In the past few weeks the complementarian-egalitarian debate has again featured prominently in the blogosphere. Perhaps it is time for a little context. From Allison Dinoia Newcombe at the Huffington Post: Last week, I visited the spot where a young girl was brutally murdered, set on fire and burned to death in the middle of the street in Los Angeles. I have searched to find answers about her plight, but to no avail; this story barely made local news. She was just 17 years old. […] Every single day, girls in Los Angeles are kidnapped and coerced by traffickers and pimps into a life of sexual slavery and violence. The average age of entry into this life is 12 years old — the age of a child in seventh grade. There are hundreds of children affected by this crisis in LA alone. Alarmingly, yet not surprisingly, estimates consistently show over 70 percent of the children victimized through sex trafficking are foster children. Traffickers know that foster kids are an abused and vulnerable population, and that these girls are desperate for the love and attention that they did not receive from their own families. Lacking the necessary relationships and support, coupled with likely sexual and physical abuse at a young age, these girls are particularly at risk for the organized and pre-meditated tactics of traffickers. Child sex trafficking, though largely unheard of and often misunderstood, is in fact a domestic crisis. It has become one of the most common organized crimes in the country, third only after the sale of illegal drugs and arms. Gangs, which have been entrenched in Los Angeles neighborhoods for many years, are increasingly becoming involved in child sex trafficking. Gang members have learned that, unlike drugs or weaponry, a young girl’s body is a “commodity” that can be sold time after time. An added benefit for traffickers is the decreased risk: when selling girls, the primary risk falls on the child being sold, who is standing alone on the street, not on the trafficker who is safely out of sight. And while a child is not of age to consent to sex, they can be arrested and charged with the crime of prostitution due to legal loopholes. Just last week I observed a court hearing where a 12-year-old was being charged with the crime of prostitution. Likely pre-menstrual, still with a childish look in her eyes, she sat in court in an orange jumpsuit, with tears streaming down her cheeks, while the judge explained the charges. Do not miss it: a 17 year old girl, set afire and burned to death in the middle of a street in Los Angeles, California, USA. Do not miss it: a 12-year old girl, likely brutalized and trafficked by a gang, arrested and charged with prostitution by cops and D.A.s who should know better. With tears on her face she sits in front of a judge who may be too uncaring to set aside unjust laws. Or possibly hindered by a legislature too stupid to change them. From a Reuters report entitled, “Syrian forces use sexual violence against men, women, children”: [Human Rights Watch] said many of the assaults were in circumstances in which commanding officers knew or should have known the crimes, such as electric shocks to genitalia, were taking place. In another face-to-face interview a woman from the Karm al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Homs city which was overrun by Assad’s troops said she heard security forces and shabiha militia rape her neighbors while she hid in her apartment in March. “I could hear one girl fighting with one of (the men)… She pushed him and he shot her in the head,” HRW quoted the woman as saying. She said three girls, the youngest aged 12, were then raped. After the men left the woman went next door. “The scene on the inside was unreal. The 12-year-old was lying on the ground, blood to her knees… More than one person had raped the 12-year-old… She was torn the length of a forefinger. I will never go back there. It comes to me. I see it in my dreams and I just cry.” Some interviewees told HRW that victims did not want their families to know about the assault because of fear or shame. In one case, HRW said a female rape victim was willing to be interviewed but her husband forbade it. Do not miss it: a 12-year old girl gang-raped in an apartment. Brutalized emotionally, psychologically and physically with body ripped as if she had endured a traumatic childbirth. In fact here’s an entire website dedicated to tragedies being endured by women in Syria: Women Under Siege: Documenting Sexualized Violence in Syria. Recent entries included, “Woman tells Brandeis students Assad soldiers raped her,” “Man reports Republican Guards raped woman, killed men, in Douma apartment building,” “Former officer describes being ordered to rape in Homs,” and more. Or this from the Chattanooga Times Free Press, September 2012: Note to parents: Go check your kid’s cellphone. Or Facebook. Just check. Just … check. Back in April 2010, one mother did just that. Her daughter was 14 at the time, right in the thick of middle school. Should be texting about cute boys or Hannah Montana or pre-algebra problems. Instead, here’s what showed up in her sent texts. “Cud u use a condom this time. I’m still not on birth control pills yet.” You’d freak, right? Ready to wring the neck of some punk seventh-grader? Mom found more texts, all involving a caller known as “Greg.” Police traced the texts back to a cellphone number. Turned out Greg hadn’t been in middle school since the 1970s. He’s Greg Austin, a 46-year-old Ooltewah father of three and former president of CTC Technologies in Chattanooga. Earlier this year, he pleaded guilty to two charges of statutory rape: having sex with two middle-schoolers in a $45-per-night motel. Want to know where he is today? Not in jail. Thanks to sentencing reform and the fact