Stories from afar

This past weekend saw not one, but two, visitors from the UK popping in. Independently, they were both in the Mother City, and it was wonderful seeing them!

The first was from our old church back in London. Of course, being the gossip monger that I am, I loved catching up on all the news about who is doing what/ going where/ etc, etc. While I miss the people there, I have to confess that it's not enough to make me want to be back in London! (I suppose that's a good thing, all in all.)

The other was from my old job. Meeting with Annie was fantastic, because she is such a positive person and puts such a positive spin on everything. It was fantastic to hear about the various promotions that people had had, and also to hear about how the naughty kids are still naughty (just proves that it wasn't me!!)

However, she did relate a very tragic story. The school is a Church of England school. That doesn't mean that all the kids at it are Christian - in fact, far from it. What it does mean though is that a large percentage are supposed to come from families who are involved in local churches. Thus, it was with great shock that I learnt about an attempted gang rape of the sweetest, most wonderful, Christian girl by a group of Afro-Caribbean boys the school has had nothing but trouble with from the moment they started at the school.

What was even more sad, in my estimation, is that the victim did not return to the school because these boys' (Afro-Caribbean) female friends blamed her for it, saying that she obviously 'wanted' it, and just did it to get their friends expelled. In the light of her trauma, to have to come back and face that kind of intimidation was more than she felt she could cope with.

The boys were expelled (or permanently excluded), and they were charged. They are currently serving sentences in juvenile detention centres. This must surely be the lowest point in the life of the school. Thinking back to my time there, what really saddens me is that I predicted many of these boys would have a criminal record before they left school. In fact, at one time I had a conversation with one of the boys in which I warned him that his current path was leading in that direction, and urged him to consider his future seriously, and change his life if he wanted to avoid that. It just seems so sad that many of the staff felt and saw the same potential as I did, and yet we were collectively unable to help these children avoid the dangers we saw. You can lead a horse to water, and all that. But I still find it so tragic that these boys refused our help, and now they will have a sexual offenders criminal record that will follow them around for the rest of their lives.

As for the victim, my heart bleeds for her. She is the most sensible, lovely, sweet-natured, intelligent, friendly girl around, and a Christian to boot. I can only pray that this horrible event draws her to Christ, rather than from him. I long to contact her and tell her how sorry am I, but I won't because I don't want to bring up painful memories for her. I just entrust her to God's care, and hope that she is able to move on from this event.