Tackle barbaric behaviour: teach children to ‘do unto others’

I HAVE to agree with Wim van der Walt (Cape Times, July7). Homo sapiens is a lost cause. When I look at this world and what we have done to it, I despair, as do many others.

Apart from the obvious, such as killing of animals and plastic in our oceans, I am talking about the rape culture around the world.

In the Cape times of Friday, there was a pathetic photograph of a Rohinga girl with her young son next to her but she was obviously depressed and not interested in him, and one can understand why.

She had been raped by six soldiers from Myanmar’s security forces and her 2-year-old son had been strangled to death. How barbaric is that?

There are many rape survivors, but the men folk in her village have walked away from marrying them when they learnt these girls had been raped. What sort of men are these? No sympathy, no empathy for these young girls who their own gender had violated. These poor young girls have a life that is hell on Earth. Can any man ever think about what it is like to be raped and then to carry this baby for nine months? To give birth on the dirt floor of a shelter and then to crown it all, be ostracised by men? It is sickening.

We also have in this country a very high rate of child abuse and women abuse. Where have we gone so wrong? I have to ask. A stepfather keeps his stepdaughter prisoner and over a period of five years rapes this little girl 900 times.

Did no one at her school or in the community put two and two together? Can one imagine this poor little girl’s life in a shack with this abusive man? I hope the book is thrown at him.

Does anyone remember the campaign done by Charlize Theron, which asked “Where are the real men out there”? I have been saying for years we need classes in all the schools to teach young men and women the meaning of life and how one should behave.

One doesn’t need to be religious to follow one commandment. Do unto others… It is so simple, but if you do not like something done to you, then don’t do it to someone else.

But I don’t hold my breath in this world today. Barbie Sandler Claremont