tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/abduction-7594/articlesAbduction – The Conversation2022-12-20T03:19:14Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1910062022-12-20T03:19:14Z2022-12-20T03:19:14ZGirl, gone: Vikki Wakefield’s twisty thriller explores every parent’s worst nightmare<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496412/original/file-20221121-23-6fieh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C18%2C6284%2C4173&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Engin Akyurt/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vikki Wakefield’s first foray into adult fiction begins with every parent’s worst-case scenario: single mum Abbie is at a busy outdoor market with her six-year-old, Sarah, when her daughter disappears. Sarah is suspected abducted, and despite all the police resources, there are no leads on her disappearance. Abbie is left to pick up the pieces of her life and carry on. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: After You Were Gone – Vikki Wakefield (Text Publishing)</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Surviving the worst</h2>
<p>In the very first chapter, we recognise this narrator as one who has survived the worst and lives with an absence of answers: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Not knowing was like living inside a well with slippery sides and the occasional crack between stones, a foothold, a scrabbling place.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496413/original/file-20221121-14-he3p7h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496413/original/file-20221121-14-he3p7h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496413/original/file-20221121-14-he3p7h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496413/original/file-20221121-14-he3p7h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496413/original/file-20221121-14-he3p7h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496413/original/file-20221121-14-he3p7h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496413/original/file-20221121-14-he3p7h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496413/original/file-20221121-14-he3p7h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Book cover: After You Were Gone by Vikki Wakefield.</span>
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<p>Marketed as a psychological thriller, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/after-you-were-gone">After You Were Gone</a> is told from the first-person point of view of a mother who has struggled to survive her daughter’s disappearance, but who never fit the <a href="https://theconversation.com/worrying-about-being-a-perfect-mother-makes-it-harder-to-be-a-good-parent-58690">ideal mother</a> mould. </p>
<p>Six years after her daughter’s suspected abduction, Abbie is starting a new life and marrying an older man – Murray – with children from a previous marriage. The day after her wedding, a mysterious caller promises the truth about what happened to her daughter if Abbie follows his very specific instructions. Having spent the past six years mired in guilt, blaming herself for Sarah going missing, Abbie goes along with the caller’s increasingly onerous demands.</p>
<p>Three time frames are interwoven throughout the novel: Before, Now, and After. Before is before Sarah disappeared. After is the years afterwards. Now unfolds in the present, with the mysterious caller. It is a clever structure because it gives us an understanding of what brought Abbie to this place, the level of stress she is under – and the reasons for the choices she has made, and is about to make.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-why-ya-gothic-fiction-is-booming-and-girl-monsters-are-on-the-rise-95921">Friday essay: why YA gothic fiction is booming - and girl monsters are on the rise</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The bad mother</h2>
<p>Wakefield creates nuanced and complex characters with different versions of the truth, and the tension between Abbie and her own mother is dialled high. In a conversation between Abbie and her sister Jess, we see the different ways siblings respond to the weight of maternal expectation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Why does she hate me so much?” I whispered to Jess.</p>
<p>“Because you pretend you don’t need her,” she said.</p>
<p>“You don’t need her.”</p>
<p>“But I pretend that I do.” Jess squeezed my hand.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The last taboo in society is the bad or indifferent mother – Wakefield is brilliant at showing us how insidious the cult of perfect motherhood might be for a young single mum who is hardly capable of looking after herself, much less a child. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496415/original/file-20221121-19-i6if7l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An attractive woman with a blunt, straight, choppy bob and a sleeveless t-shirt" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496415/original/file-20221121-19-i6if7l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496415/original/file-20221121-19-i6if7l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496415/original/file-20221121-19-i6if7l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496415/original/file-20221121-19-i6if7l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496415/original/file-20221121-19-i6if7l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496415/original/file-20221121-19-i6if7l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496415/original/file-20221121-19-i6if7l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In her first adult novel, Vikki Wakefield explores the ‘last taboo’ of the bad or indifferent mother.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Abbie’s pregnancy was accidental and Sarah’s father is not in the picture. Sarah is wilful and fiercely independent even at the age of six. “If I lost my temper, she would smile,” Abbie admits. “Some days I yearned to hand Sarah to a kind-faced stranger on the street and walk away.”</p>
<p>Abbie’s feelings about Sarah are both confronting, and familiar to anyone who has struggled with motherhood and the burdens of societal expectation. She suffers from <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-human-being-not-just-mum-the-womens-liberationists-who-fought-for-the-rights-of-mothers-and-children-182057">maternal ambivalence</a>: not an absence of love for one’s children, so much as an admission that motherhood is harder than expected, and a resentment of the burden of caregiving (and guilt at that resentment). Abbie recalls:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Around the age of two or three, Sarah progressed from simple needs to complex wants, and I cherished the hours when she was asleep while I was awake. From the moment she woke she was wired, swinging from manic activity to inconsolable tiredness, and the relentlessness of single parenthood made me hate myself on a daily basis.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-it-possible-to-describe-the-complexity-and-absurdity-of-motherhood-181066">Is it possible to describe the complexity and absurdity of motherhood?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Neat ending with unexpected twist</h2>
<p>The self-loathing that Wakefield sets up enables the narrative to unravel in the now: after the phonecall, with Abbie becoming increasingly hostile to everyone around her. </p>
<p>It is believable until we reach the final scenes, where the ending does seem implausible in its neatness after so much chaos. Murray and Abbie’s relationship is only witnessed as it implodes, and this gives us scant insight into why they were together in the first place.</p>
<p>Without giving away the ending, part of what it hinges on is the premise that the narrator, Abbie, spent years throwing away her letters and packages: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>my habit of throwing away mail, unopened, went as far back as when I’d lived in the unit with Cass, and only got worse after Sarah was taken.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet she keeps her surname when remarrying, in case her daughter might one day find her. It seems unlikely that someone whose child has been abducted throws away mail unopened – mail that could have actual leads, possible clues, or a letter of contact.</p>
<p>Despite this quibble, the twist was unexpected. Rereading, one can see the seeds sowed – tiny flecks here and there – which come to root the final story. After You Were Gone is more interesting for the way it portrays the complex pressures of motherhood than as a psychological thriller, but Wakefield succeeds in allowing the pressure of one to propel the other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191006/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleanor Limprecht does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Renowned YA author Vikki Wakefield delves into the complex pressures of motherhood with her first adult novel – a psychological thriller.Eleanor Limprecht, Lecturer, Creative Writing, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1736282022-04-25T19:11:53Z2022-04-25T19:11:53ZWhen parents turn children into weapons, everybody loses<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459560/original/file-20220425-26-7nz3kx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=67%2C0%2C7500%2C4973&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One form of domestic abuse involves a parent breaking their child's connection with the other parent.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/divorce-and-difficult-choice-concept-royalty-free-illustration/1355645462">Mikhail Seleznev/iStock/Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Domestic abuse can involve one parent using a child as a weapon against the other parent, which harms the child in immense ways. My research has identified how these dynamics play out and examines the damage. </p>
<p>There are approximately <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs/nisvs-impactbrief-508.pdf">5.7 million cases</a> of domestic abuse in the U.S. each year, and in some of those, mothers and fathers use children to manipulate and <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-58808-004?doi=1">harm the other parent</a>. This behavior can include directly pressuring the child to spy on the abused parent or threatening the abused parent that they will never see the child again if they leave the relationship.</p>
<p>Another way a parent can use a child as a weapon involves turning the child against the other parent. In this case, the abuser makes the child believe the other parent never loved them, abandoned them or is dangerous and unsafe to be around. In this way, the abuser corrupts the child’s reality, even convincing the child that the abuser is the victim of abuse.</p>
<p>The outcome of this process is what <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=G4n0IUsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">psychologists like me</a> call “<a href="https://doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/bul0000175">parental alienation</a>.” The child feels betrayed, hurt and very angry toward the alienated parent – much like a spurned lover, but worse, because it involves a parent the child had a primary attachment to and who comprises half of their identity. What happens next is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.05.002">cascade of losses</a> associated with great harm to children.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459561/original/file-20220425-12-ze6f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="One parent stands alone on one side of a room, while another parent stands in front of a child" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459561/original/file-20220425-12-ze6f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459561/original/file-20220425-12-ze6f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459561/original/file-20220425-12-ze6f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459561/original/file-20220425-12-ze6f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459561/original/file-20220425-12-ze6f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459561/original/file-20220425-12-ze6f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459561/original/file-20220425-12-ze6f9r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When one parent separates the child emotionally from the other parent, great harm ensues.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/problems-and-conflict-in-family-fight-and-royalty-free-illustration/1327597178">robuart/iStock/Getty Images Plus</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1. Loss of self-confidence</h2>
<p>When this happens, researchers in my field call this weaponizing a child. The child often <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/products/inv/book/214361/">loses trust in their own memories</a> or experience with the abused parent because it’s at odds with what the abuser is leading them to believe. Many adults who were alienated from a parent as a child report feeling <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/children9040475">helpless and disconnected from their emotions</a> and having problems trusting other people.</p>
<h2>2. Loss of innocence</h2>
<p>The abusive parent can take away the child’s innocence by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10502556.2012.663265">exposing them to ideas and behaviors</a> that are not age-appropriate, or are in fact not appropriate at all. The abuser may ask the child to make an adult-level decision, such as choosing whether to have a relationship with the other parent. Abusive parents also can often neglect the developmental needs of the child, such as encouraging independence, and sometimes make the child care for the needs of the parent.</p>
<h2>3. Loss of parental connection</h2>
<p>When a child becomes alienated from a parent, they begin to reject half their identity because they are hurt and angry, and it is too painful to acknowledge that connection. The child also rejects the important parental bond the abused parent had provided. This <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/01926187.2011.601206">loss of connection and sense of shared identity</a> has substantial short- and long-term negative effects, such as unresolved grief and low self-esteem. </p>
<h2>4. Loss of wider family links</h2>
<p>As the child becomes more distant from the abused parent, the child also can <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Margaret-Sims/publication/269552856_Grandparents_with_Little_or_No_Contact_with_Grandchildren-Impact_on_Grandparents/links/58002f3e08ae32ca2f5dbd23/Grandparents-with-Little-or-No-Contact-with-Grandchildren-Impact-on-Grandparents.pdf">lose relationships with extended family</a> and social networks. The child is deprived of the types of experiences and opportunities that these related individuals can provide, such as social support or professional opportunities possible through their social networks.</p>
<h2>5. Loss of social connection</h2>
<p>Some abusers socially isolate their children – home-schooling them, limiting their friendships or even <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02486521">relocating or abducting them to another state or country</a>. When that happens, the child can lose all their former social, educational, recreational and cultural connections. Unable to grieve the loss of the alienated parent openly because of the abusive alliance they have formed with the abusive parent, the children often suffer alone.</p>
<h2>What’s to be done?</h2>
<p>To friends and relatives, a situation in which children are weaponized can be confusing or even appear as the reverse of what is actually happening. Outsiders <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000175">might not recognize the role of the abuser</a> and think that the abused parent is in fact rejecting the child or is somehow otherwise at fault.</p>
<p>But those closely connected outsiders are the people <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10502556.2014.901833">best positioned to help</a> the family break its cycle of violence and find ways to protect the child. When they blame the wrong parent for abuse, the child continues to suffer. Even mental health professionals <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000216">don’t always evaluate the situation correctly</a> and focus treatment on the child’s relationship with the abused parent – while ignoring the continued influence of the abuser.</p>
<p>The most recent national statistics available indicate that there are not <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs/nisvs-impactbrief-508.pdf">significant differences in numbers of men and women</a> who are victims of domestic violence each year, and I <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104471">do not find in my research</a> that there are gender differences in the proportion of parents who have their children weaponized against them by another parent. </p>
<p>Unless children are protected from being weaponized against a parent, there will continue to be many family relationships that remain broken.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Harman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some parents engage in domestic abuse by influencing their children to fear, dislike or distrust their other parent. What happens next is a cascade of losses.Jennifer Harman, Associate Professor of Applied Social and Health Psychology, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1654962021-09-12T08:18:12Z2021-09-12T08:18:12ZRethinking ukuthwala, the South African ‘bride abduction’ custom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420038/original/file-20210908-23-ashuvv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rural Eastern Cape </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Susan Winters Cook/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just over a decade ago in South Africa, a flurry of media reports surfaced about a customary practice known as <em>ukuthwala</em>. The <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2011-04-04-forcing-the-issue/">reports</a> described a rise in <em>ukuthwala</em> characterised by the kidnapping, assault and rape of young girls by older men, forcing them into customary marriages. Girls as young as 13 and 14 in the rural areas of provinces such as Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal were affected by this violence. In some cases, the girls’ families accepted and arranged the marriages.</p>
<p><em>Ukuthwala</em> is a term in Nguni languages which has various meanings. It can refer to ways (including abduction) of making a customary marriage happen quickly. South Africa has a varied cultural make-up, and the term ‘customary’ is generally used to describe beliefs and traditions of groups that are ‘indigenous’ to the country. Customary marriages therefore are based on localised norms. As a route to customary marriage, multiple types of <em>ukuthwala</em> exist across the country, each with distinct names and elements.</p>
<p>The reports about violent <em>ukuthwala</em> cases provoked responses from different sectors of society. Government leaders organised meetings with affected communities. The <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/salrc/dpapers/dp132-UkuthwalaRevised.pdf">South African Law Reform Commission</a> did an extensive study. <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC51942">Legal scholars</a> outlined the human rights implications of the practice. The ruling political party’s Women’s League <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/ancwl-slams-ukuthwala-1796707">called</a> for <em>ukuthwala</em> to be abolished.</p>
<p>From the media and government reports, legal scholarship and case law, two general conclusions emerged during this period. The first was that non-consensual <em>ukuthwala</em> was a modern phenomenon. The second was that it was an abuse of tradition, not an authentic customary practice.</p>
<p>Through <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/african-studies-review/article/abs/deconstructing-characterizations-of-rape-marriage-and-custom-in-south-africa-revisiting-the-multisectoral-campaign-against-ukuthwala/030D12337FA12BA87D2553E0ED2AF76D">my research</a>, based on interviews with women in the Eastern Cape and examinations of historical and recent sources, I have found that both of these conclusions about <em>ukuthwala</em> are oversimplifications. The reality is far more complex. Coercive <em>ukuthwala</em> has been practised for generations, and many have held the cruel acts accompanying <em>ukuthwala</em> as part of tradition. </p>
<p>The mainstream conclusions obscure the actual nature and extent of this form of gendered violence.</p>
<h2>Misconceptions</h2>
<p>The first misconception is that violent <em>ukuthwala</em> is a new phenomenon. Part of the misunderstanding stems from the fact that before 2009 only a <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/5564/Koyana_Indomitable%282007%29.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">small body of academic research</a> existed, and much of it concentrated on the romantic <em>ukuthwala</em> forms, akin to elopement. There are however sources that provide rich insights into past practices of violent <em>ukuthwala</em>. The historian <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/colonizing-consent/F26822B9351AC12F6E0F0BBFAECE34D2">Elisabeth Thornberry</a>, for example, explored sexual crimes and customs in colonial-era Eastern Cape. An early legal ethnography was Jacobus van Tromp’s 1947 <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/xhosa-law-of-persons-a-treatise-on-the-legal-principles-of-family-relations-among-the-amaxhosa/oclc/1017118500?referer=di&ht=edition">work</a> on Xhosa customs. Colonial and apartheid-era court cases also provide evidence of women seeking to escape abusive marriages.</p>
<p>Most importantly, older women are repositories of historical knowledge. I conducted my research in partnership with <a href="https://www.masimanyane.org.za/">Masimanyane</a>, an Eastern Cape-based women’s rights organisation. In my interviews women related their experiences of <em>ukuthwala</em>, rape and brutality during the 1970s. Staff of Masimanyane described how older women in affected communities had asked for counselling for the traumas they suffered decades ago. </p>
<p>Collectively these sources demonstrate that coercive <em>ukuthwala</em> is not of recent origin.</p>
<p>The second simplified conclusion about violent <em>ukuthwala</em> is that it is an inauthentic expression of custom. This assertion is most evident in the legal arena. In the 2015 decision <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAWCHC/2015/31.html">Jezile vs S</a> the Western Cape High Court determined that features of traditional <em>ukuthwala</em> under customary law included:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the consent of both the bride and groom</p></li>
<li><p>a “pretend” abduction of the bride</p></li>
<li><p>the strict prohibition of any sexual intercourse during the abduction.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The court labelled the forced form of <em>ukuthwala</em> as “aberrant”. In parallel, the South African Law Reform Commission <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/salrc/dpapers/dp132-ukutwala.pdf">concluded</a> that instances of forced <em>ukuthwala</em> were “illegal distortions” of the custom.</p>
<p>In my research I found that for many communities in rural parts of the Eastern Cape, coercive <em>ukuthwala</em> has been the standard according to customary practice. In my interviews with older survivors, they explained that what they endured in the <em>ukuthwala</em> process, such as abductions and rapes, was part of the custom where they lived. Their families took part in arranging the marriages and then refused to rescue them even after they were raped.</p>
<p>There is fortunately a growing body of scholarship that depicts the cultural acceptance of violent <em>ukuthwala</em>. This includes <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.1080/02587203.2017.1303902">research</a> by legal scholars Lea Mwambene and Helen Kruuse done in Jezile’s community in the Eastern Cape following the court case, as well as in-depth <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2014.896720?src=recsys">explorations</a> by <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23323256.2016.1248987">anthropologists</a>. </p>
<p>In sum, my findings affirm that custom cannot be understood as formulaic or benign. How people live and the traditions they invest in are infinitely diverse. There cannot be an essential form of <em>ukuthwala</em>.</p>
<h2>Culture and violence</h2>
<p>The simplified understandings of <em>ukuthwala</em> that I have outlined have particular consequences. For one, the perception of violent <em>ukuthwala</em> as ‘new’ has concealed brutality against black women through the apartheid and colonial eras. This very significant form of familial violence against women in the past remains mostly unacknowledged, and the brutality of <em>ukuthwala</em> today stands without context.</p>
<p>Connected to this is the denial of the link between culture and violence. The strict outlook on <em>ukuthwala</em> hides the very close relationship between marriage processes and rape. This is a relationship that has existed across many cultures. For example, marital rape was only <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1993-133.pdf">criminalised</a> in South Africa in the 1990s, undoing the marital rape exemption based on <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-and-comparative-law-quarterly/article/abs/rape-in-marriage-developments-in-south-african-law/525DC5CD095C77A800C118AF5EF0B613">Roman-Dutch and English laws</a>. In other words, the customary acceptance of sexual violence of ukuthwala is not unique. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, rape in marriage remains under-researched and misunderstood. My research highlights how the institution of marriage continues to diminish women’s sexual autonomy. Coercive <em>ukuthwala</em> happens because families prize marriage and the power of husbands over the individual rights of women and girls. The marriage in effect nullifies a husband’s wrongdoing.</p>
<p>Research must incorporate the voices of women of all ages, question written resources, and create more balanced accounts to inform law and policy. Without this we only have a partial understanding of <em>ukuthwala</em> and the injustices that women and girls have long been subjected to.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165496/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nyasha Karimakwenda receives funding from South African The National Research Foundation SARChI Chair in Security and Justice</span></em></p>Perceptions of marriage abduction as a recent phenomenon hide the violence that has been done to women as part of culture.Nyasha Karimakwenda, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1401322020-06-05T13:58:50Z2020-06-05T13:58:50ZMadeleine McCann: Investigation was flawed from the start, says senior detective who was there<p>News that a 43-year-old German man is now the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52914016">prime suspect</a> in the Madeleine McCann case appears – at last – to be a significant development. </p>
<p>The information from the German authorities and the Metropolitan Police Service indicates that in May 2007 this man was living and frequenting Praia da Luz, Portugal, and possibly committing burglaries at holiday complexes to fund his itinerant lifestyle. It also appears that as a teenager he was convicted of sexual offences against children in Germany and was therefore a known convicted sex offender in 2007.</p>
<p>This raises several questions: was he known to the Portuguese investigation team at the time? If so, when did his name enter their system and what did they do to implicate or eliminate him from their enquiry? When was his name passed on to the UK investigation team? These are questions at the forefront of my mind as I think back to my time in Portugal.</p>
<p>Madeleine McCann had been <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/madeleine-mccan-disappearance-timeline-suspect-paedophile-germany-a9547621.html">missing for several days</a> when I arrived in Praia da Luz in May 2007. I had been sent to Portugal as part of the UK’s Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre (CEOP) response to Madeleine’s disappearance. I was a detective superintendent and senior investigating officer (SIO) with knowledge about predatory child sexual abusers and non-familial child abduction.</p>
<p>After being briefed at the British Consulate regarding Madeleine’s disappearance, I met with Gerry and Kate McCann at their holiday apartment and we discussed the Portuguese police investigation strategy and possible scenarios that could have led to their daughter’s disappearance. Understandably, the McCanns were trying to come to terms with the situation they found themselves in. </p>
<p>During our discussion, Gerry asked me directly if I thought his daughter was still alive, and I pointed out that if she had been abducted – statistically – she would by now be dead. The majority of children who are murdered after being abducted by someone unknown to them are <a href="http://www.actionagainstabduction.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Taken.pdf">dead within three to six hours</a>. It was a difficult conversation, but I was struck by how focused the McCanns remained throughout. </p>
<p>The following day I went to the police station in Praia da Luz and spoke with several of the lead Portuguese investigators. They were all very polite but it was clear from their attitude and response that they didn’t welcome what they considered to be UK interference in a Portuguese crime. At that time, they were also receiving advice from Leicestershire Police (the McCanns’ home police force) supported by the then UK National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA).</p>
<p>From the outset I was struck by the lack of urgency surrounding the investigation and it was difficult to establish any detailed information around what direction the investigation was taking. Over the next few days, whenever I suggested certain courses of action that they might wish to consider, the Portuguese police either dismissed it out of hand or I was informed that it had already been done without result.</p>
<h2>Flawed investigation</h2>
<p>As the days went by, I became more and more frustrated and I relayed this back to CEOP in my telephone conversations and daily written reports. After ten exasperating days avoiding the growing media presence, trying to get and impart information and having meetings cancelled at the last minute because investigators were too busy, it was still unclear to me whether many of the key investigative tasks had been adequately completed. </p>
<p>For example, I had serious misgivings about the quality of the search strategy, the recording of full-time and casual staff at the holiday complex, identification of all known suspected and convicted sex offenders living or frequenting the area, and other significant or relevant crimes in the local area.</p>
<p>My professional opinion was that the Portuguese investigative approach to Madeleine’s disappearance was flawed and not fit for purpose when set against what we would have been done in a similar investigation in the UK. This was reflected time and time again in my verbal and written reports and the “<a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/madeleine-investigation-a-fiasco-as-bungling-portuguese-police-fail-to-send-crucial-documents-to-6657234.html#gsc.tab=0">fiasco</a>” was regularly reported on in the press. </p>
<p>Disappointingly, as the investigation progressed there was also a certain amount of inter-agency rivalry between the UK agencies involved, which resulted in a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/01/british-police-competition-harmed-madeleine-mccann-investigation-home-office-report">fraught working relationship</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Golden hours’ wasted</h2>
<p>In the years since Madeleine’s disappearance, I have also <a href="https://www.policeprofessional.com/news/missing-madeleine-mccann-inter-force-%C2%91trust-co-operation-and-understanding%C2%92-iss">raised my concerns</a> as to whether agencies across Europe are still any better prepared for these types of investigations.
When an investigation team doesn’t gather information or act in a timely and systematic fashion, the investigation gets away from them and this dramatically reduces the chances of the crime being solved.</p>
<p>My experience then, and even more so now having studied the behaviour of non-familial child abductors and murderers in-depth as a criminologist, is that the first 24 to 48 hours of a child abduction investigation – often referred to as the “golden hours” – are critical to its successful outcome. It requires strong, dynamic leadership supported by clear defensible decision making. </p>
<p>This must be backed up by systems and structures designed to collect and evaluate information quickly. At the same time, information must be retained in a manner so that it can be revisited at appropriate times as the investigation moves forward and alternative lines of enquiry are considered.</p>
<p>Non-familial child abduction attracts vast amounts of media attention. High-profile cases often attract national media coverage and cases where the child is murdered become, what is called in criminology, “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article-abstract/44/2/256/562927">mega-homicides</a>”. These cases can attract worldwide attention and generate vast amounts of information. </p>
<p>The potential for this information to overwhelm even the best-prepared investigation agency during the early hours or days of an inquiry is considerable. For this reason, there is a need for a systematic approach to core policing functions to deal with the complexity. And it is vital to have a thorough, well documented investigation strategy. </p>
<p>These investigations also require highly skilled and experienced investigators who have the ability to make defensible decisions based upon reliable information and create investigative strategy and policy that can stand the test of hindsight. A failure to do so can have serious consequences.</p>
<p>Three years after Madeleine’s disappearance, in 2010, I conducted and wrote CEOP’s internal review of the Portuguese investigation, which was subsequently passed to the Home Office. The review contained observations and recommendations that, after <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/209174/McCanns-seek-joint-Madeleine-review">repeated requests</a> from the McCanns, led to the Met being tasked to establish their own investigation, <a href="https://www.met.police.uk/notices/met/operation-grange/">Operation Grange</a>.</p>
<p>The information timeline, when fully known, may offer clarity and explanations to many of the questions that have been swirling around this case since 2007. But these explanations may also raise more uncomfortable questions about the effectiveness of the initial police inquiry and the competence of the people who led it. I only hope this new information leads to some form of closure for the McCanns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140132/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graham Hill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The detective turned criminologist who was sent to help Portuguese police in 2007 says he had misgivings as to how the most basic of tasks were being carried out.Graham Hill, Visiting Research Fellow, School of Law, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814502017-08-01T22:22:03Z2017-08-01T22:22:03ZWhy kids need risk, fear and excitement in play<p>“Be careful!” “Not so high!” “Stop that!” </p>
<p>Concerned parents can often be heard urging safety when children are at play. Recent research suggests this may be <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/">over-protective</a> and that kids need more opportunities for <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13502930701321733">risky play</a> outdoors. </p>
<p>Risky play is thrilling and exciting play where children test their boundaries and flirt with uncertainty. They climb trees, build forts, roam the neighbourhood with friends or play capture the flag. <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/6/6423">Research shows such play</a> is associated with increased physical activity, social skills, risk management skills, resilience and self-confidence. These findings make intuitive sense when you <a href="http://mymodernmet.com/forest-kindergarten/">watch children at play</a>. </p>
<p>Importantly, it’s not up to parents or experts to decide what is risky play for a particular child. </p>
<p>Rather, children need to be given the mental and physical space to figure out appropriate risk levels for themselves: far enough that it feels <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2304/ciec.2009.10.2.92">exhilarating</a>, but not so far that it becomes too scary. </p>
<p>My years as an injury prevention researcher have left me well aware of things that can go wrong and how to prevent them from happening. But because I have a doctorate in developmental psychology, I am also concerned that we are <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/9/3134">keeping our kids too safe</a>. Preventing our kids from exploring uncertainty could have <a href="https://www.participaction.com/sites/default/files/downloads/Participaction-PositionStatement-ActiveOutdoorPlay_0.pdf">unintended negative consequences</a> for their health and development, such as increased <a href="http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/6/6423">sedentary behaviour</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/147470491100900212">anxiety and phobias</a>. </p>
<h2>Parents’ hopes and fears</h2>
<p>Many of the parents I’ve spoken to through my research <a href="http://journals.lww.com/jrnldbp/Abstract/2011/09000/Striking_a_Balance_Between_Risk_and_Protection_.1.aspx">recognize the importance of risky play</a>, but can be overwhelmed by worry about the possibility of serious injury or abduction. They also worry that someone is going to report them to the authorities for letting their child take risks. These worries make it hard for them to let go and can result in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-psychologists-and-counsellors-in-schools/article/can-a-parent-do-too-much-for-their-child-an-examination-by-parenting-professionals-of-the-concept-of-overparenting/3E190E449B5F74EBCA43DECF7BD0470A">over-protection</a>. </p>
<p>More recently, I’ve noticed an opposite trend: parents who are worried their child is too timid and not taking enough risks. They want to know how they can help their child take more risks in play. </p>
<p>This concerns me as much as over-protection. Both approaches can increase the risk of injury and harm since they ignore children’s capabilities and preferences. How will children learn about themselves and how the world works if an adult is constantly telling them what to do and how to do it? </p>
<h2>What about injuries?</h2>
<p>There’s never been a <a href="https://journal.cpha.ca/index.php/cjph/article/download/5315/3483">safer time to be a child in Canada</a>. The likelihood of dying from an injury is 0.0059 per cent. Car crashes and suicides are the leading causes of death, not play. In fact, children are more likely to need medical attention for an injury resulting from <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-014-0289-0">organized sports</a> than play. </p>
<p>Likewise, the likelihood of <a href="https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/lbrr/archives/cn33598-eng.pdf">abduction by a stranger</a> is so small that the statistics are not even collected. In an attempt to strike a balance, <a href="http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/21/5/344">injury prevention professionals</a> are moving to an approach that seeks to keep children <a href="https://www.rospa.com/faqs/detail/?id=67">as safe as necessary, rather than as safe as possible</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180460/original/file-20170801-28766-1y1jhih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180460/original/file-20170801-28766-1y1jhih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180460/original/file-20170801-28766-1y1jhih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180460/original/file-20170801-28766-1y1jhih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180460/original/file-20170801-28766-1y1jhih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180460/original/file-20170801-28766-1y1jhih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180460/original/file-20170801-28766-1y1jhih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At OutsidePlay.ca parents can understand their own fears around risky play and develop a plan for their child.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Children are inherently capable</h2>
<p>Risky play is an important part of many outdoor schools and early child care settings in <a href="http://childnature.ca/">Canada</a> and other parts of the world. In <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/dec/09/the-school-in-the-woods-outdoor-education-modern-britain">outdoor forest schools and nurseries in the U.K.</a>, for example, pre-school and kindergarten kids build dens, climb trees, use tools and create fire — under careful supervision. </p>
<p>One principal in New Zealand decided his students <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1Y0cuufVGI">didn’t need any rules</a>. Students were allowed to climb trees, build forts, ride bikes — whatever occurred to them. His school was part of a <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/139/5/e20163072">larger study</a> that found students who were allowed risky play were happier and reported less bullying than students in schools who didn’t change their approach. </p>
<p>Seeing children engaged in risky play helps us realize that they’re much more capable than we think. <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/dateline/story/kids-gone-wild">When they’re given the chance</a>, even very young children show clear abilities to manage risks and figure out their own limits. We just have to open our eyes and be willing to see what is in front of us. And most importantly, get out of the way to give them a chance to experiment for themselves. The potential for learning is enormous. </p>
<h2>What’s a parent to do?</h2>
<p>Setting unnecessary limits on a child’s play or pushing them too far: both are problematic. Our role as caregivers is to give children the freedom to explore and play as they choose while supporting them in managing the real dangers that pose a serious and realistic threat to their safety. </p>
<p>What this looks like varies for different children depending on their developmental stage, competencies and personal preferences. For example, play where there is a chance of getting lost is common at all ages: A preschooler hiding in bushes feels like he’s a jungle explorer. His parents supervise while giving him the feeling of independence. </p>
<p>For older children, this kind of play can involve exploring their neighbourhood with friends. Parents can help prepare them by gradually building the skills needed to <a href="http://www.parachutecanada.org/injury-topics/topic/C14">navigate traffic safely</a>. </p>
<p>For parents struggling to strike a balance, my lab has developed <a href="https://outsideplay.ca/">OutsidePlay.ca</a>, an online tool to help parents manage their fears and develop a plan for change so their children can have more opportunities for risky play. Usually this involves learning how to get out of the way of children’s play. Change can be as simple as counting to 30 before stepping in to give children a chance to manage on their own. Parents are often amazed by what they see.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81450/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mariana Brussoni receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Lawson Foundation and salary support from the BC Children's Hospital Research Institute. </span></em></p>Did you know there has never been a safer time to be a child in Canada? Research shows that kids need freedom outdoors to explore exhilaration and fear, and discover their own limits.Mariana Brussoni, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/804872017-07-12T14:18:13Z2017-07-12T14:18:13ZNigeria won’t end kidnapping without making risks outweigh rewards<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176924/original/file-20170705-5202-1aw1yny.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigerian militants patrol the oil rich Niger delta region, the birth place of commercial kidnapping in the country.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Stringer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Kidnapping is an ancient crime dating back to 17th century Britain when infant children of rich families would be <a href="http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Kidnapping">“napped” (caught in their sleep)</a> and taken away for ransom. The first major case of kidnapping reported in the US was that of four-year old <a href="http://origins.osu.edu/article/child-kidnapping-america">Charley Brewster</a> who was lured away in Pennsylvania in 1874 by two strange men with the promise of candy and fireworks. The men later sent ransom notes to the boy’s father through the post office. His father didn’t pay, the boy was never found.</p>
<p>Kidnapping has since evolved. Today it’s a well organised and highly sophisticated crime which occurs in many parts of the world. </p>
<p>In Nigeria it has <a href="http://iiste.org/Journals/index.php/RHSS/article/viewFile/11987/12311">become quite common</a>, competing with crimes such as armed robbery, piracy and cattle rustling in frequency and in violence. It has <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/for-nigeria-criminals-kidnapping-remains-lucrative-trade/2846383.html">grown rapidly</a> over the years and is now entrenched as a dominant form of organised crime in the country. </p>
<p>The benefits of kidnapping far outweigh its costs in the country. The legal frameworks of criminal justice aren’t efficient enough to sanction crime and ensure proper deterrence. Opportunistic Nigerians rationalise that the benefits outweigh the risks. This probably explains the high incidence and apparent intractability of kidnapping in the country. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/06/arrested-kidnapper-evans-buys-170k-wristwatch/">recent arrest</a> of Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike (a.k.a Evans), who has become the poster boy for kidnapping in Nigeria, has once again raised questions about what lies behind the rise in cases in the country. And what can be done about it.</p>
<h2>History of kidnapping</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.academia.edu/32278765/AN_ANALYSIS_OF_THE_CAUSES_AND_CONSEQUENCES_OF_KIDNAPPING_IN_NIGERI">Early cases of kidnappings</a> in Nigeria were abductions mainly for ritual killing, slavery and forced marriage. There were also cases where individuals were abducted during communal wars and held as bait for strategic trade-offs. These types of kidnapping have been ongoing in various places in the country for years. </p>
<p>The rise of mercantilist kidnapping – or kidnap for ransom in Nigeria – is a recent development. It began in the 1990s with the activities of Niger Delta militants who engaged in hostage taking to press their demands for fiscal federalism, resource control and environmental rights for their communities polluted by decades of oil exploration. </p>
<p>The militants, who assumed the status of activists and agitators for their region, wanted to attract attention to the plight of the region and to compel the government and oil multinationals to clean up their environment, pay compensation for years of exploitation and bring investment and development. They targeted expatriate workers of the oil firms as well as principal government functionaries for hostage taking.</p>
<p>There was a significant drop in the incidence of kidnapping in the region following the deescalation of the Niger Delta crisis at the turn of the century. By this time though, the crime was already becoming a booming franchise in nearby South-eastern Nigeria, with Abia and Anambra States as critical flash points. These states, and others in the region, became hotbeds for kidnappers who often targeted the rich and the influential for criminal economic benefit. </p>
<p>In the years that followed, kidnapping for ransom quickly spread to different parts of the country, including states like Edo, Lagos, Ogun, and some northern states of Nigeria.</p>
<p>So why is kidnapping thriving in Nigeria? There seem to be three factors driving the crime today. </p>
<p>The first is the quest for material accumulation. The <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038038506067516">second is tough socio-economic conditions</a>. And the third is a sense of fearlessness and impunity on the part of perpetrators who feel that they will get away with the crime. </p>
<p>Kidnapping typifies a tendency towards criminal economic accumulation and social advancement which thrives in societies that have the following characteristics:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>People struggle to survive because of high levels of poverty, </p></li>
<li><p>Growing social inequality and deprivation</p></li>
<li><p>The prevalence of impunity</p></li>
<li><p>A lax and inefficient criminal code</p></li>
<li><p>Weak law enforcement procedures and capabilities, and </p></li>
<li><p>An ineffective criminal justice system. </p></li>
</ul>
<h2>The fall of a kidnap kingpin</h2>
<p>The media and law enforcement agencies in Nigeria refer to Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike (a.k.a Evans) as the <a href="http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/233708-how-arrested-kidnap-kingpin-evans-made-millions-of-dollars-from-ransom-police.html">kidnap kingpin</a>. </p>
<p>His capture has some critical implications. First, it has exposed the level of sophistication that kidnapping has reached in the country. Second, it has revealed that kidnapping syndicates, no matter how sophisticated, are not invincible. Third, it has buttressed the argument that, armed with an effective strategy, the police can control the incidence of kidnapping in the country. </p>
<p>And lastly, it’s shown that a lot needs to be done to control crime in Nigeria. </p>
<p>The arrest of Evans doesn’t signify the end of the crime. Far from it. Rather it marks the dawn of a new era in Nigeria’s anti-kidnapping crusade. This is an opportunity – which if properly exploited – can reduce the attraction of kidnapping, and help the country move towards making the crime history. </p>
<h2>The way forward</h2>
<p>Nigeria must strengthen its laws for combating crime if it truly wants to fight and reduce kidnapping. Efforts must be made to ensure greater efficiency in the operations of the law to achieve greater impact. </p>
<p>I believe, like the American Economist Bryan Douglas Caplan <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/06/the_strange_pol.html">that</a> “the kidnapping problem is not hard to solve” and that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>kidnappers kidnap because the benefits exceed costs. The obvious solution is to raise the costs by imposing harsher, surer punishments. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>To arrest the rising spate of kidnapping, Nigeria must entrench stiffer penalties. Some states have instituted the <a href="http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/06/evans-may-get-death-penalty-life-imprisonment-ambode-signs-bill-law/">death penalty</a> as a punishment for the crime. I believe that the death penalty can serve as a great deterrence. </p>
<p>But first efforts must be made to tackle socio-economic conditions that make kidnapping attractive such as poverty, unemployment, deprivation, inequality. After all, sustainable criminal deterrence is scarcely possible under the atmosphere of material insecurity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chukwuma Al Okoli receives funding from Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETfund) in Nigeria.</span></em></p>Tough socio-economic conditions, among others, make kidnapping a thriving business in Nigeria. A strong justice system along with stiff punishment for the crime are needed.Al Chukwuma Okoli, Lecturer/Resident Researcher Department of Political Science, Federal University LafiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/617172016-07-06T01:05:00Z2016-07-06T01:05:00ZWhy are people starting to believe in UFOs again?<p>The 1990s were a high-water mark for public interest in UFOs and alien abduction. Shows like “The X-Files” and Fox’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_autopsy">“alien autopsy” hoax</a> were prime-time events, while MIT <a href="http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1158.htm">even hosted an academic conference</a> on the abduction phenomenon. </p>
<p>But in the first decade of the 21st century, interest in UFOs began to wane. <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/why-have-we-stopped-seeing-ufos-in-the-skies">Fewer sightings were reported</a>, and established amateur research groups like the <a href="https://business.highbeam.com/5799/article-1G1-76881163/lack-ufos-shuts-down-british-flying-saucer-bureau">British Flying Saucer Bureau</a> disbanded.</p>
<p>In 2006 historian Ben Macintyre suggested in <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/benmacintyre/article2044933.ece">The Times</a> that the internet had “chased off” the UFOs. The web’s free-flowing, easy exchange of ideas and information had allowed UFO skeptics to prevail, and, to Macintyre, people were no longer seeing UFOs because they no longer believed in them.</p>
<p>Data seemed to back up Macintyre’s argument that, when it came to belief in UFOs, reason was winning out. <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/4483/americans-belief-psychic-paranormal-phenomena-over-last-decade.aspx">A 1990 Gallup poll</a> found that 27 percent of Americans believed “extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth at some time in the past.” That number rose to 33 percent in 2001, before dropping back to 24 percent in 2005.</p>
<p>But now “The X-Files” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/arts/television/the-x-files-season-10-finale.html">is back</a>, and Hillary Clinton <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/us/politics/hillary-clinton-aliens.html?_r=0">has even pledged</a> to disclose what the government knows about aliens if elected president. Meanwhile, <a href="http://https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/06/11/why-alien-abductions-are-down-dramatically/qQ3zdBIc2tLAf3LVms8GLP/story.html">a recent Boston Globe article</a> by Linda Rodriguez McRobbie suggests that belief in UFOs may be <em>growing</em>. </p>
<p>She points to a 2015 <a href="http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=6902">Ipsos poll</a>, which reported that 45 percent of Americans believe extraterrestrials have visited the Earth. </p>
<p>So much for reason.</p>
<p>Why does Western society continue to be fascinated with the paranormal? If science doesn’t automatically kill belief in UFOs, why do reports of UFOs and alien abductions go in and out of fashion? </p>
<p>To some extent, this is political. Even though government agents like “Men in Black” may be the stuff of folklore, powerful people and institutions can influence the level of stigma surrounding these topics.</p>
<p>Sociologists of religion have also suggested that skepticism is countered by a different societal trend, something they’ve dubbed “re-enchantment.” They argue that while science can temporarily suppress belief in mysterious forces, these beliefs will always return – that the need to believe is ingrained in the human psyche. </p>
<h2>A new mythology</h2>
<p>The narrative of triumphant reason dates back, at least, to German sociologist Max Weber’s 1918 speech <a href="http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Weber-Science-as-a-Vocation.pdf">“Science as a Vocation,”</a> in which he argued that the modern world takes for granted that everything is reducible to scientific explanations.</p>
<p>“The world,” he declared, “is disenchanted.”</p>
<p>As with many inexplicable events, UFOs were initially treated as an important topic of scientific inquiry. The public wondered what was going on; scientists studied the issue and then “demystified” the topic.</p>
<p>Modern UFOlogy – the study of UFOs – is typically dated to a sighting made by a pilot named <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/kenneth-arnold">Kenneth Arnold</a>. While flying over Mount Rainier on June 24, 1947, Arnold described nine disk-like objects that the media dubbed “flying saucers.” </p>
<p>A few weeks later the Roswell Daily Register reported that the military had recovered a <a href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/59331/roswell-ufo-crash-what-really-happened-67-years-ago">crashed flying saucer</a>. By the end of 1947, Americans had reported an additional 850 sightings. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129262/original/image-20160704-19124-1ss9o12.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The front page of the July 6, 1947, edition of the Roswell Daily Record.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/RoswellDailyRecordJuly8,1947.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the 1950s, people started reporting that they’d made contact with the inhabitants of these craft. Frequently, the encounters were erotic. </p>
<p>For example, one of the first “abductees” was a mechanic from California named Truman Bethurum. Bethurum was taken aboard a spaceship from Planet Clarion, which he said was captained by a beautiful woman named <a href="http://www.theironskeptic.com/articles/clarion/clarion.htm">Aura Rhanes</a>. (Bethurum’s wife eventually divorced him, citing his obsession with Rhanes.) In 1957, Antonio Villas-Boas of Brazil reported a similar encounter in which he was taken aboard a ship and forced to breed with a female alien. </p>
<p>Psychologists and sociologists proposed a few theories about the phenomenon. In 1957, psychoanalyst <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2013/05/carl_jungs_1957_letter_on_the_fascinating_modern_myth_of_ufos.html">Carl Jung</a> theorized that UFOs served a mythological function that helped 20th-century people adapt to the stresses of the Cold War. (For Jung, this did not preclude the possibility that UFOs might be real.)</p>
<p>Furthermore, American social mores were rapidly changing in the mid-20th century, especially around issues of race, gender and sexuality. <a href="http://www.baylorpress.com/Book/266/Monsters_in_America.html">According to historian W. Scott Poole</a>, stories of sex with aliens could have been a way of processing and talking about these changes. For example, when the Supreme Court finally declared laws banning interracial marriage unconstitutional in <a href="https://www.aclu.org/loving-v-virginia-case-over-interracial-marriage">1967</a>, the country had already been talking for years about <a href="http://www.ufocasebook.com/Hill.html">Betty and Barney Hill</a>, an interracial couple who claimed to have been probed by aliens.</p>
<p>Contactee lore also started applying “scientific ideas” as a way to repackage some of the mysterious forces associated with traditional religions. Folklore expert <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004DULQJC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#nav-subnav">Daniel Wojcik</a> has termed belief in benevolent space aliens as “techno-millennarianism.” Instead of God, some UFO believers think forms of alien technology will be what redeems the world. <a href="http://nyupress.org/books/9781479881062/">Heaven’s Gate</a> – whose members famously committed mass suicide in 1995 – was one of several religious groups awaiting the arrival of the aliens.</p>
<h2>You’re not supposed to talk about it</h2>
<p>Despite some dubious stories from contactees, the Air Force took UFO sightings seriously, organizing a series of studies, including <a href="http://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos.html">Project Blue Book</a>, which ran from 1952 to 1969.</p>
<p>In 1966, the Air Force tapped a team of University of Colorado scientists headed by physicist Edward Condon to investigate reports of UFOs. Even though the team failed to identify 30 percent of the 91 sightings it examined, its 1968 report concluded that it wouldn’t be useful to continue studying the phenomenon. Condon added that schoolteachers who allowed their students to read UFO-related books for classroom credit were doing a grave disservice to the students’ critical faculties and ability to think scientifically. </p>
<p>Basing its decision off the report, the Air Force terminated Project Blue Book, and Congress ended all funding for UFO research. </p>
<p>As religion scholar Darryl Caterine explained in his book “<a href="http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A3296C">Haunted Ground,”</a> “With civil rights riots, hippie lovefests and antiwar protests raging throughout the nation, Washington gave its official support to a rational universe.”</p>
<p>While people still believed in UFOs, expressing too much interest in the subject now came with a price. In 2010, sociologists Christopher D. Bader, F. Carson Mencken and Joseph O. Baker <a href="http://nyupress.org/books/9780814791356/">found</a> that 69 percent of Americans reported belief in at least one paranormal subject (astrology, ghosts, UFOs, etc.). </p>
<p>But their findings also suggested that the more status and social connections someone has, the less likely he or she is to report paranormal belief. Single people report more paranormal beliefs than married people, and those with low incomes report more paranormal belief than those with high incomes. It may be that people with “something to lose” have reason not to believe in the paranormal (or at least not to talk about it).</p>
<p>In 1973, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics surveyed its membership about UFOs. Several scientists reported that they had seen unidentified objects and a few even answered that UFOs are extraterrestrial or at least “real.” However, physicist Peter A. Sturrock suggested that scientists felt comfortable answering these questions <a href="http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc592.htm">only because their anonymity was guaranteed</a>.</p>
<p>Harvard psychiatrist John Mack came to symbolize the stigma of UFO research. Mack worked closely with abductees, whom he dubbed “experiencers.” While he remained cagey about whether aliens actually existed, he advocated for the experiencers and argued that their stories should be taken seriously. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">John Mack’s appearance on ‘Oprah.’</span></figcaption>
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<p>His bosses weren’t happy. In 1994, Harvard Medical School <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/04/us/harvard-investigates-a-professor-who-wrote-of-space-aliens.html">opened an investigation</a> into his research – an unprecedented action against a tenured professor. In the end, Harvard dropped the case and affirmed Mack’s academic freedom. But the message was clear: Being open-minded about aliens was bad for one’s career.</p>
<h2>Reason and re-enchantment</h2>
<p>So if Hillary Clinton is running for president, why is she talking about UFOs? </p>
<p>Part of the answer may be that the Clintons have <a href="http://https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/08/the-long-strange-history-of-john-podestas-space-alien-obsession/">ties to a network</a> of influential people who have lobbied the government to disclose the truth about UFOs. This includes the late millionaire Laurence Rockefeller (who funded John Mack’s research) and John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s campaign and a long-time disclosure advocate.</p>
<p>But there may also be a broader cultural cycle at work. Sociologists such as Christopher Partridge <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-re-enchantment-of-the-west-9780567108944/">have suggested</a> that disenchantment leads to re-enchantment. While secularization may <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/13/a-closer-look-at-americas-rapidly-growing-religious-nones/">have weakened the influence of traditional churches</a>, this doesn’t mean that people have become disenchanted skeptics. Instead, many have explored alternate spiritualities that churches had previously stigmatized as “superstitions” (everything from holistic healing to Mayan prophecies). The rise of scientific authority may have paradoxically paved the way for UFO mythology.</p>
<p>A similar change may be happening in the political sphere where the language of critical thinking has been turned against the scientific establishment. In the 1960s, Congress deferred to the Condon Report. Today, conservative politicians regularly challenge ideas like climate change, evolution and the efficacy of vaccines. These dissenters never frame their claims as “anti-science” but rather as courageous examples of free inquiry. </p>
<p>Donald Trump may have been the first candidate to discover that weird ideas <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/06/30/some-they-sound-crazy-but-trump-conspiracy-theories-resonate-with-wide-swath-public/7HFzyTzJAio6vn0QGGcTdO/story.html">are now an asset instead of a liability</a>. In a political climate where the language of reason is used to attack the authority of science, musing over the possibility of UFOs simply doesn’t carry the stigma that it used to.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61717/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph P. Laycock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whether it’s Hillary Clinton’s courting the UFO vote or Donald Trump’s lending credibility to various conspiracy theories, the “triumph of reason” seems to have gone by the wayside.Joseph P. Laycock, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Texas State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/535072016-02-01T04:28:26Z2016-02-01T04:28:26ZBanning child and forced marriages is gaining traction in Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109500/original/image-20160128-27140-bn3299.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa is taking a tough stance against the practice of abducting and forcing young girls into marriage that's still rife in some parts of the country.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Zimbabwean Constitutional Court has delivered a landmark decision outlawing all marriages <a href="http://jurist.org/paperchase/2016/01/zimbabwe-court-outlaws-child-marriage.php">below the age of 18</a>. This includes customary marriages.</p>
<p>Predictably, the move generated a great deal of comment and questions. There were even <a href="http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/b856fd004b61c907a73ae743e5868fd4/Zimbabwe%E2%80%99s-Constitutional-Court-outlaws-child-marriage-20162001">suggestions</a> that the Zimbabwean decision was</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the first of its kind in Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Though inaccurate, the claim legitimately marks the issue as a regional and continental problem. In 2015 Unicef released <a href="http://uni.cf/1JI041N">a report</a> on child marriages which highlighted the scale of the problem on the continent. </p>
<p>The reasons for the phenomenon of child marriage are complex and include the fact that in customary law, marriageable age was never reckoned as an actual number but depended on puberty, which was the indication that the girl was now physically able to bear children.</p>
<h2>The rights of girls and young women</h2>
<p>The debate about the marriage of young girls has been raging for years in South Africa. It reached a new pitch after a <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/salrc/dpapers.htm">visible spike</a> in the abduction of girls, ostensibly for the purposes of customary marriage, in certain areas of the country. </p>
<p>The perpetrators claim to be practising the custom of <a href="http://www.masimanyane.org.za/?q=content/quest-understand-ukuthwala"><em>ukuthwala</em></a>.
Typically, these abductors force themselves sexually on girls as their “brides”. In some instances the girls are as young as between nine and 14 years old.</p>
<p>In many cases this is justified on the basis that some money or other material consideration has been paid to the parents. This is a vile distortion of the custom of <a href="http://umsamo.org.za/wpp/ilobolo-its-meaning-and-process/">ilobolo</a> (dowry). Parents living in poverty are thus frequently complicit in this human rights violation.</p>
<p>In 2015 in the case of <a href="https://www.crin.org/en/library/legal-database/nvumeleni-jezile-v-state">Mvumeleni Jezile v. The State</a> the Western Cape High Court confirmed a 22-year sentence of imprisonment against the adult abductor of a 14-year-old girl under the guise of the <em>ukuthwala</em> custom.</p>
<p>The accused had been charged with several crimes arising from his actions. These included three counts of rape and one count of human trafficking, all of which the appeal tribunal upheld.</p>
<p>A further development in 2015 was the publication by the South African Law Reform Commission <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/salrc/">(SALRC)</a> of its <em>Revised Discussion Paper on Project 138: The Practice of <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/salrc/dpapers.htm">Ukuthwala</a></em>.</p>
<p>The Revised Discussion Paper contains a draft Bill, tentatively titled the <em>Prohibition of Forced Marriages and Child Marriages <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/salrc/dpapers.htm">Bill</a></em>, which is being taken around the country as part of a <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/salrc/media.htm">public consultation</a> process. </p>
<p>The Law Commission is aiming for wide public engagements, particularly with government departments, police services, traditional leaders and rural communities. It also wants to attract commentary from NGOs, other civil society organisations, as well as religious organisations, educators and ordinary citizens.</p>
<p>After these steps, the Law Commission will submit a report to the minister of justice in the hope that the cabinet will give approval for it to be passed into law.</p>
<p>The Bill specifically criminalises forced marriages as well as child marriages. Both are already prohibited by the provisions of the <em>Recognition of Customary Marriages <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/1998-120.pdf">Act</a></em>. The Act has, since 1998, required not only that customary marriages be conducted only with the consent of the partners, but also that the parties should be at least 18 years old. </p>
<p>The Bill lists the existing crimes of abduction, kidnapping, human trafficking, rape and assault as possible verdicts in such cases. It also explicitly strips protection away from these criminal actions that might be claimed under custom or culture practices.</p>
<p>This points immediately to the difficult issues in this debate.</p>
<h2>Clash of cultures</h2>
<p>For many women’s rights activists, practices such as <em>ukuthwala</em> should be banned in their entirety as being generally inimical to human rights, particularly those of women and the girl child. </p>
<p>On the other hand, cultural activists make the point that the laws of the land are already adequate to target these crimes masquerading as custom. They also argue that it seems arbitrary and discriminatory to treat crime in urban areas as such and suddenly call it “culture” when it occurs in rural areas. </p>
<p>This conflict is but the tip of the iceberg in a country deeply embroiled in increasingly <a href="https://theconversation.com/unease-reigns-as-culture-and-the-constitution-collide-in-south-africa-41795">acrimonious contestations</a> between cultural rights and western law. </p>
<p>At the heart of the disputes is something more than the so-called <a href="https://theconversation.com/unease-reigns-as-culture-and-the-constitution-collide-in-south-africa-41795">clash of cultures</a>. Some serious misgivings are beginning to emerge about the lack of depth in the national debate about the complexities, sometimes quite intractable, of recognising and accommodating difference while promoting a single nationhood.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.anc.org.za/centenary/show.php?id=8803">Unity in diversity</a> is a nice slogan, but the ideal appears horrendously difficult to realise in practice. </p>
<p>For every opponent of <em>ukuthwala</em>, there will be someone who will remind us that, in its earlier form and function, the practice could have been seen as a subversive avenue empowering youngsters to resist parental authoritarianism. In such cases, the parties were usually consenting lovers of marriageable age who had reason to defy parental expectations and where sex was not sanctioned.</p>
<p>Similarly, criminalisation by the state often ignores the complicity of family in these times of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-current-measures-underestimate-the-level-of-poverty-in-south-africa-46704">abject poverty</a>. A significant obstacle to the reporting of these perversions is usually the reluctance of the victims to send their own parents to jail, often rupturing the extended family in the process. </p>
<p>Add to this toxic mix the emotions generated by different interpretations of the <a href="http://www.gov.za/DOCUMENTS/CONSTITUTION/CONSTITUTION-REPUBLIC-SOUTH-AFRICA-1996-1">Constitution</a> by people and organisations with different agendas, and it becomes clear that the Law Commission has its work cut out in attempting a solution without exacerbating already divisive fault lines.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53507/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thandabantu Nhlapo is chair of the advisory committee on the Practice of Ukuthwala. It advises the South African Law Reform Commission.</span></em></p>The reasons for the phenomenon of child marriage are complex and include the fact that in customary law, marriageable age was never reckoned as an actual number but depended on puberty.Thandabantu Nhlapo, Emeritus Professor of Private Law, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/465722015-08-29T19:00:09Z2015-08-29T19:00:09ZDay of the disappeared: remembering Mexico’s 43 abducted students<p>International human rights legislation defines “enforced disappearance” as the action of state agents, or people or groups acting with the state’s authorisation, support, or acquiescence. The immediate perpetrators abduct their victims and take them to clandestine detention sites; the authorities refuse to give information on their whereabouts if they have it, and even protect the perpetrators. </p>
<p>In the 21st century this crime against humanity is still horrifically common, and it’s incumbent on us to grapple with the full reality of it.</p>
<p>Enforced disappearance is identified with governments such as the Nazi state, which first explicitly embraced forced kidnapping in the <a href="http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007465">Night and Fog Decree</a> (1940), as well as the military dictatorships in <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2012/11/city-disappeared-three-decades-searching-guatemalas-missing/">Guatemala</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/grandmothers-reunion-highlights-argentinas-long-road-to-recovery-from-its-dirty-war-30328">Southern Cone</a>, which carried out enforced disappearance on a massive scale from the 1960s to the 1990s. </p>
<p>In these cases, the involvement of the state could be documented and proven, but it’s not always so simple. In places such as Colombia, responsibility for enforced disappearance is lost in a complex web of government forces, paramilitary groups, and private citizens. Many enforced disappearances around the world now follow this pattern. </p>
<p>Many states have renounced responsibilities to their citizens to such an extent that they have created, or have failed to prevent, conditions that leave particular sectors of the population vulnerable to such crimes. </p>
<p>The case of the 43 students <a href="https://stories.californiasunday.com/2015-01-04/mexico-the-disappeared-en">abducted</a> in Guerrero, Mexico is a perfect example.</p>
<h2>Outrage</h2>
<p>On September 26 2014, police and three gunmen attacked a group of teacher training students from Ayotzinapa in the city of Iguala. They killed six people, wounded 20, and the police kidnapped 43. </p>
<p>Mexican civil society – which has a long history of civic mobilisation and organisation, and is highly skilled at both – responded to the mass abduction with huge protests. Mexicans <a href="https://theconversation.com/hunt-for-missing-students-goes-on-as-citizen-rage-grips-mexico-34688">demanded</a> that the truth be revealed, the students returned alive, and those responsible <a href="http://www.cipamericas.org/?s=ayotzinapa&lang=en">brought to justice</a>.</p>
<p>People and groups around the world came out in solidarity with the students, all partaking in the effort to hold the Mexican government responsible. Governments, in contrast, have shied away from making a ruckus, keen to protect their <a href="http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5336-mexico-ayotzinapa-caravan-forges-european-alliances">profitable relationships</a> with Mexico. </p>
<p>The physical violence of the crime resonates terribly in a region that faces huge, complex social and political struggles. The college is in an extremely socially deprived area, rich in natural resources such as water and gold, home to a very politically and socially organised population on the one side, and a reactionary elite of powerful land - and powerholders on the other, and ravaged by organised crime - which in turn <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/video-the-monster-in-the-mountains">involves local officials</a></p>
<p>The pedagogical ethos of this college nurtures rural cultural identities and ways of life, and views the teacher’s job as not simply as to impart knowledge, but also in terms of facilitating civic empowerment and the autonomous development of local communities. This puts the students in resistance to those who want to create a dispossessed, disempowered and malleable rural population that provides cheap labour for the exploitation of natural resources. </p>
<p>In keeping with that ethos, the college’s students have supported local community struggles against a <a href="http://www.internationalrivers.org/campaigns/la-parota-dam">hydroelectric dam project</a> and <a href="http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/4807-peoples-encounter-in-resistance-against-the-extractive-mining-model-in-mexico;%20http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/15245;%20http://www.tlachinollan.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Proyectos_Mineros.pdf">open-air mining</a> by transnational companies, as well as communitarian attempts to taking control of security where the state had abandoned it to organised crime. </p>
<p>The internal organisation of the college, were the students’ syndicate takes many important decision, pitches them against the government’s highly controversial <a href="http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/5334-a-teachers-day-protest-in-mexico-city-brings-an-army-of-police-into-the-streets">neoliberal educational reforms</a>, which greatly centralised the way education is regulated. </p>
<p>The 43 students’ abduction has sent shockwaves along all these faultlines. More shocking yet was the display of impunity and state irresponsibility throughout the government’s investigation.</p>
<h2>Smears and lies</h2>
<p>In January 2015 the Mexican authorities closed the case, presenting what they refer to as the “historical truth” and what is otherwise known as the “official story”. As they tell it, corrupt police officers handed the students over to a drug gang who killed those who had not yet died, incinerated the bodies in the pouring rain on a rubbish dump, and threw the students’ remains into a river. </p>
<p>The evidence for this consists of one tooth and a bone fragment from one of the students, which were found in the river, and of statements from the arrested individuals (among them, police officers) who are charged with crimes such as kidnapping, extortion, and drug traffic related offenses. </p>
<p>No-one has been charged with “enforced disappearance”, which could be investigated by international courts, thereby breaking through the impunity so characteristic of contemporary Mexico. </p>
<p>National and international Human Rights groups have <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/damning-report-missing-mexican-students-published-150724102545186.html">criticised almost every aspect</a> of the investigation and its outcome, and have made detailed recommendations to the Mexican government – none of which have been implemented.</p>
<p>The symbolic violence that so often accompanies enforced disappearance was on full display too. The victims are smeared in mainstream media and by officials as a social nuisance, rioters, vandals, and maladjusted teenage rebels who, because of their “deviant” behaviour, are somehow partly to blame for what was done to them. </p>
<p>The official story not only provides no credible motive for the attack on the students, it slanders their reputation by imposing an incredible one: that they disturbed a public event organised by the former corrupt mayor of Iguala, and were then abducted and killed by people engaged in organised crime. </p>
<p>This farcical version of events insults the commitment of the students, their networks and their families, and undermines a basic pillar of the law – namely that everyone must be protected from enforced disappearance.</p>
<p>The Guerrero case is but one of many similar, largely unreported cases in Mexico and across the world. Yet it show us just how enforced disappearance works in a context that has been described as the <a href="http://www.academia.edu/3728182/Poetry_against_Consolation_during_the_Apotheosis_of_Neoliberalism">apotheosis of neoliberalism</a>. To remove the conditions that permit these atrocities, we have to <a href="http://www.geografiadeldolor.com/">challenge them</a> on every possible level.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46572/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cornelia Gräbner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The awful combination of impunity, corruption and violence in which a group of Mexican students were abducted persists to this day.Cornelia Gräbner, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies and Comparative Literature, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/356882015-02-23T06:23:31Z2015-02-23T06:23:31ZTo stop child abductors, we need a better understanding of who they are<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71749/original/image-20150211-25679-19gp1e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Probably not lurking in your local forest these days.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Society tends to see men that abduct and sexually abuse children as <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2332603/April-Jones-murder-trial-Mark-Bridger-guilty.html">evil</a>, but given we feel so strongly about what they do, we know surprisingly little about them. These crimes are rare and the extreme public hatred for perpetrators means that few are willing to talk frankly about what they have done and why they did it. That means that there isn’t much evidence to go on when it comes to understanding why these crimes happen.</p>
<p>Every so often, a child is abducted and sexually abused by a man they don’t know. Sometimes that child is murdered and the offence becomes known as a mega-homicide. These crimes strike fear into the heart of every parent, particularly during the considerable media coverage that generally follows. </p>
<p>But after the initial media interest and intense debate, the case will slip away from the public conscious and the topic falls into obscurity until the next high-profile abduction. This yo-yo effect means that the public remains largely unaware of the deeper issues involved in this type of crime and the risks posed to their children.</p>
<h2>Changing profile</h2>
<p>Historically the men who abduct children have been depicted as socially isolated, sexually inadequate deviants who are unable to forge age-appropriate relationships with their peers and who exist on the fringes of society.</p>
<p>This stereotype owes much to the way perpetrators were portrayed in “stranger danger” <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8399749.stm">campaigns</a> run in the 1970s and 1980s. They were, to some extent, borne out by research undertaken in the early 1990s. But the stereotype predates the rapid development of communication technology. In fact a child abductor now is just as likely as the next man to have an outgoing personality and play an active part in their community.</p>
<p>Today, two types of non-familial child abductor present a threat to children. The first are those who use traditional methods to entice or snatch a child from a public place and the second are those who use social networks to identify and manipulate a child prior to abducting or attempting to abduct them. </p>
<p>While these two methods may appear very different, the methods used by both types of offender is in fact remarkably similar. They consider the same things when assessing the vulnerability of their victim and use similar methods to control them.</p>
<p>In this sense it appears that there are more similarities between the two types of child abductor than perhaps one would expect. This suggests that existing profiles of child abductors in the UK may be one-dimensional. They encourage a stereotype that may now be somewhat dated and misleading to potential prevention and detection strategies, rather than usefully informing them. </p>
<p>Perhaps it’s time for profiles to reflect the fact that while two abductors might take two initially different pathways in order to meet a child, their approaches often merge as the abduction unfolds.</p>
<h2>Changing our view</h2>
<p>In the UK, we have a justice system that has <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/can-we-judge-whether-convicted-sex-offender-will-reoffend-1485611">rehabilitation and redemption</a> at its core – yet we don’t seem ready or willing to extend those values to people who commit sexual crimes against children. Demonising these people surely only undercuts our ability to understand their motives and intervene to protect children.</p>
<p>Contrary to public perception, non-familial child abductors are often model members of society. At the time of their offence, they are usually either married or in a steady relationship and many have children of their own. They generally have a job and many actively contribute to their communities and society as a whole. They are not awkward social misfits that lurk outside schools or parks, nor do they spend vast amounts of time grooming potential victims.</p>
<p>Rather than fitting the increasingly widespread stereotype, they do not hang around the dark web, networking with like-minded people or view huge numbers of indecent images of children. They live their lives in plain sight and are skilled at grooming those around them – to the point where they are often the last person anyone would suspect of harbouring a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/03/paedophilia-bringing-dark-desires-light">deviant sexual interest</a> in children. </p>
<p>Crucially, most have no previous criminal convictions of any kind and are not known to the police or other authorities before abducting a child. </p>
<p>All this draws us towards an uncomfortable reality: the men that abduct and sexually abuse children are not as far removed from the non-offending male population of society as we might like them to be.</p>
<p>As unpalatable as this may seem, we should perhaps be reassured. If sexual offenders of this kind are not the incomprehensible monsters we once thought, we have a better chance of understanding their motives and stopping them – even if that demands a huge change in the way we deal with them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35688/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>In addition to being a research student at Durham University Graham Hill is the Director of KLIK Protective Services, a company created in 2011 which provides independent consultancy and specialist risk assessments relating to sexual crimes against children.</span></em></p>Society tends to see men that abduct and sexually abuse children as evil, but given we feel so strongly about what they do, we know surprisingly little about them. These crimes are rare and the extreme…Graham Hill, PhD Research Candidate, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/194022013-10-22T13:14:45Z2013-10-22T13:14:45ZExplainer: who are the Roma?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33475/original/vf55zwjv-1382440303.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Targets for abuse: Roma women outside court in Larisa, central Greece.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nikolas Giakoumidis/AP/Press Association Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Once again Roma people are in the news and, as ever, they are the focus of prejudice and vilification. The most recent story surrounds <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24605954">alleged child abduction in Greece</a>, following a raid on a Roma encampment. The narrative plays to some familiar stereotypes: allegations of criminal activities, welfare scrounging - and even that age-old <a href="http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/romani_studies/v020/20.2.matthews.pdf">fairytale</a> so popular in Victorian times of children being stolen by Gypsies. </p>
<p>As one of Europe’s largest minority groups - and its most disadvantaged, it would stand to reason that the Roma would be ideal targets for vitriol. Although this has certainly been the case in the recent past (in the UK The Sun ran a “<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4337281.stm">Stamp on the Camps</a>” campaign a number of years ago) things have been reasonably more uneventful of late – well almost.</p>
<p>The news coverage about how Roma are “criminals”, “undeserving” and a “drain on resources” are far more common in mainland Europe. France’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11020429">expulsion of Roma</a> drew international condemnation - but right-wing parties regularly target Roma for their campaigns and hate groups focus violence on members of Roma communities.</p>
<h2>Who are the Roma?</h2>
<p>Roma people have a long history of living in Europe with a presence recorded from the 13th Century. They are now widely recognised as one of the EU’s largest minority groups with an estimate of more than 10m Roma <a href="http://www.coe.int/t/congress/Sessions/Alliance/EC-roma.pdf">living in Europe</a>. The term “Roma”, first chosen at the inaugural World Romani Congress held in London in 1971, is now widely accepted across the European Union (EU) as a generic and pragmatic term to describe a diverse range of communities, tribes and clans.</p>
<p>Members of these communities can differ in many significant linguistic and cultural ways. The <a href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52010DC0133:EN:HTML%20">European Commission</a> identifies four different types of Roma communities namely:</p>
<ul>
<li>Roma communities living in disadvantaged, highly concentrated (sub)urban districts, possibly close to other ethnic minorities and disadvantaged members of the majority;</li>
<li>Roma communities living in disadvantaged parts of small cities/villages in rural regions and in segregated rural settlements isolated from majority cities/villages;</li>
<li>Mobile Roma communities with citizenship of the country or of another EU country; and</li>
<li>Mobile and sedentary Roma communities who are third-country nationals, refugees, stateless persons or asylum seekers.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Where do Roma live?</h2>
<p>Data collection about how many Roma there are across the EU is incredibly challenging. Many states prohibit the official collection of data by ethnicity and even informal estimates are difficult given the low level of engagement by services with Roma populations.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33474/original/ny3mdrzb-1382440028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33474/original/ny3mdrzb-1382440028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/33474/original/ny3mdrzb-1382440028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33474/original/ny3mdrzb-1382440028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33474/original/ny3mdrzb-1382440028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33474/original/ny3mdrzb-1382440028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33474/original/ny3mdrzb-1382440028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/33474/original/ny3mdrzb-1382440028.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1077&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Sun: Stamp on a Camp campaign.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, <a href="http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/romatravellers/Source/documents/stats.xls">the information we do have</a> (which is contested by many but at least serves as a yard stick) points to two tentative conclusions. </p>
<p>First, there are varied numbers of Roma populations present in nations across Europe. The most significant populations are to be found in the central and eastern European states of Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Slovakia, Romania, Serbia and Hungary. In these countries, Roma make up between 7-10% of the total population. In most other states Roma make up around 1% or much less of the population.</p>
<p>Second, there are significant differences between “official” population estimates and estimates provided by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) active in this field.</p>
<p>The issues faced by Roma are complex, multilayered and often entrenched. The issues read like a description of a community living in a developing nation. Poor health, low levels of literacy, joblessness, poor accommodation standards, low levels of engagement with education and discrimination are endemic within all states within which Roma feature.</p>
<h2>Roma in the UK</h2>
<p>The communities of those people classified as “Roma” in the UK are complex. Under the definition from the <a href="http://a.cs.coe.int/team20/cahrom/documents/Glossary%20Roma%20EN%20version%2018%20May%202012.pdf">Council of Europe</a> Gypsies and Travellers are included. In fact, most UK Romany Gypsies arguably have a shared heritage with more recently arriving Roma. </p>
<p>However, within the UK the term “Roma” is more synonymous with migrants typically arriving from central and eastern Europe. Roma have migrated to the UK for decades. Increases in this migration occurred post-1945, during the late 1990s and early 2000s and more recently since the accession of new European Union member states in 2004 and 2007. </p>
<p>Previous estimates put the number at between 100,000 and 300,000 but data soon to be released by researchers at the University of Salford attempts an up-to-date enumeration of migrant Roma in the UK.</p>
<p>While in the UK, Gypsies and Travellers are split between those who live in caravans and those who live in housing, it is thought migrant Roma live in housing almost without exception - which reflects the situation across Europe, where Roma have moved from caravans and nomadic way of life to often precarious and poor housing.</p>
<h2>Where do we go from here?</h2>
<p>There are efforts being exerted at a European level to resist moving back to an archaic position of blaming Roma for a country’s ills. Unfortunately, however, EU member states tend to mobilise in response to the (mostly negative) perception of Roma, without regard to the reasons why Roma occupy the position of a vulnerable minority. </p>
<p>The EC is attempting to consolidate the efforts of its member states into making tangible improvements to the lives of Roma by encouraging the development of <a href="http://europa.eu/newsroom/calendar/event/442230/progress-report-on-national-roma-integration-strategies">National Roma Integration Strategies</a>. But there is clear confusion about how best to tackle this complex and politically charged issue. </p>
<p>A more humanised approach would be a start where we are able to separate the criminality of a few from tainting the futures of an entire ethnic group. The media may be able to help with this. Certainly more than they have in the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Brown is a member of the European Academic Network on Romani Studies and a Chartered Psychologist of the British Psychological Society . He has received funding from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to undertake a study to help enumerate the population of migrant Roma in the UK. Currently co-funded by the European Union’s Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme to work on the project Roma MATRIX.</span></em></p>Once again Roma people are in the news and, as ever, they are the focus of prejudice and vilification. The most recent story surrounds alleged child abduction in Greece, following a raid on a Roma encampment…Philip Brown, Research Fellow in Housing & Urban Studies, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.