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Comment by mherkender | Hacker News Reader

Wow, his father sounds like a piece of work.

He decides that culture is the only real reason he shouldn't marry someone who was "about 9 to 12" when he's 36. Then his long absences put her at risk of being brutally gang-raped, which happens. She ends up in the US, and eventually goes back without her kids. He tells his kids nothing about her, why she left, who she is, but still has his son beg her to come back in front of a video camera. His son thinks she abandoned him and becomes an alcoholic by 14. The guy says “We weren’t a touchy-feely, talk-about-things kind of family".

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I couldn't get through this article this guy made me so mad. He's like the worst sort of intellectual, the one that loses his own morality and culture to abstract ideas.

Personally, I think the worst sort of intellectual is the one that gets all judgmental and mad at people based on flimsy hearsay information.

Old men marrying children is common in many parts of the world.

http://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_58008.html

http://tooyoungtowed.org/

>Old men marrying children is common in many parts of the world.

There are quite a few shitty people in the world. As much as many of us hate to admit it, there are also quite a few shitty cultures. Any 36 year-old man, from any culture that has ever existed, that finds it acceptable to marry a 9-12 year old and then start raping her when she's 13 is a piece of shit. Any culture or individual that condones such behavior shouldn't exist anymore.

Yeah our culture is the best! Everyone else is wrong!

I don't really subscribe to the misinformed view that one has to be perfect in order to recognize a flaw. I criticize my own culture as much as any other, perhaps more.

I don't think it's fair of you to imply what he did not imply. Despite all the 'cultural-sensitivity' and what not, there are some lines that have to be drawn and stated bluntly and unapologetically. In that respect, I could not have said it better than the parent comment, and 100% agree with below statement:

" Any 36 year-old man, from any culture that has ever existed, that finds it acceptable to marry a 9-12 year old and then start raping her when she's 13 is a piece of shit. Any culture or individual that condones such behavior shouldn't exist anymore."

> from any culture that has ever existed

Actually there are a lot of eras that had a very low life expectancy in early times [1]. Giving birth at an age earlier than what our society finds acceptable would have been normal, if not the responsible thing to do, for those eras. Otherwise the parents would be living an unprepared 5 year old alone in the world.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

I couldn't have said it any better, myself. Not all cultures are good. Quite a few of them are, in fact, terrible, and should no longer exist.

Should we really look back on the Roman Empire as just consisting of a bunch of child rapists?

Yes. Next question, please.

Are you sure that is usually how the story plays out? I don't know, but I also don't trust the usual sources as they have their own agenda. Perhaps the percentage of rapists there is not higher than in the Western world?

I also think it is very difficult to judge from a different culture. For example, what if the girls are being killed if they can't be married? (Again, I have no idea about the real workings of those cultures, but there are certainly cultures where girls get killed because parents can't afford them - not saying that that is a good state of things, but the question is who is to blame?).

>For example, what if the girls are being killed if they can't be married?

If this were the kind of culture that a person lived in, why not just marry them to save their lives and then not consummate the relationship?

>Are you sure that is usually how the story plays out?

In cultures that allow children to be married to adults, yes, this is usually how it plays out.

Also, I realize there is a possibility that this particular story is fabricated. I just responded to the oft-repeated claim that we should try to be more understanding of pedophiles if and only if they are from a different culture. I can't imagine a circumstance where people should be forgiving to any 36 year-old man that has a sexual relationship with a 12-year old.

"why not just marry them to save their lives and then not consummate the relationship?"

That's what I meant - perhaps it often works out that way, and only the rape cases are being reported to the western world for emotional effect.

"I just responded to the oft-repeated claim that we should try to be more understanding of pedophiles if and only if they are from a different culture."

I've never heard that kind of story, but I admit that I don't read a lot about pedophiles.

But it seems normal that 12 year olds have sex. Perhaps criticizing the age difference has a lot of culture dependent aspects? For example the limit of 18 years to call somebody an adult seems somewhat arbitrary. In any case I don't think pedophilia can be attached to an age limit, only to body development?

> But it seems normal that 12 year olds have sex.

Not to me.

Sure, but to nature it does. Otherwise, why make it possible for 12 year olds to get pregnant?

Nature allows a lot of things. But it is not because of this that it is the best thing to let it happen. The decision to disallow this kind of behavior through law was rational.

You misunderstand me. I am not arguing against the law. Just against cultural bias.

If you left 12 year olds to their own devices without educating them that they shouldn't have sex, many of them will probably have sex. That is what I mean by "it is normal". Is it even illegal for 12 year olds to have sex?

Also, out of curiosity, how would you explain to kids that they shouldn't have sex? I think some reasons don't apply across all cultures.

> Any 36 year-old man ... that finds it acceptable to marry a 9-12 year old and then start raping her when she's 13 is a piece of shit

I would assume she fully expected to have sex with her husband, 13 years old or not. To suggest this was rape, against her will, is a bit preposterous and an incorrect usage of the word. At the same time I find it reprehensible that a 36 year old American, whose culture says underage is below 18, would get involved with what we'd consider a child.

>To suggest this was rape, against her will, is a bit preposterous and an incorrect usage of the word

There are different kinds of rape. It doesn't really matter if a 13 year-old consents. How many 13 year-olds do you know that are mature enough to make such a decision?

I know plenty of 30+ year olds who aren't mature enough to make such a decision either. The age of 18 is just an arbitrary choice to plant a legal marker, because it's not practical to judge on a case by case basis.

Not that I'm condoning the behavior in this case....I'd think the intent of age of consent laws would be to protect those not yet able to protect themself with their own judgement - it should be obvious in this case, especially considering his age at the time, that taking a ~13 year old "wife" and proceeding to have sex with her when you had no intent to move there permanently was an incredibly wrong thing to do, by any moral compass.

I agree that SOME 30 year-olds aren't mature enough to make adult decisions, but on the other hand almost every single 13 year-old on the planet is too immature.

I don't know any, but I don't live in the Amazon. If you ask them, they might say yes. And apparently she chose him, so...

You don't know what rape is. The modern interpretation of rape isn't just when people force themselves on others, it also includes things like coercion, and abuse of power.

I'm not sure I can think of a more obvious example of taking advantage than a almost middle-aged affluent man who marries a child from a group of people almost completely isolated from the outside world while he's supposed to be studying them.

Why is it in every thread online involving statutory rape is there some guy trying to shift the definitions or morality of it around? What are you trying to accomplish?

I hope you see the irony in your complaint about "some guy trying to shift the definitions or morality" when we're discussing a primitive tribe in the Amazon that thinks marriage to 13 year olds is perfectly OK.

You're saying that the moral rules of your culture are the absolute correct ones that apply globally? What else might this apply to? There are cultures who lay out their dead for the vultures to eat; we don't do this, so do you have a problem with that too?

You not understanding me is not ironic. He's not a member of a primitive tribe, he's an anthropologist.

If I visit a country and they tell me I should hate homosexuals, knowing what I know about homosexuality means that doing it would make me an awful human being. Even if I respect their different opinions on the matter, it doesn't mean that they are being good, because we know that homosexuality isn't a choice more than they know it is a choice.

Vultures eating dead flesh is not inherently wrong, it's just distasteful to some. This very obvious example of child sexual abuse that actually harms someone who is alive is not even close, and it's weird that you're making that comparison. Do I really need to cite the negative effects of sexual abuse on children to justify my position here?

And I'm saying she's a member of a primitive tribe who thinks being 13 and having sex is fine. To her, she's not being raped.

If you read my comment above in full, I did say what he was doing was reprehensible. Relative to our culture, he's molesting a child, and if it were happening in the US it would be considered rape because we consider people under 18 to be incapable of informed consent. And therein lies the uncertainty of definition, since she was informed and consented.

I give up, you're a troll. You're not really saying anything at all.

I see your definition of troll is someone who doesn't agree with you.

" Any culture or individual that condones such behavior shouldn't exist anymore."

You and a terrorist would have so much to talk about.

Even if you are subscribing to the morals of that tribe, then he wronged her by leaving her "undefended" and vulnerable to the gang rape she endured while he was gone.

(This is of course assuming that the article is accurate and fair. If the article is accurate, it's hard to defend the father's actions no matter how you look at them).

So is slavery. If you are an anthropologist from a non-slave culture working in an area where people keep slaves, and you decide not only to keep a few, but to import them when you return...

> He decides that culture is the only real reason he shouldn't marry someone who was "about 9 to 12" when he's 36.

This is why I hate cultural relativists. They use it as an excuse to throw morals and common sense out the window.

This is why I hate overly touchy-feelies. They use their emotional sensitivity to throw analytic thinking out of the window and then persecute people who are not like them.

Where do morals and common sense come from, eh? Culture. Common sense is literally a sense that is common to a certain group of people. Morals are also mutually accepted limitations to each other behavior.

So yes, morals and common sense of your culture are out of the window when dealing with another culture. Just because you have a strong opinion doesn't mean you're right.

Yes, if your morality is arbitrarily determined by what you can get away with, everything's moral that you can get away with.

Does the father in a particular family get to set the culture of that family? If so, I think that many child molesters may have the basis for a "common sense" appeal through your argument.

Everything you said here is nonsensical and wrong. You completely missed the point and are rationalizing your own culture as the only right culture.

Treat culture the same way you treat religion. Just as there are many religions, but none of them is the right religion, so there are many cultures, and none of them is the right culture.

As for your attempt to label the father as child molester in this case, you are wrong. Child molesters are people who not only are showing behavior, that is unacceptable in the culture they are in, but also they are doing it, at least in some cases, against the will of the partner. What the father in this case did was nor against the culture in which he did it, neither against the will of the partner.

What are you talking about? Common sense is literally a cultural POV, I mean it has the word COMMON in it, and therefore by definition dependent on that common thread of culture or human knowledge; it is a relative term that's developed through a common experience, which is transformed into a sense, but it's an acquired sense nonetheless.

As for morals, we are animals, and animalistic, thinking otherwise, or towards some fabricated ideal, is untruthful, and therefore amoral.

However for the functioning of a society it is necessary to establish both, morality, and inevitably common sense, and your adverse reaction to such other moralities, or POVs is a direct result of societal conditioning, which is good, because it creates stability in this society.

I thought that the US had laws against "sex tourism" so I wonder if it's possible, at least in theory, that he could get prosecuted for this?

Those laws were probably not on the books when this crime took place.

Apparently by local custom they were both two years old.

After 2 comes "many."

> sex tourism

He married her. It's really not the same thing.

And then he just left, so I'm not sure what "marriage" even means in this context. Under our laws it would be something more like "statutory rape" but I do wonder what actually applies here.

This isn't something I've looked into, just something I saw on 20/20 or some similar show once, so you might be right that it only applies to those setting up tours or going on them rather than to conduct that happens overseas.

This sort of thing happens every now and then, even when there are no indigenous tribes involved:

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jul/15/childprotection.so...

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