Halfway Between the Gutter & the Stars

Before you email and ask, yes these are all real stories taken from around the World:-

That Sacred Institution: The Al-Shams newspaper in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, reported in March that Mohammed al-Rashidi, 11, had just married a cousin, who is 10, remarking: “I am ready for this marriage. It will help me study better.” [Agence France-Presse, 19/3/08]

And in April, in a courtroom in Sana’a, Yemen, a courageous 8-year-old girl walked in alone and demanded that the judge grant her a divorce from the 30-year-old man her father had contracted to marry her. The judge, rejecting tradition, granted the divorce. [Yemen Times, 9/4/08]

Student Vinicios Robacher, 15, said in March he was preparing to file a lawsuit against school officials in Danbury, Conn., over an ear injury. Robacher said that, while he had his head down, sleeping in class, the teacher slapped his desk so hard with her palm, to wake him, that he still has constant pain. [WCBS-TV (New York City), 13/3/08]

Well, That Explains That!: Gene Morrill, 57, hoping for a shorter sentence after his conviction for soliciting sex from teenage boys over the Internet, told a court in Fredericksburg, Va., in March about his rough life as a child, beginning with the time he was sexually molested by Bigfoot. [Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, 26/3/08]

A 26-year-old driver was arrested in Bay County, Fla., in April after being spotted on the side of a road masturbating. According to the police report, the man said “he had just left work and explained that he needed some personal time with himself that he could not have at home.” [Northwest Florida Daily News, 2/4/08]

Mr. Roland Scott, the victim of a street robbery, took away the perp’s shotgun and started beating him with it, but jarred the trigger, and it fired, hitting Scott, fatally, in the stomach (Baltimore, March). [Baltimore Sun, 28/3/08]