Too Many Wives = Too Many Divorces

Hard to follow convoluted reports like this. Maybe it's just me. So a 12-year-old girl goes to visit her real mother - who her father had divorced sometime ago - and then the father goes to pick the little girl up and takes her over to her stepmother's house - who he had also divorced [if I'm reading the story correctly] - where the stepmother shaves off all of the girl's hair? What? Why? The stepmother says she had lice. The little girl takes her hair to her father and it is proven there is no lice. Ummm. Question: Why the heck was the little girl at the stepmother's house anyway, if the father had already divorced her some ten years ago? Shouldn't he be on to wife number three or eleven by now? Makes absolutely no sense. Maybe someone else can figure it out. Regardless. The stepmother has been sentenced to three months in jail, will be given 70 lashes [big freakin' deal] and will have to pay 3,000 riyals [$804.28] to her ex-husband. Huh? Shouldn't the little 12-year-old girl be getting something out of this, besides a bald head? A find example of how a father takes care of his little girl in The Sandbox. Yes, indeed! [For the unaware - father's get custody of children, here, not the mother, unless the child is very, very young.]

And another fine example of fatherhood, right here. The father of a little six-year-old girl has refused to take charge of her "following a decision by doctors that she should leave the mental hospital to which she has been interned and continue to receive treatment as an outpatient." How in the world does a little six-year-old girl end up requiring treatment from a "mental hospital?" What the heck did YOU do to her??? Am I the ONLY one who finds that beyond strange? Probably. The child, Maryam, cannot go home with her father because he "claims that his living conditions are not suitable for his daughter's care, saying that his house has no doors and that she could easily escape." Are you living in a tent? Supposedly Maryam was "a child enjoying perfect health until she was attacked by stray dogs while playing in front of her house. Now she is said ot have irrational fears and has become aggressive and can be dangerous to other children. Her father said he had to chain her up to stop her running away." Nope. Calling B.S. on this. Something is all terribly wrong with this story. I report. You decide. Oh, and no mention of the mother.

An African woman has been arrested for performing surgical repairs without the benefit of a valid medical license with which to do so. Perhaps if women were not compelled to be "virginal" at the time of their marriages then this woman's services would not have necessitated such demand and she never would have been able to charge such a high price! I'd be willing to speculate that this happens far more frequently than it is reported.

"In a new twist to the controversy surrounding child marriage in the Kingdom, eyebrows have been raised... at the marriage of a 15-year-old schoolboy to an older cousin." Hello? This is hardly controversy. An 8-year-old little girl being forced by her deadbeat father to marry a man that is 60 years old IS controversy. No matter. Calling B.S. on this, too. Boys' fathers don't typically arrange the marriage contracts; girls' fathers do. The teenage boy says, "My father forced me to marry my cousin two months ago. She's 16, a year older than me [why, she's practically an old maid, for goodness sake!]. Her father and mine agreed to a dowry of SR50,000, which will be paid in installments." Well good for you. 15, 16... Never too young, I guess. Time to start a family. The boy's father says, "I've arranged for my son and his wife a suitable home to live in... Marriage at this age is normal in our tribe and in these parts, the people here have been doing it for years and it hasn't caused any problems." Can you say genetically caused birth defects? What could possibly go wrong.