In 2011, Afghan police officer Abdul Rahman was confronted by two American soldiers. Why? Well, he liked children.
Especially when they were chained to his bed.
There were reports Rahman had abducted a boy, tied him to a bed, and repeatedly raped him. It wasn’t the first such allegation, and the boy’s mom believed Rahman would come for her son again.
Rahman was questioned over the mother’s story, and he admitted it was true. When the Americans expressed their disapproval, Rahman responded by laughing. This didn’t go over well.
Cpt. Dan Quinn threw Rahman to the ground and reconveyed the message physically; Sgt. Charles Martland gave him a hand. Although Rahman’s injuries weren’t serious, there were lasting repercussions–for Quinn and Martland.
Quinn was relieved of his command while Martland is now being forced out of the military. Despite Rahman being a US funded police official, it seems Quinn and Martland had no authority to confront him. In a recent New York Times article, military spokesman Col. Brian Tribus was quoted as saying that “allegations of child sexual abuse by Afghan military or police personnel would be a matter of domestic Afghan criminal law.”
Unfortunately, Rahman wasn’t unique. In the same article, Quinn recalled how he reported another police officer for raping a 14 year-old girl. The consequences? “He got one day in jail, and then she was forced to marry him.” Quinn claims that “we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”
The policy of ignoring sexual violence wasn’t just callous towards Afghan children–it also cost American lives. In 2012, Marine Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. voiced concerns that a group of teens were being kept on base as sex slaves by an Afghan commander. He told his father, “At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it.” Buckley died shortly thereafter, along with two other Marines. They were killed by a teen who managed to get his hands on a gun and opened fire. According to Buckley’s father, “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s their culture.”
That the US government would turn a blind eye to rapists in Afghanistan is appalling, but not unprecedented. After all, it’s done the same thing in this country for years; it even funds a group that helps them stay out of jail.
Planned Parenthood is America’s largest abortion chain, performing over three hundred thousand every year. It also receives over half a billion dollars in annual public funding. While this money isn’t supposed to pay for abortions, the meme below illustrates how well that rule works out.
And not only does Planned Parenthood perform plenty of abortions, it isn’t picky about who they’re done on, either. That’s good news for sexual predators, something a recent report from Alliance Defending Freedom documents.
In multiple cases, Planned Parenthood has helped sex offenders destroy the evidence of their crimes. It helped Gary Cross; the California man brought his 13 year-old stepdaughter there after getting her pregnant. Despite being well below the age of consent, clinic staff didn’t alert authorities. Instead, they referred the girl for a late-term abortion. With the evidence gone, Cross was free to keep raping her.
Timothy Smith also brought his stepdaughter to Planned Parenthood for a cover-up abortion. John Blanks, Jr., Adam Gault, Joseph Coles, Kevon Walker, and Edgar Ramirez did the same with their victims, too.
Denise Fairbanks recounted in a lawsuit how she explicitly told Planned Parenthood clinic staff that she had been brought in by her incestuous father. Instead of calling police, they performed an abortion and turned her back over to him.
Undercover investigations by Live Action have documented the same attitude. In 2008, Live Action founder Lila Rose told staff at a Memphis Planned Parenthood facility that she was fourteen and pregnant via her thirty one year-old boyfriend. Rather than report the abuse, a counselor instructed Rose to lie about her boyfriend’s age when seeking an abortion. Visits to other Planned Parenthood centers produced similar results.
If you feel like sexual abuse isn’t he sort of thing we should be enabling, you’re not alone. Complaints are being leveled in Washington over the military’s tolerance for rape in Afghanistan, with Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) contending that “the Army should stand up for what’s right and should not side with a corrupt Afghan police officer.” Pro-lifers don’t want it tolerated at home either.
Pro-life lawmakers are pushing to defund Planned Parenthood and direct the money to the more than nine thousand community health centers operating nationwide. They’re places that provide care to those with limited financial resources–not help for rapists. Unfortunately, pro-abortion legislators have blocked the effort.
You can show your support by signing Live Action’s online petition. It’s available here, along with more evidence of Planned Parenthood’s wrongdoing. Because whether it’s overseas or back in the US, sexual abuse shouldn’t be ignored. Regarding rape in Afghanistan, Army veteran Rick Scavetta asked, “How can you turn a blind eye to that?”
We can’t.
