"For the progress of humanity, work alone is not adequate, but the work should be associated with love, compassion, right conduct, truthfulness and sympathy. Without the above qualities, selfless service cannot be performed."

On Sunday morning, Indian guru Sri Sathya Sai Baba passed away. He leaves behind a massive empire, several million mourning devotees worldwide, an extensive religious philosophy, a great deal of controversy and a legacy of large-scale philanthropic projects in India, including free hospitals and mobile medical facilities, a free university and schools, and other efforts which included supplying clean water to hundreds of rural villages. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Apr 25, 2011 - 41 comments

Jack Chick and his cracktasticness has certainly been covered on Metafilter before. However, in one fell swoop, his cracktasticness has not only squared but cubed. Chick's pamphlet, Lisa (curiously absent from the tracts on his site), features a father who gave herpes to his little daughter and then pimps his daughter out to his similarly pedophilic neighbor (who thinks the "pretty juicy gossip" is "pretty kinky") in exchange for the neighbor's silence. Two months of abuse later, the family doctor discovers Lisa's herpes, and does not report the father to the police, because ... well, you'll see. (Makes the Old Ones look better and better.)
posted by WCityMike on May 24, 2008 - 49 comments

"A distressing example of the breakdown of moral and social values . . ." 62 of the 66 accused were convicted and sentenced in France's largest child sex abuse case to date. From 1999 to 2002, 45 children in Angers, aged 6 months to 12 years, were prostituted by their own families in exchange for as little as a carton of cigarettes. Most of the families were monitored by social workers and reports of abuse began in 1999, but an in-depth investigation did not begin until three years later.

Each next news article reveals more horrifying details. Three children were raped by over forty adults; parents would be ". . . smoking cigarettes in the next room while men raped their children and the children were crying". And ". . . one girl was forced to perform oral sex so often that she cannot eat in the company of adults".

It can take a lifetime to recover from being raped once. A nine-year-old who's been raped by forty people, including her parents and grandfather? I pray her psychologist is better than her family's social worker.
posted by schroedinger on Aug 7, 2005 - 64 comments

"A court found 19 inhabitants of the same village guilty of systematically raping or sexually abusing an eleven-year-old girl who had been prostituted by her own father."

Third-world litany? Try Belgium.
posted by donkeyschlong on Sep 3, 2002 - 42 comments