“The heart is deceitful above all things,” the prophet Jeremiah said.
“And desperately sick,” he continued in Jeremiah 17:9. “Who can understand it?”
Human depravity was unfortunately on display last month when a dozen youth — at least one no more than 11 years old — were allegedly involved in the repeated rape of a 14-year-old girl in Europe.
According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, the boyfriend of the young victim, also 14, spent April 2 with her at a local fairground. At around 6 p.m., he allegedly took her to a wooded area in the Kortrijk area of West Flanders, Belgium.
The boy is reported to have raped the girl in the presence of other boys. Then, at least four of the others allegedly raped the girl, with additional boys engaging in different types of assault and filming the crimes.
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Images of the attacks were posted on social media, authorities said.
The assailants were all no more than 16 years old — with an 11 year old, the youngest, allegedly serving as a lookout, authorities reported.
Initially 10 boys, including the 11-year-old, were arrested; later reports indicated the number of assailants numbered up to 12.
The news publication Nieuwsblad described the boyfriend as a type of individual known to romance young girls for purposes of human trafficking.
Should these alleged offenders be tried as adults?
Under what local media described as his powerful influence on her, the victim reportedly returned to the site of the first incident, resulting in more abuse.
Because the attackers are minors, under Belgian law they cannot be publicly identified.
Full criminal responsibility comes into play at age 18; however, due to the seriousness of the case, a 16-year-old involved in it may be tried as an adult.
It’s believed shame and embarrassment prevented the victim from reporting the crimes earlier, according to professor of forensic psychology Frédéric Declercq.
And here’s another dimension to the criminal acts — all of the alleged perpetrators are of Somalian or North African descent.
Uh oh.
I can hear it now — the cry of “RACISM!” wailing from across the Atlantic.
Spare me.
It’s not about the race or descent of the criminals involved.
It’s about Western countries — embedded in a tradition of Christian decency — who have allowed people of widely diverging cultures to immigrate without the expectation of them assimilating and honoring the values of the host country.
True, the attackers on the 14-year-old girl in Belgium could have been of any ethnicity or descent. I’ve been in parts of rural America where a group or two of seedy-looking, young, white men have given me pause.
But the incursion of individuals of radically different cultures, morays, and worldviews who have no desire to assimilate or respect countries to which they immigrate represents invitations toward tribalism and ethnic corruption.
For instance, 50 percent of rapes in Germany are perpetrated by foreigners, according to the RAIR Foundation.
That coincides with the incursion of more than a million male migrants to Germany from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East from 2015 to 2023, RAIR said.
The problem is aggravated by censorship of nationalities of sexual assault criminals. Talk about it in Germany, and it’s considered hate speech.
The situation has been festering in Europe for a while. Bruce Bawer described some of it in his 2006 book “While Europe Slept.”
Bawer moved to Europe in 1998 and witnessed a shift from pre- and post-9/11. After watching the measured Islamic destruction of Western civilization there, he changed his mind, and he returned to the U.S. singing the praises of our nation and culture so much that he sounded like a right-winger.
The heart is wicked, desperately so. But wisdom requires us to pay attention to where certain aspects of evil are coming from.
That’s not about hate; it’s about self-preservation.
