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Thirteen year old girl becomes pregnant.
Since no one is heralding the return of Christ, I’m guessing that she had assistance other than the hand of god in getting pregnant. Not that you would know it reading the article. Or the fact that she was actually twelve when she “fell pregnant” while under state care. The father of the child so far has not been identified. Should he be over 16 then the book should be thrown at him.
Apart from ‘this is very unusual in this community, but it happens elsewhere’ [wtf?] there is almost no one saying that it shouldn’t happen at all. This girl should have been looked after, and if she was known to be sexually active given access to sex education, counselling should she wish it, and contraceptives.
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Categories: gender & feminism, media, parenting
I’m sorry, there should be plenty of outrage. At 13, this child is not old enough to consent to having sex with anyone, I don’t care if the person was her age or older than her. I have granddaughters that age and no way shape or form are they old enough, mature enough, to consent to having sex with anyone. At the very least it’s statutory rape, and the powers that be should be looking for whoever did it and prosecuting that person to the fullest extent of the law.
They say this doesn’t happen often, but it happens more often than people would believe. I’m 57, and when I was 18 and pregnant, in a home for unwed mothers (where my mother sent me, I hadn’t yet graduated high school), there was a 12 year-old girl there who was pregnant (this was in 1972, almost 40 years ago, in the United States). So don’t believe them when they tell you this doesn’t happen. Oh yes it does happen, and I’ll bet that now, just like back then, they don’t find the person who got her pregnant and he gets away to get another young girl pregnant.
***outrage***
If I read it through my lawyer’s eyes, it looks very much like what a lawyer might, with a lawyer’s caution, advise the various people who have been interviewed to say.
Maybe we lawyers (and those politicians) need to understand that sometimes, caution must be thrown to the wind.
‘this is very unusual in this community, but it happens elsewhere’ [wtf?]
Read: Aboriginal communities. Because Aboriginal girls don’t deserve the same level of care as other girls.
By elves?
“I don’t think we should be looking at fault here.” Well, I feel entirely willing to find fault with the man who got her pregnant, unless someone offers some pretty compelling reasons not to.
”It happens in other communities but it doesn’t happen often in our community.”
Well, let’s all move to Victoria, then, where (apparently) all is perfect.
Not.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/dodgy-carers-slip-through-the-net/story-fn7x8me2-1226036883463
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/girl-14-sold-for-sex-while-in-state-care/story-fn7x8me2-1226038744847
What self-righteous and blinkered response. What did someone once say about pride and a fall?
Here in Britain there was an uproar a couple of years ago because “OMGZ, a boy of 12 is a father, the outrage!”. It was started by a rightwing newspaper and the message behind it was “older GF traps boy into fatherhood”. The noise was so loud, the story got to the Spanish press.
It turned out, he wasn’t the father to being with.
I wonder why there isn’t a similar outrage about this story. (ok, I tell a lie, I don’t wonder, I know why)
@Mary Tracy – that story made it to Australia too.
There was a letter in the Herald Sun on Thursday that accused the girl of deliberately getting pregnant to get the baby bonus. I nearly choked on my morning tea. No, “Robert of Melbourne”, this girl did not deliberately get pregnant at the age of 12, she was raped at the age of 12.
Luckily for my sanity, everyone in the office I then showed the letter to made the same non-verbal outraged noise.