Well isn’t this just a great little world we live in.
Pedophiles and rapists abound. And they are in power.
In Texas, an ex-DA shot himself because he was about to be arrested for soliciting a minor.
And I’m sure we all remember Mark Foley.
Now, Daniel Ortega returns. No, my friends, it isn’t the title of a horror movie, although it certainly could be. Daniel Ortega is once again President of Nicaragua. The last time he was president, his step-daughter, Zoilamerica Narvaez, accused him publicly of sexually abusing her for 11 years. Daniel Ortega never denied it.
Zoilamérica Ortega stood up in public and broke her silence about Daniel Ortega. She went public with the fact that Ortega sexually abused his stepdaughter for 11 years, starting when she was 11. Ortega never denied the charges, but Zoilamérica’s mother said her daughter was lying.
Zoilamérica continued to fight to have her father taken to court and prosecuted, despite threats from loyal followers of Ortega. She never backed down. She never wavered.
The United States Government supported Ortega’s victory in Nicaraugua.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House said on Tuesday that U.S. support for Nicaragua’s government under newly elected former Marxist guerrilla leader Daniel Ortega would hinge on its commitment to democracy.
“The United States is committed to the Nicaraguan people,” said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, after Ortega bounced back to power with a presidential election victory. “We will work with their leaders based on their commitment to and actions in support of Nicaragua’s democratic future.”
Since Ortega has been out of office, programs have been set up in Nicaragua to educate men, women and children about the affects of domestic and sexual violence. These programs have been key in teaching prevention, and they have been successful. Putting Ortega back in office puts these programs in danger. He is obviously not against domestic and sexual violence.
The US Government supports Nicaragua’s commitment to democracy. Apparently at any cost. So, if the people of Germany wanted to vote Hitler back into power, would we support Germany’s commitment to democracy? What if the Iraqi people wanted to vote Hussein back into office? I’m sure we wouldn’t support that.
This wasn’t one little mistake that can be swept under the rug. It was an 11 year tyranny against his daughter. But it’s OK. Democracy was at work.
What’s next? Mark Foley for president? Better yet, lets all write in my father’s name in 2008!!
Osama bin Sperm Donor for president!
November 27, 2006 at 3:28 am
Dear Lisa,
i know that you speak from anger, quite rightly, in this comment and not altogether misplaced. I, too, believe that Daniel Ortega is guilty of molesting and raping his stepdaughter, Zoilamerica Narvaez. It angers me that this man (like so many other men) has the power to deny a public hearing of his violence, of being able to continuously deny the anguish and trauma caused to Zoilamerica. However, the world is more complicated than just “Daniel Ortega raped his stepdaughter and therefore he is like Hitler.”
Reading Zoilamerica’s story carefullly, you will find that she did not make a public statement earlier partly because she was aware of his importance as a symbol of rebellion, of resistance to U.S. empire. The United States has NEVER supported Daniel Ortega in the past because Daniel and the FSLN have always opposed U.S. intervention in Nicaragua and to U.S. Support for the line of dictators that the FSLN (Sandinista Front for National Liberation) put an end to in 1979. So Zoilamerica, for a time, let herself be silent about her stepfather’s abuse because she felt that she needed to be protect the symbol that is her stepfather and not ruin her stepfather’s political party’s chances of winning.
i spent several months in Nicaragua in 2002. The news of Zoilamerica’s public accusations and lawsuit had broken about half a year ago. i got to hear different interpretations of this story. One is that, Daniel Ortega had been in jail as a political prisoner for many years under the Somoza dictatorship before being released and getting picked as the public figurehead of the FSLN leadership. Some people speculate that he likely had gotten raped and otherwise tortured while he was in jail and that was why he left jail an introspective, usually quiet person – a weakened person who took out his frustrations, his demons on a weaker person. This does not in any way excuse his behavior toward his stepdaughter, but it adds an extra dimension to this man, who is so easily demonized.
What I am asking you to do is to consider that there are many facets to people, and to politics. I believe that, in the heart of every human being there is great capacity to do wrong as well as to do good, to be cruel as well as to be compassionate.
Perhaps you can get a deeper sense of what I mean by reading an op-ed piece that I came across the other day. It was published in the October 15, 2006 in the Los Angeles Times. In it, Bettina Aptheker writes about her process of dealing with the resurfaced memory of her father molesting her starting from a very young age. Bettina Aptheker is today a professor of feminist studies and history at UC Santa Cruz. Her recent memoir is titled “Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel.” Reading this article, i was motivated to go an internet search on Zoilamerica (because i had heard about Daniel Ortega being elected) and to find your website.
November 27, 2006 at 8:23 am
Are you saying I should forget what he did to his own step daughter because he is the ONLY person in Nicaragua who can lead that country?
Am I supposed to say “oh, poor baby” because he was raped in prison? I have pretty strong opinions about that, too. Abuse is a choice, not a gene.(http://sadlynormal.wordpress.com/2006/10/03/abuse-is-a-choice-not-a-gene/)
I find it hard to believe that no other person would be able to lead the country as “effectively” as Ortega.
It’s a shame when anyone can look beyond the rape and torture of any woman or child, for any reason, but especially when the monster is a political icon. What this says to anybody paying attention is that those lives that were ruined meant nothing. They were sacrificial lambs and its ok.
In the last few years, Nicaragua has made great strides in lowering the domestic and sexual violence occurences.
With Ortega in office, it is quite possible those programs are at risk, not only with funding, but just the simple fact that their president has done it, so it must be ok.
I don’t care about the politics of any country, to be quite honest with you. But I do care about who we are chosing as our world leaders. I care about the humanity, the people who these leaders are supposed to be taking care of and protecting.
There are plenty of people who arent abusers, rapists, child molesters… who would make fine leaders.
Ortega isnt one of them.
But, Democracy was at work. And the US is all about democracy.
November 30, 2006 at 6:58 am
No, Lisa. It doesn’t seem to me that you are reading my post carefully. I’m not asking you to be sympathetic to Daniel Ortega or to support his presidency. For the record, I see him as a terrible leader who should not even have been put up as the presidential candidate for his political party. But that is not the point I was or am trying to make.
What I am asking you to do is to consider (A) that making monsters out of abusers is not helpful in solving the long term problem since it causes people to focus on “the people out there” – easily used in the service of perpetuating racist , nativist, homophobic, and transphobic violence (the history of white people’s justification for lynching black men, for example) – instead of on the friends, acquaintances, relatives, parents who are the most common perpetrators of sexual violence; (B) it may be more helpful to point out the Behavior of people who do wrong things instead of casting stones at the image of the person (I use “image” because whenever we reduce somebody to a concept or idea we are also denying that person’s complexity and humanity); (C) while commiting violence IS a choice, it is also often made irrationally because people are not taught Tools for how to deal with the physcial and psychological violence done to them; and (D) prisons, due to overcrowding, privatization, and an emphasis on punishment over rehabilitaton, have become institutions that often hurt people and teach them how to do more violence than aid in their recovery – advocating for longer prison terms without fundamentally changing how prisons operate will generally result in even MORE sexual and other forms of violence done to people within and outside of prison in the long term.
Report from Human Rights Watch http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report2.html#_1_12
The Stanford Prison Experiment
http://www.prisonexp.org/
Let me emphasize that I do not think that there are any simple answers. I am hoping, though, that we all develop greater abilities to ask more questions so that we can find and address the Root causes of sexual abuse and other forms of violence as I believe that All forms of violence of linked.
November 30, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Dear Sidewalk Sotol,
I feel your post inadvertently minimized Ortega’s crimes. When you restate sexual abuse as “behavior” you are minimizing it. Do you characterize murder as “behavior”? I am not about to minimize child sexual abuse by calling it “inappropriate behavior.” Inappropriate behavior is putting your feet on the coffee table, or interrupting people. You also didn’t clearly condemn sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is always wrong.
I do not buy into the argument about everyone having the capacity to commit great evil and great good. I often hear this from my fellow lefties and I find it naive. For instance I thought about killing my abuser. I stood over him when he slept and thought about plunging a butcher knife into him. When he had angina attacks, I gave him his pills. I thought about withholding them. However, I do not have the capacity for killing. It just isn’t there. Sorry. I don’t blame people who kill their abusers–it’s self defense. I just don’t have it in me.
I’ve also never had the urge to molest. Again, it just isn’t there. I think I’d commit suicide if I even felt the urge. In over 20 yrs. of working in the field of abuse prevention, I’ve only met one abuser who truly wanted to stop. He was in despair, because there is no effective treatment for pedophilia at this time. All he could do was avoid children and try not to act on his urges. He was seriously contemplating suicide. I don’t blame him.
We don’t know why some people who are molested become molesters, while others don’t. It may be a moral choice, or it may be brain chemistry, or perhaps a combination of the two. Violentization has also been suggested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violentization I discount the Stanford Prison Experiment due to the extremely poor methodology and the fact that Stanford’s psych dept. is funded by the CIA.
I also hear my fellow lefties say we shouldn’t “demonize” abusers. This would be funny if it wasn’t so wrong. Abuser commit horrendous crimes against children. The decent, common people of America, waitresses and truck drivers, etc., call them things I won’t repeat. According to my son, the Japanese word for child molester ends in the syllable for demon. Abusers demonize themselves by their own acts. We the survivors are not demonizing them.
Ortega was too old to become a pedophile or ephebophile from his prison experience, in my opinion. Also, his anti choice law shows a hatred of women which undoubtedly predates his incarceration. When people call abusers “complicated” it sounds like they are making excuses for them. As far as I’m concerned, the abuser can discuss his or her problems with a therapist in a locked ward.
March 25, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I get being mad at the male, but what about her mother? A mother’s first job is to protect their children. I think that the mother should be punished as well.
March 25, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Oh, and another thing. I don’t care how bad a childhood or an experience is, it is no excuse for hurting others. I have been neglected, physically, emotionally and sexually abused, but that doesn’t give me the right to do the same to anyone else. Further more, if we excused everyone that was ever abused, raped, terrorized, for turning into the perpetrators of those same actions, it would be a step back in society. I think that unlike murder, a child sexual abuser continues to “abuse” that child for the rest of the persons life, due to people dealing with memories, flashbacks and triggers. I find the girl’s mother to be one of the worst offenders in emotionally abusing her child. The reason most people stay silent is the reaction that this woman had and gave to her own daughter. I find both the stepfather and the mother to be dispicable and I find the American government even worse for associating with that type of person. I think the abusers should not be “rehabilitated” but I think that what they do is worse than first degree murder. As I said before, its been 4 years and my hubby accidently ripped his jeans and the sound triggered me so bad I had to be sedated. I think the situation as a whole is wrong.