A thirteen year-old girl was raped in rural India this past January. Two months later, the perpetrator was punished. So was his victim.
Social activist Sachin Tukaram Bhise secretly recorded a village council meeting in which the girl was whipped. The man who whipped her, Arun Jadhav, insisted she was at fault for not reporting the attack.
While the footage resulted in multiple arrests, the incident wasn’t unique. And given how other rape survivors have been treated, I’m not surprised this one felt reluctant to come forward. Of course, India isn’t the only place where some side with rapists against their victims. It’s happened at America’s largest abortion chain, too.
Denise Fairbanks was thirteen when her father began raping her. Two years later, he brought Denise to an Ohio Planned Parenthood abortion facility after getting her pregnant. In a subsequent lawsuit, she recalled explicitly telling Planned Parenthood’s staff what had happened. Rather than turn to the police, Planned Parenthood turned Denise back over to her abuser.
Planned Parenthood staff in Colorado didn’t help Timothy Smith’s thirteen year-old victim either. The state’s Office of Children, Youth, & Families warns medical professionals to be vigilant when a child “becomes pregnant or contracts a venereal disease, particularly if under age fourteen” but the folks at Planned Parenthood had other ideas. One later admitted under oath that “being thirteen and pregnant alone is not a red flag.” By performing an abortion on his victim, Planned Parenthood helped Smith keep the abuse hidden and ongoing.
The group also helped Gary Cross abuse his thirteen year-old victim. Luis Gonzalez-Jose got similar assistance with the eleven year-old he raped. Fellow child rapists John Blanks, Jr., Adam Gault, Joseph Coles, Kevon Walker, Edgar Ramirez, and Grey David Woods benefited from cover-up abortions too.
When a teenaged victim of alleged serial rapist Tyler Kost went to Planned Parenthood, she was told staff didn’t “want the hassle” of filing a report. Local law enforcement has said an investigation could have begun months earlier if a report had been filed.
Keep in mind, these are just some of the cases that have come to light–there’s no way to know how many victims Planned Parenthood has hurt. What do we know? That your tax dollars helped them do it.
Every year, Planned Parenthood receives over half a billion dollars in federal funding. Tell Congress that money would be better spent on federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and community health centers (CHCs). In addition to not enabling rape, FQHCs and CHCs offer a wider array of care, with the five hundred thousand mammograms they performed last year standing in sharp contrast to Planned Parenthood’s zero.
In India, people like Sachin Bhise are standing up to those who persecute rape survivors. Americans should do the same.
