabbed two fifteen year old girls a block from their homes early one evening, dragged them off the sidewalk into a small park and raped them. One girl fought back so hard, one of these b*****ds hit her so hard with a rock or branch she was knocked out. She came to many hours later, naked and bleeding and crawled her way to a nearby house. The hunt began for her best friend Misty and the two men, the girl they'd left behind was placed in a secure house for almost two years under police protection. Misty's body was found in the Fraser River miles out of town weeks later. The search for the two men lasted months, ID posters everywhere - I didn't recognize them from those. Then they finally got them. I was stunned to realize these two unspeakably evil men were the same seemingly perfectly normal, friendly, chatty guys who had worked on my car many times, knew me and my daughters by name as I knew theirs and the other mechanics first names. Thing is, they knew our surname, address, which high school my daughters went to.... How to protect against predators like that? There's no way to tell, nothing sets them apart....
So, yes, its always happened. The difference now is people get out their video recording cell phones because the media pays huge bucks for sensational videos. Porn sites pay for this stuff too. :angry1: Why no stopping it, calls for help nor heroes when there's observers as well as the sicko perpetrators? I've never been able to understand that phenomena, never since I first learnt that such things happened. If anyone has the answer to that I'd sure like to know.
An 'interesting' note: women invariably receive far longer jail sentences for killing an abusive male partner or husband, no matter how many restraining orders, arrests, broken bones and surgeries endured for years; or a rapist who raped her & got off free to taunt and threaten her; than do males who kill. And on average males get less time for killing a female than they do a male. My apologies, I can't give citations - it was a documentary on female and male justice I watched last Fall, so can only be anecdotal I'm afraid.
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