Displaying items by tag: rape

Bishop Christopher Saunders has been charged with rape and a string of sex offences - some against children. The 74-year-old was arrested on 21 February, after parallel investigations ordered by police and the Pope. Mr Saunders, who denies the allegations, was refused bail. He is one of the most senior Catholics to face charges of this nature. The offences he is alleged to have committed include two counts of rape, 14 of unlawful and indecent assault, and three of child abuse. For years, he has faced allegations of sexual abuse made by several Aboriginal men from communities in his parish. When the accusations were first aired in 2020, the initial police investigation was closed without charge. However after a historic inquiry was ordered by the Pope - and its 200-page report subsequently leaked to the media last year - police began a new investigation.

Between 20 November and 3 December, at least thirty Christians were killed, and ten young women and girls raped, in attacks on five villages by the extremist Allied Democratic Forces. Locals described scenes of terrified Christians flooding into the streets as the jihadists surrounded churches, armed with guns, clubs, machetes, swords and axes. Fourteen Christians with severe wounds are in hospital in a critical condition, and at least fifteen people were abducted. A survivor, hiding in the latrine, watched through a vent as his wife and three children were murdered. A pastor In Mayitike said the militants tried to force villagers to convert to Islam before killing them. When his family refused to convert, they shot his wife in the head and cut their four children into pieces with a sword.

In July at least eight people were injured outside a church by an IS car bomb, in an area held by the Kurdish YPG militia. On the same day in Afrin, on the border with Turkey, a bomb killed eleven civilians, including children, and injured others, some seriously. Homes were damaged in the explosion and subsequent fire. A few days earlier a retired Christian school teacher went missing from her home in a mainly-Christian village near Idlib. The next day her body was found nearby: she had been raped repeatedly, tortured, and stoned to death by Islamist militants linked to an rebel group in the area. Forensic investigation found that the barbaric ordeal had lasted for around nine hours before she finally died.

On Sunday the Bring Back Our Girls Group (BBOG) applauded the federal government and security agencies on the release of 82 more Chibok girls. Their release was negotiated through the combined efforts of security agencies, the military, the Swiss government, the Red Cross, and local and international NGOs. 21 girls had been set free last October, and the government committed to rescuing the 113 girls who are still captive. A spokesperson for the Young Women Political Forum urged the ministry of women’s affairs and the ministry of health to work together to provide the girls and their parents with adequate psychological counselling. Pray that communities will accept these victims of rape, who are now mothers with babies and no husbands. See also the Prayer Alert world article 3.