sexist culture




Dear Friends, for the weekend ministry I am frequenting the Government Shelter home rather minor jail or Remand home together with two of my friends here. Something horrified me last Sunday as I was listening to three boys who were arrested on charges of rape and murder. What i am sharing here therefore is the version of the story the boys told me.
The three boys - whose name I would not like to state here - are from a slum in Nashik. One of them is sixteen year old and the other two are eleven and thirteen. The sixteen year old lad at the invitation (I don't know what kind of invitation that could be!) went into a physical relationships with a girl of seventeen year old at her house. The smaller boys accompanied the bigger lad at his persuasion and they told me that they only touched the parts of the body (I wonder what these two kids knew of sex). Someone happened to see it and he reported to the brother of that girl. The girl sensing the consequences immolated herself (the police' version is that the boys burned after having raped her). The boys were arrested and tortured. Now they are in the blessed remand home. When I heard them say finally I was thinking myself what will become of them poor lads? Who is responsible for their behavior? More so what is happening around us? I think we live in a sexist culture, a culture that promotes no values. It is going to be tough for us, those of us who have consecrated ourselves to serve God, to let people know that God cares and loves and His love is not that of the worldly passing love.




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