My dear friend was sexually molested by her father ...

I want her to read this powerful meditation — I am not really sure what else to call it — written by the very popular blogger Elizabeth Scalia, a brilliant writer known to First Things readers as "The Anchoress." She wrote this piece three and a half years ago, and somehow I never noticed it, until today, until just now.

If you suffered sexual abuse at the hands of your father or mother, please read this. If you know someone who else who suffered it, please encourage them to read this. And everyone else, read it. Read it and weep.

. . . There is a strange displacement that occurs within a child who has endured sexual abuse by a parent. There is the dissociative element, of course. A child overwhelmed by what is happening to him or her tends to find a safe spot somewhere inside herself, from which she can almost “watch” the abuse, as though it is happening to someone else.

And there are recurring images that become meaningful to such a child in ways that others would never consider. When I think back on that time in my life, I see images of doorways. The doorway through which I would interiorly pray someone – anyone – would enter, to stop the terrible chaos surrounding me…the doorway I watched while cringing beneath my sheets and blankets, hoping no shadows would be moving within the dim light and heading my way.

The corner moulding of a doorway means little to most people. To me, it holds out hope of rescue, or fear of ruin. . . . (continue reading)

MADE (sterile) IN CHINA

This is outrageous even by Communist Chinese standards of outrageous crimes against humanity.

Doctors in southern China are working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise — by force if necessary — almost 10,000 men and women who have violated birth control policies. Family planning authorities are so determined to stop couples from producing more children than the regulations allow that they are detaining the relatives of those who resist.

About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.

The 20-day campaign, which was launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which, with a population of 2.24 million, is the most populous county in the province.

A doctor in Daba village said that his team was working flat out, beginning sterilisations every day at 8am and working straight through until 4am the following day.

Zhang Lizhao, 38, the father of two sons, aged 6 and 4, said that he rushed home late last night from buying loquats for his wholesale fruit business to undergo sterilisation after his elder brother was detained. His wife had already returned so that the brother would be freed.

Mr Zhang said: “This morning my wife called me and said they were forcing her to be sterilised today. She pleaded with the clinic to wait because she has her period. But they would not wait a single day. I called and begged them but they said no. So I have rushed back. I am satisfied because I have two sons.”

Thousands of others have refused to submit and officials are continuing to detain relatives, including elderly parents, to force them to submit to surgery. Those in detention are required to listen to lectures on the rules limiting the size of families. (continue reading)

Courtesy of New Advent.