Stop The Global Horror Of Child Brides
One of Die By Wire‘s most horrifying and heart-breaking NON-fictional threads is the issue of young girls — some as young as nine or ten years old– who become virtual sex slaves to men often in their 40s to mid 50s.
Not only do these girls have their lives ruined by brutal and sustained sexual molestation, but they frequently die in childbirth because their birth canals and hips have not matured sufficiently.
And the girls who die are the lucky ones.
I’ve just started a new blog — Stop Child Brides — to bring attention to the issue of child brides and international child abuse.
GLOBAL PROBLEM RECOGNIZED BY THE UN, OTHER INTERNATIONAL GROUPS
I conducted extensive research on the subject before writing Die By Wire and found that the United Nations along with a growing number of international organizations and activist groups are struggling to stop the practice.
Sadly, they are meeting with scant success. This is because this form of brutal pedophilia is culturally, ideologically or religiously sanctioned in the countries where it it most widely practiced.
In Afghanistan, for example, a law is on the books outlawing the practice. In reality it is not enforced. Women are meat, property to be disposed of as men see fit. Girls have an even lower, sub-human status.
Further, the misguided concept of “cultural equivalence” in Europe has resulted in authorities turning a blind eye toward the practice among immigrant communities from Turkey, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and similar countries.
The Western media are guilty of accepting the cultural equivalence argument and have neglected to cover the issue. The fact that “child bride” is a phrase that does not convey the actual horror keeps the issue from seeming important. It seems like an antiquated, backward, undesirable but only remotely unpleasant cultural artifact along with arranged marriages and dowries (both of which often have their own unacceptable consequences.)
Instead, the world must recognize “child bride” as a synonym for sexual slavery, institutional pedophilia, female child abuse, physical battering and horrible medical consequences often ending in slow, agonizing death.
WHY IS IT LUCKY TO DIE?
Those young girls that do survive childbirth are beaten, sometimes to death, abused and often killed when they try to escape.
And even as unfortunate as those girls are, they’re luckier than the girls who suffer from fistulas caused by difficult and near-fatal childbirth.
Fistulas are caused by horrific tissue damage that leaves openings through which urine and feces can leak through the vagina. The damage can usually be surgically corrected. Unfortunately, needed medical care is usually lacking in tribal villages or in European immigrant communities where the girls cannot be taken to state clinics and hospitals because they are illegal.
WHAT CAN FICTION DO?
The men responsible for perpetuating the horror of child brides escape punishment in real life.
That’s why I sent guardian sniper Mira Longbow to Amsterdam.
I hope that my fiction can bring awareness — and action — in the real world. Otherwise, justice remains only imaginary.
In Die By Wire, guardian sniper Mira Longbow is in Amsterdam to take out the head of a human smuggling ring that sells young girls as child brides to the highest bidders. Her mission in fiction is what eludes international authorities in real-life: to stop the monsters behind the practice and bring them to justice.
NEW BLOG DEVOTED TO CHILD BRIDES AND INTERNATIONAL CHILD ABUSE
Stop Child Brides is a new site so the content is sparse as I work to write more. I’m also open to outside contributors. If you’re interested, please contact me at lperdue@ideaworx.com.
