I'm appalled at some of the language floating around about the 11-year-old sexual assault victim. There are many questions unanswered in this case but a few things we know.
-- There are two categories of people involved in this case. There are adults and there are children.
-- This child was injured sexually by someone.
-- This young girl is a foster child, certainly one of society's most vulnerable of children. She is in foster care, which means she had to be taken from parents who could not care for her. She is in a group home and not with family members, which means she does not have the protection and support of extended family members. She does not live in Fresno, which means she has little community support. Who knows what traumatic events she has suffered or witnessed in her short life? What kind of people have guided her and advised her all her life?
Yet there are some who would make this child somehow a contributor to her own trauma because of how she looked, what she did or what she said. Using words like "bad choices" applied to a preteen are ridiculous. We have age of consent laws created specifically because children are too young to understand sex, too naïve to understand that they are easy prey for pedophiles and rapists. All efforts should continue to focus on protecting this vulnerable child and all energies should be expended on finding the predators who hurt her, prosecuting them and then removing them from society so they cannot harm any other children.
In the meantime, I can only hope that she is in a safe place, with caring adults who are able to comfort her and protect her
Way to go Gail, you hit the nail right on the head. There are children and there are adults -- case closed.