Reactions, please.
Feb. 20th, 2002 10:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaLast night my sister told me a story. I'm going to recount as much of the story as I can, just as it was told to me, and I'd very much appreciate your thoughts.
My sister's friend participates in a newsgroup devoted to a TV show. On that newsgroup, some time ago (more than six months), she began corresponding with a 13-year-old Afghan girl who was in the U.S. to attend school. The girl's guardian was her grandfather, who had very progressive ideas about educating women. Because of that, and because the girl is a math prodigy (although she writes in very broken English), he arranged for her to attend school in New York.
On September 11th, her grandfather had a heart attack and died when he saw the WTC disaster covered on TV. Her U.S. hosts were both in the World Trade Center at the time, and died in the attack. Back in Afghanistan, the rest of her close family was killed when Taliban forces burned their house down. She has therefore come under the custody of distant relatives.
These relatives do not believe in educating girls, and have forced her to leave school. They have arranged her marriage to a 60-year-old man in Afghanistan, against her will. She is still in the U.S., but they moved her a couple of times in a private plane, and she has no idea where she is. She is not permitted to leave the house or contact anyone. She is only able to contact my sister's friend because she has a handheld computer which her guardians don't realize is equipped with e-mail access. She is becoming progressively more despairing, and my sister's friend is becoming progressively more frightened for her.
My sister's friend called the FBI, and was told that without any information about the girl's location there isn't much they can do.
What do you think?
My sister's friend participates in a newsgroup devoted to a TV show. On that newsgroup, some time ago (more than six months), she began corresponding with a 13-year-old Afghan girl who was in the U.S. to attend school. The girl's guardian was her grandfather, who had very progressive ideas about educating women. Because of that, and because the girl is a math prodigy (although she writes in very broken English), he arranged for her to attend school in New York.
On September 11th, her grandfather had a heart attack and died when he saw the WTC disaster covered on TV. Her U.S. hosts were both in the World Trade Center at the time, and died in the attack. Back in Afghanistan, the rest of her close family was killed when Taliban forces burned their house down. She has therefore come under the custody of distant relatives.
These relatives do not believe in educating girls, and have forced her to leave school. They have arranged her marriage to a 60-year-old man in Afghanistan, against her will. She is still in the U.S., but they moved her a couple of times in a private plane, and she has no idea where she is. She is not permitted to leave the house or contact anyone. She is only able to contact my sister's friend because she has a handheld computer which her guardians don't realize is equipped with e-mail access. She is becoming progressively more despairing, and my sister's friend is becoming progressively more frightened for her.
My sister's friend called the FBI, and was told that without any information about the girl's location there isn't much they can do.
What do you think?
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no subject
Date: 2002-02-20 09:29 am (UTC)Why did the distant relations suddenly decide to marry this girl off, when they have only known of their supposed authority for a few months at best? How did they manage to get local American connections that could pull this sort of thing off, yet not realize that the girl's handheld can send email?
If by some chance it turns out to be for real, I like Bill's suggestion about re-contacting the FBI or talking to the State Department. If some sort of documentation can be provided (email headers, perhaps), then it can be backtraced in reasonably short order.
I suspect, though, that this will turn out to have been the fevered imagination of someone who wanted to create a dramatic situation to get some vicarious sympathy ("poorlittlekidnappedafghangirl@hotmail.com", perhaps). There have been far too many cases of fraudulent identity claims on the Net for me to accept this situation at face value. God knows, there have been cases where everything has gone wrong with a person's life, and the responsible authorities have fallen down on the job, but this sounds like something from an anime comic.
Now I'm really going to cynic hell.
Date: 2002-02-20 09:34 am (UTC)"Last week, our heroine frantically tapped out a message on her handheld..."