Sexual Crimes
The
spiritual darkness of the country we were in translated into a high rate of
crimes, which were committed with impunity, particularly in the capital city and
including against foreigners, as the underpaid and corrupt local police used their badges as
licenses to extort money, were not interested in solving crimes, and in fact
themselves committed many of them.
Particularly rampant were sexual crimes against women and children. Rapes were almost never prosecuted, so seldom reported. In the capital city, many impoverished parents sold the virginity of their daughters and even their daughters outright to the highest bidders, who were often much older foreign men.
The local men also had a 'tradition' of bonding with each other by having group sex with one girl. As most of them couldn't afford or find or didn't want to pay for a prostitute who would agree to such an ordeal, many of them simply abducted and gang raped a girl. A survey found that five percent of the local men admitted to having gang raped a girl for this purpose; the actual percentage was deemed to be in the double digits as most participants in this 'tradition,' which even has a name, were deemed reluctant to admit it.
Furthermore, the smart phone adoption took off while we were in the country, which became flooded with pornography. The way the local men look at white women was often at least inappropriate.
By this time, to find respite from the oppressive heat, Kristin and I had moved into a newly-built hotel that was offering air conditioned rooms for $6. We were on the third floor, in rooms at the opposite ends of a long corridor, not only for those in the adjacent rooms to be spared the noise of the spiritual warfare half of the time, which lowered our chances of being kicked out, but also for the world to know that we were not fornicating.
When Kristin was out in public with me, people assumed that we were a couple, so she was protected. When we returned to our hotel, however, the hotel's male staff and the male merchants just outside the hotel ogled at her more. In due time, I surmised that the word had gotten out from the hotel staff that we were staying in separate rooms, so even though we always walked around together, we were in fact not a couple. Kristin would be better protected if people thought we were a couple, but there was nothing I could do, as I couldn't share a room with her.
But I did worry constantly about her when she was in her room by herself at night. Sometimes she came knocking on my door for help when the demons acted up, but I knew that other times, she just stayed and suffered alone. Also, the reception desk had duplicate keys to all of the rooms. Since the doors had no security latches, a male staff or his friend could sneak into her room while she was sleeping.
One day, the expat community in the sleepy provincial town we were in was rocked when the nude corpse of a French girl was found floating by the bank of the river that traverses the town. She was in her early 20s, had been staying alone at a guest house in town, and her skull had been split open by what appeared to be a machete strike.
The local police quickly arrested a Belgian man who owned a nice guest house in town. He had an alibi but the dead girl's rented bicycle had been found in front of his guest house. The police claimed, without any evidence, that the Belgian had raped the girl, killed her with a machete, rode her bicycle to his own guest house, and left it by its entrance. The expats in town speculated that the girl had been raped by a local man or men, who then killed her with a machete, which is their - not a Belgian's - weapon of choice, dumped her body in the river, planted her bicycle in front of the Belgian's guest house, and colluded with the local police to frame him so that he can be put away and they end up getting his guest house. The Belgian was jailed without being tried and the rapist-murderer(s) remained on the loose. (After about a year, the Belgian was released for lack of evidence and immediately flew home to Belgium; his guest house was taken over by the locals, and the French girl's rapist(s) and murderer(s) was/were never caught.)
Not long thereafter, I walked Kristin to her room after spiritual warfare in mine, bid her good night, turned around and began to walk back toward my room when a local man walked past me in the opposite direction. Since her room was the only one left in his direction, I turned around and saw him actually stepping into her doorway after her, and yelled, "Hey! What are you doing?" I am not sure if he understood my words, but he stopped. When I yelled at him again while rushing toward him, he backed out a bit but kept his eyes on Kristin, undressing her up and down with his eyes as she recoiled and backed up deeper into her room to distance herself from him. When I jumped in between him and Kristin and faced him, he, a sweaty middle-aged local man with eyes brimming with lust, finally turned around and walked away.
I spent some time in her room, both to calm her down and in case the guy returned. I stayed until after she had gone to bed and then returned to my room, but hardly slept.
The next morning, I asked Kristin what she thought about us sharing a room with two beds until we find a Christian lady or family to house her. Nothing would change except that we would need to change in the bathroom before and after showering. Sharing a room would give the impression that we are a couple. While that would be bad for our reputation, it would be a deterrence to would-be rapists, who also would need to get past me if they entered her room again. I told her that this was far from the ideal solution, but her safety is more important than our reputation, especially given what had just happened, until we can find a lady or a family to house her.
She welcomed the suggestion, saying that she hadn't been feeling safe at night and had been hoping for such a suggestion even before what happened the night before or to the French girl. So we moved to another part of town and into a room with two beds.