Sin By Silence

Silent No More: Taking Lincoln’s Advice

Battered women are in prison for killing their abusers even though they acted in a form of self-defense for themselves and their children after experiencing years of violence.

They have often been repeatedly raped, beaten, and threatened to be killed. If they tried to leave, their abuser said he would find them and kill them. If they called the police or told anyone what was going on, he told them he would kill them. They were trapped and out of options.

In March of 1991 a battered women’s support group for women incarcerated in the California Institution for Women for killing their abusers was formed. The group - called Convicted Women Against Abuse - began writing letters to the governor seeking clemency and several have been released from prison as a result.

Women in the Film Sin by Silence - Photo: sinbysilence.org
A new movie entitled “Sin by Silence” about the Convicted Women Against Abuse support group will be premiered March 22, 2009 at the Cleveland International Film Festival. The Internet Movie Database has this synopsis of the movie :

From behind prison walls, SIN BY SILENCE reveals the lives of extraordinary women who advocate for a future free from domestic violence. Inside the California Institution for Women, the first inmate-initiated and led group in the U.S. prison system, shatters the misconceptions of domestic violence. Against the system and against the odds, the women of Convicted Women Against Abuse have risen to expose the stigma of the cycle of domestic violence. Through their stories of terror and hope, the viewer can begin to understand the cycle of violence, the signs of an abuser, and how each and every one of us is responsible for changing the tragedy of domestic violence. Written by Olivia Klaus

The facts, according to the SinbySilence.org website, about domestic violence:

1 of every 3 women experience abuse.
Every 7 seconds a woman is battered.
Up to 4 million women are battered in their homes each year.
Battering is the #1 cause of injury to women in the U.S.
There are 3 times as many shelters for animals as there for battered women.
Every day 4 women die from domestic abuse.
Up to 50% of homeless women and children on the streets are fleeing domestic violence.
Domestic violence happens to women of all classes, cultures, races, etc. This has really hit home with the recent battering of mega singing star Rihanna by her equally mega singing star boyfriend Chris Brown. Even she isn’t immune from abuse.

According to the Sin by Silence website:

While most of the women in SIN BY SILENCE may remain in prison for the remainder of their lives, these women are committed to helping others understand the reality of domestic violence.

You can watch a trailer of the movie here. The website lists resources such as the Domestic Violence Hotline and Free Battered Women if you want more information or want to get involved.

The least we can do is to help these women raise awareness about domestic violence, learn the signs of when a woman is being battered, and help a battered woman out when possible…by extending a hand or by making a donation to a women’s shelter. We can advocate that laws be eased to decriminalize actions taken in self-defense by battered women.

Abraham Lincoln said, “To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” These women are courageously standing up and speaking out. Let’s join them.

FGM - Female Genital Mutilation

Kidnapped by women, stripped naked, and paraded through the streets. This was the plight of four women journalists on February 7 in the city of Kenema in the African country of Sierra Leone. The reason? To punish them for reporting on female genital mutilation (FGM). The United Nations reports that 94% of women and girls in Sierra Leone ages 15 - 49 have experienced FGM, which is done to control their sexual urges, make them ready for marriage, and to make them an acceptable female member of society. Women cannot even hold office in Sierra Leone unless they have been cut.

Last year the Sierra Leone government said it would ban FGM, but it has done nothing about it. Patricia Kabbah, the late wife of previous President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, sponsored (paid for) the circumcisions of 15,000 girls in order to get votes for her husband. A decade ago, the woman who later became the Minister of Social Welfare, Gender and Women’s Affairs in Sierra Leone threatened to “sew up the mouths” of those who preach against FGM.

It is hard to imagine that women such as the journalists’ kidnappers, the ex-president’s wife, and a minster of women’s affairs would all advocate the barbaric practice of cutting off the clitoris (and sometimes also the labia) of girls. The practice is often done with a crude knife, razor blade, or even a piece of broken glass and can cause severe bleeding and infection, injure girls for life, make them incontinent, make them infertile, cause complications during pregnancy and childbirth, and can even cause death.


Rugiatu Turay Fights FGM - Credit: The Independent
One brave woman in Sierra Leone who is working to stop this practice is 26-year-old Rugiatu Turay. Ms. Turay is a victim of FGM herself. The Independent online reports this about what happened to Ms. Turay when she was 12 years old:



Ms Turay was mutilated at her aunt’s house where she was staying with her three sisters and her cousin. “We didn’t even know that we were going to be initiated,” she says. “They called me to get water and then outside they just grabbed me.”

She was blindfolded, stripped, and laid on the ground. Heavy women sat on her arms, her chest, her legs. Her mouth was stuffed with a rag. Her clitoris was cut off with a crude knife. Despite profuse bleeding she was forced to walk, was beaten and had hot pepper water poured into her eyes.

“My mother had always told me never to let anyone touch me there. I was scared and I tried to fight them off. Nobody talked to me but there was all this clapping, singing, shouting,” recalls Ms Turay. “When I tried to walk on the seventh day I could not walk. All they could say is ‘Today you have become a woman’.”

For the past six years, Ms. Turay has waged a war with the 20 people on her staff against FGM through her organization Amazonian Initiative Movement. She became an activist after a cousin bled to death from FGM. She works to persuade the soweis, the women who do the cutting, to lay down their knives and stop practicing FGM. So far she has convinced 700 to over 1200 soweis (the numbers vary according to different reports) in 111 villages to stop the cutting and participating in the traditional bondo ceremony. Ms. Turay has received numerous death threats, been attacked, and has had magic used against her. Because she is still alive, the local people think she has special powers and they now leave her alone.

Katrina Manson, the journalist who wrote The Independent article, asked President Koroma of Sierra Leone, elected in 2007, his thoughts on FGM and he said “Let people in civil society deal with this issue.” That means that brave people such as Ms. Turay must fight against the 3 million new African girls being mutilated each year, adding to the 92 million already circumcized.

It is shocking that girls as young as FIVE years old are trained to be circumsisers. 35-year-old Marion Kanu, interviewed by Ms. Manson, gave her reasons for practicing it: “I didn’t like it when it happened to me and I worry about the pain of the girl, but I do it because they pay me, and because we met our ancestors doing it.” The woman’s two children also are circumcisers. In this poor country it is a way to make a living. The village elders have an incentive to keep the practice going also; they receive the equivalent of $25 for every circumcision rite.

Sierra Leone ranked last in the UN’s Human Development Index in 2007 and 2008. Life expectancy there is the lowest of any country in the world: 42 years old. Only 25% of women are literate; 37% of the entire population is literate. The country has the highest rate in the world of mothers dying during childbirth: 1,800 women for every 100,000 live births “…largely due to lack of human resources and corruption in the healthcare sector” according to the UN. 25% of children die before the age of five. Annual income is about $240.

This is a country where people are uneducated, live in extreme poverty, and are steeped in traditions and in corruption …all making it extremely difficult to stamp out female genital mutilation. According to the World Health Organization, the best way to begin to do this is literacy, education, and alternative forms of income for the soweis.

International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation is sponsored by UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) each February 6. If you want to help, you might consider going to Unicef.org and making a donation.

Additional information can be found at the Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project.

Guard Troops Sent to Moorhead, Minn

Fargo begins another day preparing for flood
Published - Mar 28 2009 09:20AM EST

By PATRICK CONDON and DAN SEWELL - Associated Press Writers

Floating ice and water is seen from the overflow of the Red River in Moorhead, Minn. The river had risen to 40.32 feet early Friday, more than 22 feet above flood stage and inches more than the previous high water mark of 40.1 feet set April 7, 1897.
Officials in Fargo are adding National Guard troops and intensifying their response to the rising flood on the Red River.

Officials say they are increasing the level of guard troops from 1,700 troops to 1,850 and asking residents to keep an eye on dikes for possible breaches.

They are also bringing in 300 large bags that hold a ton of sand and could be dropped into breaks in the levees.

No major levee breaches or other issues were reported during the night.

The National Weather Service predicted the crest at near 42 feet sometime Sunday, but said it was still possible the river could rise to 43 feet. That's as high as the levees go and is nearly 3 feet higher than the record of 40.1 feet set in 1897.

Watch & Pray Flooding in Fargo

River reaches record high in Fargo, region braces
Published - Mar 27 2009 12:24PM EST

By NATE JENKINS and DAVE KOLPACK - Associated Press Writers

AP Photo/Minneapolis Star Tribune, Brian Peterson)

Floating ice and water is seen from the overflow of the Red River in Moorhead, Minn. The river had risen to 40.32 feet early Friday, more than 22 feet above flood stage and inches more than the previous high water mark of 40.1 feet set April 7, 1897.
The rising Red River broke a 112-year record early Friday and breached one of the dikes fortifying the city, but the mayor pledged to "go down swinging" as he called for more evacuations and additional National Guard troops to prevent a devastating flood.

The river swelled to 40.32 feet _ more than 22 feet above flood stage and inches more than the previous high water mark of 40.1 feet set in 1897. The National Weather Service said it could crest as high as 43 feet on Saturday. Fargo's main dike protects the city at the 43-foot level.

Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker says the city has no plans to build the dike any higher. He says officials believe the Red River will crest at between 41.5 and 42 feet, and there wasn't time to raise the dike again.

"We're not going to proceed to take it to 44. Is that a gamble? We don't think so," Walaker said.

Walaker says they are adding 800 members of the guard from North Dakota and South Dakota to patrol dikes for breaches, on top of the 900 troops already in place. They toiled in harsh conditions, with scattered flurries and wind chills below zero for most of the morning.

But officials said the cold weather actually helped. The river was rising more slowly because the freezing temperatures prevented snow from melting.

Officials also asked people to stay off roads to keep streets clear for sandbag trucks and avoid traffic jams that have been plaguing the area. Some of the roads were covered with snow.

Authorities in Fargo and across the river in Moorhead, Minn., expanded evacuations Friday across several blocks of their cities. Officials said 400 people had been evacuated in Fargo, plus more than 100 inmates were taken from the county jail to other lockups in the region. Sen. Byron Dorgan also said that Northwest Airlines was sending two jetliners to move patients from hospitals to safer areas.

"In this is trying and difficult situation it's critical that Minnesotans pull together and act on advice from emergency responders to ensure everyone's personal safety," Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said in a statement to Moorhead residents. "Now is not the time to sit and wait for the worst, it's time to act to ensure a better outcome."

In one flood-threatened neighborhood of Fargo, residents placed pumps in their soggy yards in hopes of keeping water out of their homes.

"Last time we said we'd never go through this mess again. But here we are," Karen Whieland said as she toiled in her soaked front yard, the hum of levee-making backhoes nearby.

Tina Kraft took everything of value or importance in her basement and first floor and moved it upstairs.

"We've prepared for it as best we can. We really just have to be ready for our house to be flooded."

Just after 2 a.m. Friday, residents in one neighborhood were roused from sleep and ordered to evacuate after authorities found a leak in a dike. The leak left the integrity of the dike in question, police Capt. Tod Dahle said, but crews worked hard to repair it.

"We want to go down swinging if we go down," Walaker said.

The American Red Cross planned to send another 150 people to the North Dakota flood zone to operate emergency shelters. They will join the 85 such volunteers already working in Grand Forks, Bismarck, Fargo and Moorhead, Minn.

Spokeswoman Courtney Johnson said Friday it's not necessarily a sign that the Red Cross is expecting a disaster. "No one living has ever seen something like this," she said. "We preach preparedness. We can't not be prepared."

Residents in this city of 92,000 had been scrambling in subfreezing temperatures to pile sandbags along the river and spent much of Thursday preparing for a crest of 41 feet, only to have forecasters late in the day add up to 2 feet to their estimate.

The National Weather Service said in its follow-up statement that the Red was expected to crest between 41 and 42 feet by Saturday, but could reach 43 feet. It said water levels could remain high for three days to a week.

The first estimate sparked urgency among thousands of volunteers in Fargo. The second shook their spirits.

"I've lived here 40 years and over a 30-minute span I've reached a point where I'm preparing to evacuate and expect never to sleep in my house again," said Tim Corwin, 55, whose south Fargo home was sheltered by sandbags to 43 feet.

Several unusual factors sent the Red River surging to historic heights this year. The winter was unusually cold and snowy, which left a large snowpack sitting on top of frozen ground that couldn't absorb it. Then a warm snap and heavy rain quickly melted the snow and sent it into toward the river.

And it all happened to a river that flows north. When most rivers in the United States melt, they send the extra water south toward warmer, open water. When the Red breaks up, it sends hunks of ice north into colder water that is often still frozen.

Officials ordered the evacuation of another Fargo neighborhood and a nursing home late Thursday after authorities found cracks in an earthen levee. Residents were not in immediate danger, and water wasn't flowing over the levee, Walaker said.

Still, officers went door to door to the roughly 40 homes in the River Vili neighborhood and were evacuating Riverview Estates nursing home. Authorities also asked the 1,000 residents who live between the main dikes and the backup dikes in various parts of the city to leave within 24 hours. That evacuation could become mandatory.

In rural areas south of Fargo, crews were rescuing stranded residents. Pat Connor of the Cass County sheriff's department said 70 people had been rescued by Thursday evening, and he expected that number to grow.

The federal government announced a disaster declaration Thursday for seven Minnesota counties. The entire state of North Dakota had received a disaster designation earlier in the week.

On the Canadian side of the northern-flowing Red River, ice-clogged culverts, ice jams and the rising river threatened Manitoba residents. Several homes were evacuated north of Winnipeg and several dozen houses were flooded.

___

Associated Press writers Patrick Condon in Fargo and Elizabeth Dunbar in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

Red River at Fargo water levels: http://sn.im/enwgc

Abortion Chain Owner Dies in Plane Cross at Memoriaal Grave of the Unborn

ARTICLE:
Feldkamp Family, Owner of the Nation's Largest Abortion Chain, Dies in Montana Plane Crash
Deacon for Life ^ | March 24, 2009
Posted on March 25, 2009 8:46:00 AM EDT by NYer

Family of Irving 'Bud' Feldkamp, Owner of the Nation's Largest Privately Owned Abortion Chain, Dies in Montana Plane Crash

MEDIA ADVISORY, Mar. 24 /Christian Newswire/ -- Some of you may have seen the major news story of the private plane that crashed into a Montana cemetery, killing 7 children and 7 adults.

But what the news sources fail to mention is that the Catholic Holy Cross Cemetery owned by Resurrection Cemetery Association in Butte - contains a memorial for local residents to pray the rosary, at the 'Tomb of the Unborn'. This memorial, located a short distance west of the church, was erected as a dedication to all babies who have died because of abortion.

What else is the mainstream news not telling you? The family who died in the crash near the location of the abortion victim's memorial, is the family of Irving 'Bud' Feldkamp, owner of the largest for-profit abortion chain in the nation.

Family Planning Associates was purchased four years ago by Irving Moore "Bud" Feldkamp III, owner of Allcare and Hospitality Dental Associates and CEO of Glen Helen Raceway Park in San Bernardino. The 17 California Family Planning clinics perform more abortions in the state than any other abortion provider - Planned Parenthood included - and they perform abortions through the first five months of pregnancy.

Although Feldkamp is not an abortionist, he reaps profits of blood money from the tens of thousands of babies that are killed through abortions performed every year at the clinics he owns. His business in the abortion industry was what enabled him to afford the private plane that was carrying his family to their week- long vacation at The Yellowstone Club, a millionaires- only ski resort.

The plane went down on Sunday, killing two of Feldkamp's daughters, two sons-in-law and five grandchildren along with the pilot and four family friends. The plane, a single-engine turboprop flown by Bud Summerfield of Highland, crashed into the Catholic cemetery and burst into flames, only 500 ft. from its landing destination. All aboard were killed.

The cause of the crash is a mystery. The pilot, who was a former military flier who logged over 2,000 miles, gave no indication to air traffic controllers that the aircraft was experiencing difficulty when he asked to divert to an airport in Butte. Witnesses report that the plane suddenly nosedived toward the ground with no apparent signs of a struggle. There was neither a cockpit voice recorder nor a flight data recorder onboard, and no radar clues into the planes final moments because the Butte airport is not equipped with a radar facility. Some speculate that the crash was due to ice on the wings, but this particular plane model has been tested for icy weather and experts have stated that ice being the cause is unlikely.

In my time working for Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, I helped organize and conduct a weekly campaign where youth activists stood outside of Feldkamp's mini-mansion in Redlands holding fetal development signs and raising community awareness regarding Feldkamp's dealings in child murder for profit. Every Thursday afternoon we called upon Bud and his wife Pam to repent, seek God's blessing and separate themselves from the practice of child killing.

We warned him, for his children's sake, to wash his hands of the innocent blood he assisted in spilling because, as Scripture warns, if "you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you". (Ezekiel 35:6)

A news source states that Bud Feldkamp visited the site of the crash with his wife and their two surviving children on Monday. As they stood near the twisted and charred debris talking with investigators, light snow fell on the tarps that covered the remains of their children.

I don't want to turn this tragic event into some creepy spiritual 'I told you so' moment, but I think of the time spent outside of Feldkamp's - Pam Feldkamp laughing at the fetal development signs, Bud Feldkamp trying not to make eye contact as he got into his car with a small child in tow - and I think of the haunting words, 'Think of your children.' I wonder if those words were haunting Feldkamp as well as he stood in the snow among the remains of loved ones, just feet from the 'Tomb of the Unborn'?

I only hope and pray that in the face of this tragedy, Feldkamp recognizes his need for repentance and reformation. I pray that God will use this unfortunate catastrophe to soften the hearts of Bud and Pam and that they will draw close to the Lord and wash their hands of the blood of thousands of innocent children, each as precious and irreplaceable as their own.

"I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then." (Deut. 30:19)

Gingi Edmonds is a freelance pro-life activist, writer and photographer based out of Hanford, California. Gingi writes a bi-monthly ProLife Opinion Column and is available for pro-life presentations and speaking engagements. Visit www.gingiedmonds.com for more information.