Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Last week, a 12-year-old girl in Scotland was charged with carrying an offensive weapon. Video showed her brandishing a knife and a hatchet against a man while screaming at him to get away from her. You can also hear her sister scream at the man in the background.
The girl claims that she and her sister were being sexually harassed and followed. The man claims that he and his wife were on the way to shop when they were approached by the girls, cursed at, and accused of being an illegal migrant. The couple, originally from Bulgaria, are in Scotland legally. The police sided with the man and says there is no evidence of sexual harassment. The video used to charge the girl, which was taken by the man, shows him walking toward her, goading her to pull out the knife and the hatchet.
As the girl backs away, both she and her sister scream at the man. to keep his hands off of them, obviously terrified.
Now, what exactly happened here is not clear. What is clear is that things are not okay in the UK. Among the many questions that need to be answered is why this girl was carrying these weapons in the first place. Scottish influencer and detransitioner Sinead Watson commented on X that she also carried a knife at that age because, and I quote, working class Scottish girls are never protected. And in fact, unchecked violence against girls by immigrants is a serious problem throughout the UK.
According to a recent report from the crowdfunded Rape Gang Inquiry, there are 85 cities in England where rape gangs operate. Often, police either turn a blind eye or even protect the rapists, who are predominantly Pakistani men, instead of the girls that are the victims. The Labor government has only recently launched a national inquiry into the gangs after dragging its feet for years. According to one report, which was rightly called damning, local authorities often failed to act out of fear of being labeled racist. They were also fearful that violence would result from attempting to arrest the abuser, so they'd excuse their inaction.
with appeals to things like social cohesion. Had the victims been from a higher social class, it's hard to believe that they would not have acted. Just this summer, a 15-year-old girl in Scotland was dragged behind a pup and raped in broad daylight by an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan. According to his lawyer, the man's behavior was due to cultural differences. He was sentenced to prison, but he was not deported.
And there were over sixty eight thousand reported rapes in the UK in twenty twenty three, which is a nearly sevenfold increase from two thousand. Given this state of cultural chaos there, is it any wonder that a girl might decide to break the law in order to protect herself? It's unclear in this particular case from Dundee who the aggressor was, but it happened in the context. Of a systemic failure to protect girls and young women from predatory men. And this problem is not confined to the UK.
In the Netherlands, a 17-year-old woman was stabbed to death while she was on the phone to police. She called the police to report that she was being followed. An asylum seeker who had been arrested for rape four days earlier and allegedly assaulted another woman five days before that. Was arrested for the murder. In Berlin, when a Syrian man was harassing and physically assaulting a woman on a train, an American man stepped in to help.
An accomplice of the Syrian man pulled a six-inch knife and slashed the American's face, cutting his nose to the bone. The police arrested the Syrian, a well known criminal and drug dealer, but then released him, because, well, he wasn't the person who had the knife. Had he been a German, he likely would have been kept in jail. In fact, when asked why no one else had stepped in to help the woman on the train, a German man replied that if he would have, he would likely have been the one arrested. And all of these incidents happened in just the last two weeks.
When governments treat immigrants more leniently in court than citizens, there's a real problem. When courts release violent criminals to commit more crimes, there's failure to perform the most fundamental responsibility of government, which is to protect people and punish evildoers. A society that refuses to protect girls who are from lower classes or even sacrifices them on the altar of things like social cohesion. That is a society that has capitulated to evil. The prophet Isaiah said, Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who put darkness for light, and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.
Now that is a real possibility in this fallen world. And not only for individuals, that is a real possibility for entire societies. The Western world is in danger, real danger of crossing this line. But even if it does, Christians cannot. We must know what is true.
We must embrace what is true. and we must choose to live by what is true. That, by the way, is what the new film Truth Rising is all about. The global digital premiere of Truth Rising is this Friday, September the 5th. To learn more, go to truthrising dot com slash Colson.
That's truthrising dot com slash Colson. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
And for more resources to live like a Christian today, go to Breakpoint.org. What makes a Christian education Christian?
Well, a Christian education is not just education with more rules and chapel and Bible verses. It is Christian worldview formation. If you're an educator, you have to know that every student that you teach is being shaped by all kinds of ideas, all kinds of forces that come out of the culture around them. What if you could confidently shape them with a Christian worldview to navigate these forces, these ideas? Colson Educators program is about just that.
There's a free course, Worldview Formation 101, available online. It's a self-paced course that will equip you to understand the ultimate goal of Christian education. Worldview Formation, developing lessons that incorporate the Christian worldview and creating a culture at the school where our students' faith can grow and be activated. Sign up for the Worldview Formation course today at colsoneducators.org. That's colsoneducators.org.
