Institutions who torture children

[sweeteviljesus]

I was looking at a story on CNN about a young Iraqi boy who was kidnapped by Al Qaeda militants in Fallujah in order to intimidate his policeman father. The child was brutally tortured and held for two years. Now I can easily believe that there are individuals out there who can do this kind of thing and even enjoy it, but I find it harder to believe that there are those who would perpetrate this kind of thing in the name of a cause. I don’t know a lot about AQI, but I understand that it is composed of mostly independent cells, any one of which might be composed of the sort of people who could perpetrate this kind of thing. However, this phenomenon is not unique to AQI. There are records of organizations all over the world who are willing to do this sort of thing in the name of Jesus, God, containing communism, etc. I just have to wonder how they are able to maintain in their ranks the type of scumbag who could subsist on the misery of children. Maybe I can’t understand it because I have children.

Rob

[Walton_Firm]

American interrogators in Abu Ghraib reportedly used the same tactic.

But, Provance said, interrogators grew frustrated when the boy’s father, Zabar, wouldn’t talk, despite a 14-hour interrogation. So they stripped Zabar’s son naked and doused him with mud and water. They put him in the open back of a truck and drove around in the frigid January night air until the boy began to freeze. Zabar was then made to look at his suffering son.

“During the interrogation, they could not get him to talk,” Provance recalled. “They said, ‘OK, we are going to let you see your son.’ They allow him to see his son in this shivering, freezing, naked state,” Provance said. “That just totally broke his heart and that is when he said, ‘I’ll tell you what you want to know.’”

U.S. accused of kidnappings in Iraq

[Chessic_Sense]

Hah! That’s not even close to the terrible things I read about AQI doing on a daily basis. It’s much worse than that, I assure you.

[Troy_McClure_SF]

@Chessic_Sense

Hah!

Hah?

[sweeteviljesus]

The point is not who is worse, the point is how could anyone do this to children? There are those who get off on this sort of thing, but mostly they are acting privately. But how can anyone get so worked up about their cause that they will grab a little kid and torture the shit out of him?

[Gala_Matrix_Fire]

Then there’s the 12-year-old who was detained and abused at Guantanamo Bayfor seven years.

Jawad’s age is uncertain because he was born in a refugee camp in Pakistan. He says he was about 12 years old when he was apprehended in 2002, but the Pentagon says he was 17. The U.S. Justice Department agreed this month not to use any of Jawad’s statements given during interrogations because of torture allegations.
Jawad’s attorney David Frakt says Thursday’s ruling will likely set a powerful precedent for other Guantanamo detainees who say they were forced into giving confessions.
“The conclusion of the Justice Department that all the statements made at Bagram, at Guantanamo, were coerced and involuntary and inadmissible in a court has tremendous implications for other detainees who were subjected to similar conditions and similarly abusive interrogation techniques,” he said.

[sweeteviljesus]

That one is a little different simply because the individual in question was alleged to have killed some people. In the other cases mentioned the victim was an innocent third party. I am not saying it’s right, I am just saying it is more believable. That is, I can understand how someone might seek revenge against someone who he thinks killed his friends by hurting that someone, but I can’t see how anyone could hurt that someone’s little kids.

[Terraplane]

Your logic is loathsome.

[Slithy_Tove]

My WAG: humans are incredibly intuitive and analytical, both qualities resulting in amazing art and science; but terrible, terrible at administration. As a result, we treat each other like weeds

[bordelond]

@Slithy_Tove

My WAG: humans are incredibly intuitive and analytical, both qualities resulting in amazing art and science; but terrible, terrible at administration. As a result, we treat each other like weeds

Apologies for not having read your link before responding, as the following point may be covered in there, but I did want to add something.

Humans have an astounding ability to compartmentalize. If this innate compartmentalization runs amok in a compromised or damaged mind, “torturing this kid” becomes a very different thing from “torturing children”. Finer self-soothing determinations can be made as the situation warrants, e.g. “Hey – their 12-year olds pick up rifles and pick off my buddies. It’s not like I’m torturing a baby!”

[madmonk28]

I think once there is a cause to get behind, people are capable of amazing brutality. That includes of course some of the atrocities committed by American forces mentioned in Walton’s link, as well as those committed by AQ in Iraq. One thing they have in common is that the people doing it are convinced that they are on the right side.

[Neidhart]

I thought this was going to be about those Irish orphanages.

[Markxxx]

First of all I’d like to see actual proof of these. Too often it’s pure propoganda. I’m certainly not saying it doesn’t exist, but you have to be careful with what you believe.

Children are very easily manipulated and it would be much easier to reward them or simply to withold things than abuse them.

This isn’t to say it doesn’t happen. Just go to The Crime Library and look around. There are lots of very violent people who torchure kids. There’s one woman who actually carved the word SLUT into a girl so it’d scar up to that word and she’d never be able to get married or have a boyfriend.

There are tons of examples of individuals being cruel to kids, so it definately exists but I am always skeptical of these “organized” things.

Whenever I read these stories about things like this, I am more apt to believe it’s the organization using a sick individual for scare tactics.

It’s like those flicks from the 30s, where they have the deranged mental patient the bad buy keeps living in his attic, to do his dirty work so his hands will be “clean” to the cops

[Der_Trihs]

@Markxxx

Children are very easily manipulated and it would be much easier to reward them or simply to withold things than abuse them.

But the point is typically either to use the child against the parents, or sheer cruelty. Or both. Raping children in front of their parents to get them to cooperate is one of the things we’ve been accused of in Iraq, and I see no reason to think it unlikely. We’ve recommended rape as a terror tactic for decades to our pet dictators.

@Markxxx

There are tons of examples of individuals being cruel to kids, so it definately exists but I am always skeptical of these “organized” things.

There’s no reason to be. It’s a terror tactic, and that’s hardly all that rare. Nor is there any reason to think that it’s something we’d be too moral to do.

[sweeteviljesus]

@Markxxx

First of all I’d like to see actual proof of these. Too often it’s pure propoganda. I’m certainly not saying it doesn’t exist, but you have to be careful with what you believe.

That thought did occur to me w.r.t. the case I mentioned. But as Der Trihs points out, these things have been known to happen and they aren’t limited to AQI. It is just the total lack of empathy that I felt compelled to comment on.