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A few days ago someone emailed me a link to an AP article about an 11-year-old girl in Texas who was gang-raped by a group of men ranging in age from teenage to in their late 20’s.

This person emailed me out of anger at the mention in the article that the child was raped because she dressed “older” and “wore make-up”. The article also mentioned that the girl’s parents didn’t look after her all that well and that because her and her attackers were of a different race, their arrests might have been racially motivated.

I completely understand his anger. There is not ever any justification for rape. Ever. Of anyone. That point is driven home even more when the victim is a child.

But what angered me as much as the article were the comments in response to it. Some thought rationally and questioned why her wearing make-up should have any bearing on being a reason for being attacked, others went way off the point.

“Looks to me that everytime a black/s are accused of any type of crime, they immediatly claim racial profiling. Rape is rape no matter what color or nationally is involved. While i'm not a racest, I see no reason not to convict these animals along with the parents for not caring for their child. (sic),” wrote one commenter.

This person claims to not be a racist and yet goes on to completely generalise about black people. Right. Dickhead.

“Cut off their junk and put it on display,” writes another.

I see comments like this all the time on articles on News24 (for instance) and other sites calling for rapist, robbers and killers to have all sorts of brutal, vengeful things done to them.

First things first, violence begets violence. This is a fact. When young men go to prison for whatever minor crime, what makes them hardened criminals is the violence they endure behind bars.

What we should be looking at is what lies at the root of this violence: what makes someone become a child rapist? Why do farm murderers brutally kill their victims instead of just making off with their loot?

Society wishes bloody revenge upon the perpetrators of these acts but never stops to think that there might be a reason for the gore. That’s what needs to be looked at and when we identify it we need to work on changing it.

I mean, vengeance, how far has that got us? Yeah, killers are still making with the killing and rapists are still doing the raping.

Secondly, in 99% of these comments, people ignore the victims of said acts. When that 11-year-old girl was raped, none of the commenters responded by asking how she was doing, wishing her well, maybe mentioning that they were feeling a sense of sadness for the suffering of this innocent little child.

They completely forgot about the victim, the most important person in this horrific situation! The person who needs the most focus of all.

It was all anger in the comments sections. It always is.

I guess that’s the problem with humans: It’s all anger. Mindless anger.