The story has been told too many times–a woman, a girl, gang raped by a group of males. Often beaten as well. Left for dead.

I cannot bring myself to call them men. Anyone who would do this to another human being is a monster, not a man.

Men must have some moral code. To rape teenage girls and then hang them is such an atrocity, such a clear sign of a broken system–a system that has made it clear that in India it is open season on women and children.

As appalling as the crimes themselves?

A police force that turns the other way, tacitly affirming that the victims lack any protection from the law.

We in American may look at these stories and choose to believe that it could only happen there, not here when in fact the torture and murder of African Americans in the South during decades of racial oppression proves differently.

These terrible crimes need only two contributing factors–hate, and a government that refuses the protection of the law to its most defenseless citizens.

We expend our words extravagantly about the wisdom of our poets, our beloved memoirists, but it sometimes seems as though we pick and choose our stories.

I heard yesterday about Maya’s “abusive childhood” and the years she spent in silence. But I heard little to indicate we as a nation are willing to examine the take-away of the very things that defined Maya and her titular caged bird.

Because the issue of caged birds is a thorny problem.

Angelou went mute for years as a child because she felt responsible for the death of her abuser.

She was not. He was. He was responsible for violating her and the law and then in turn the law was responsible for a completely inadequate response.

We tout the years of silence instead of decrying a lost childhood and a deeply riven justice system.

Not much has changed. I am convinced that it might have been more effective for me to choose years of deliberate silence over the quiet futility of decrying our inattention to sexual assault survivors.

Except for this: my daughters deserve to watch me fight for them. They deserve to let me carry the futility and the anger just a little.

When so many of us refuse to carry it at all.

The year I found out my adopted son was a felon I fasted a lot. It was survival fasting–not so much about food or no food, more about please, God, help us survive this.

He did.

But at my low points I still questioned whether fasting helped.

Meriam Ibrahim reminds me why we fast, so I decided to…fast again.

Governments protest. Lawyers appeal. Journalists report. A young mother languishes in jail, facing torture and death.

Such pain and uncertainty defies description.

It seems a small thing to beg God to spare her.

Please. For her little ones. Please…