Most crimes like this are, sadly, committed by someone who has some connection to the family. It’s standard to investigate connections first. That’s not “appalling” to suggest, it’s just a sad reality of these crimes.

They should be focusing on everyone connected to the family if known. It would be negligent not to.

The confusion came from the way the article was written. They didn’t know the identity until afterward.

I just want to point out that there’s a huge difference between thoroughly investigating the family after abuse of this magnitude has been proven, and making parents legally culpable for any harm that comes to their children in general.

We can react to the fact that mothers can do more to protect their children from abuse in many ways. We can give them better access to information and support in getting away from abusers. We can create better links between police and communities they serve. We can create more pathways for children to be exposed to healthy adult behavior and connections with healthy adults, even when the family is dysfunctional.

But when we find evidence that existing supports have failed, deeply investigating why is critical.

The investigators will be able to calculate how many rounds of abuse the victim suffered. The more it happened, the less likely it is the mother was unaware. And if course, the victim can tell us directly whether the mother knew. If so, she deserves a decade of her life in prison as well.

Something like 60-70% of violent crime involves victims and offenders that know each other, and with murder and sexual assault it's 70-80%.

Which isn't really relevant as most violent crime is criminal on criminal. Know each other doesn't mean they're friends. Many times it's rivals.

True. Damaged parents are often the kinds of people who are taken advantage of by sex offenders. I think it requires a social fix of some kind.

However damaged someone is they have a duty of care to their children. There's someone else with a blame in the story but to excuse this is very wrong.

Completely agree. It shouldn't be treated as an excuse but it's silly to ignore this as a HUGE risk factor. Probably should be considered when making policies etc.

You are right, the article is about:

> She said at the point Homeland Security ended her abuse she had been "praying actively for it to end".

You can provide your plausible suggestions as to what the family relationship looked like that the girl could neither ask her own mother for help nor was her father there for her.

My heart breaks for parents who learn that their children found themselves unable to confide in them about rape.

I doubt the mother didn't know.

From Maternal Perceptions Of And Responses To Child Sexual Abuse https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4845772/ :

> But it was estimated that from 30% to even 80% of victims do not purposefully disclose their misuse before adulthood.

[...]

> Arata found an inverse relationship between the disclosure and severity of abuse. Subjects reporting contact sexual abuse were significantly less likely to disclose it than those reporting non-contact sexual abuse.

> The duration of sexual abuse has a significant impact on its disclosure – the longer children are abused, the more hesitant they may be to disclose their abuse.

Equal rights also means equal accountability. It's very unlikely she was unaware of the abuse taking place for 6 years.