Sexual abuse is a very complex thing, that people who haven't experienced it have a very difficult time understanding, and even a lot of people who have experienced it, have a hard time understanding.

I was sexually abused at age 5 by a neighboring young man. As Phillips says, I cooperated. Why? Because it was a Secret, and having a Secret is fun, especially if you are a kid. Because like all children, I was erotically curious. Because I was ashamed once it started, and it was easier to go along, than to let it become known. Because I wanted to be older and cooler and more grown up, and that was what he told me it was all about.

The only difference being, I suppose, was that as a prepubescent child (and, if it relevant, and I suspect it is not, as a definitely heterosexual male) there was no physical or psychological pleasure involved in the acts, quite the contrary. It wasn't incest, technically, since it was a trusted family friend, not family. That would have just been one more complicating factor.

But the point is, this stuff is, at least from the victims' points of view, complicated, and psychologically, you always feel a little compromised. (I have no idea how it is from the abusers' point of view, and I do not care to learn.)

Me, I'm OK, even though it was in the primitive 60s my parents handled it very sensibly, and while I may have a little psychic scar tissue (I have a mild distaste for non-lesbian porn, because I have a mild distaste for seeing erect penises), I don't really have any issues or triggers.

But yes, Oprah and Phillips pretty much about nailed that one.

Zorkna is right about one thing (as he sometimes is before his inner troll takes over): "Because it's fucking Somalia. Which is the #1 most fucked up disintegrating failed anarchic shitpile of a country in the world, ever, bar none." (Then the inner troll comes out and he has to get all racistly offensive of course.) The only thing wrong with that is the "ever," other countries have been in Mad Max Land too. Liberia for instance, a couple of decades ago. (My favourite was always General Buck Naked: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Milton_Blahyi. Go ahead and read it; you won't know whether to laugh or barf. Link at sig.)

The ironic thing is that the Islamicist fundamentalists may be, at least for now, the only possible bit of hope the country has, as they are one of the few social forces that transcends the clan system that fuels the endemic violence that destroys any attempt at government. As evidenced by the Islamic Courts movement, which represented an alliance of the Islamicists and the business community (albeit that the "business" was mostly arms and drug dealing), the only forces that could transcend clan interests.

The fundamentalists got to feel important, and the business guys actually got an authority that could and would enforce a contract, pretty the basis of all law and order and civilization. The price the business guys paid was that the Islamic Courts also got to shelter and back al Qaeda, which turned out to be a bad strategy.

Because of course Bush immediately blew the hell out of it, bribing the Ethiopians to invade and sending in the air-strikes, and now Somalia is back into its current lovely situation.

The other ironic thing is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Somalia is the only ethnically homogeneous sub-Saharan state; it turns out that Africa's main problem may not in fact be ridiculous artificial nations with borders drawn by colonialists that ignored ethnic realities. Go figure.

So far as I know, "honor killing" is not a feature of Sri Lankan culture (and there is nothing Islamic about it, since Christian Arabs and Indian Sikhs practice it too).

And the "Christian" group that she is with, the Xenos Christian Fellowship, sure looks like a cult to me.

And if the family allowed her to be a cheerleader, I rather doubt that they are particularly fundamentalist (somehow, I just can't see a cheerleading team allow a member to participate in a burqa, or even a hejab).

The only conceivable danger I can see, and I suspect it is pretty slight, is that she might be killed for being an Apostate. Though I also suspect that most Muslims would be inclined to view her as a brain-washed minor, and thus not responsible. In any case, I know of no cases of a killing for apostasy in North America ever, and precious few in the Muslim world in recent history.

But who knows, as Judy Berman says, it is a complex situation, with precious few facts out there.