You know this when the media can run a story saying there are 700 teen pregnancies each year in The Bahamas, most of whom are minors between 13 and 15 years of age, and not a single word from anywhere is heard thereafter – not from the church, the police, the government, nowhere – even though if the girls are minors that means they are almost all victims of statutory rape; an offence that now carries a maximum life sentence under the legislative amendments made by the previous administration.
So we have hundreds of documented cases of statutory rape in this country each year and no one says a word, but the newspapers from the front page to back can be filled everyday with story after story about the numbers business, and churches can hold prayer vigils and campaigns asking the public for money to help them encourage the nation to say no to numbers.
But hundreds of rapes of minor girls each year in our country? Who really cares, right?
Our nation is sick.
Sharon Turner
