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A shocking crime in Frankfort

By Scott Tibbs, July 18, 2013

The tale of a gang rape in Frankfort, Indiana is tragic for many reasons, but the thing that saddens me the most is that the crime could have been prevented had the victim's father loved her enough to be a father. The portion of the Indianapolis Star's article that stuck out to me was this:

The father said he tried to stop her, but she refused. He said he didn't want to call the police because she might be arrested. And he didn't want to risk his own arrest by detaining her.

The victim, a high school senior, was stoned on prescription medicine from the same family as the "date rape" drug Rohypnol when she left the house. In that state, she was vulnerable to hurting herself or being victimized, which a medical examination determined is exactly what happened.

This is where a father needs to love his daughter enough to say "no." If that means turning her over to the civil magistrate, then that is what needs to be done. It would have been far better for her to be arrested (and likely taken to the hospital) than for her to be gang raped. If her father restrained her, given her condition, would he really have been arrested? She was a high school student. I doubt a reasonable police officer would have arrested him.

There is a reason that God commands us to discipline our children. He knows that children are born into sin and need to be taught and corrected by their fathers and mothers. Sometimes, the only loving thing to do is to say "no." The loving thing for this girl's father to do would have been to physically stop her from leaving in an impaired state, even if he needed to turn her over to the civil magistrate to do it. The saddest thing about this story is that a horrific crime would never have happen if only a father had loved his daughter.