The power of the family

Now, the last thing I want to do is sound like a right-wing evangelist or nutjob, but I actually found this story most heartening. In fact, in an odd sort of way, it made my day. It is about a Peruvian girl, Gracia, with a seriously ill mother, who offered to sell her virginity in order to raise money. Her mother is too sick to work and she does not want her 12-year-old brother to miss school. She felt the burning need to help provide for them and resolved to try to do it in the only way she could see. So far, so horrendous. What cheered me was not this sad tale of deprivation, or the bleeding heart lines which follow it on the link, but the two events which stopped her, in the end, surrendering her virginity for money.

A Canadian man offered her $1.5 million, but Gracia recalled him saying "He said he'd prefer I didn't do it, but if I was going to do it with anyone, it should be with someone who treated me right and I think he knew his bid wasn't going to be topped. He was really happy when I said No."

Then, her mother's counsel persuaded her otherwise. "Mum lives with me 24 hours a day, and respects my decision because I am an adult. But she was giving me advice, and explaining how my life might be if I did this: What example would I give my children, what kind of man would accept me with this past, would it make me happy, this money? Obviously it's a necessity, but it's not everything, it's a bad necessity and it made me realise that this money wasn't going to make me happy, I could make myself happy with my own merits."

Absolutely. This just shows the power of living in an open, honest and respectful family. This girl was a woman in her own right, able to make her own decisions, but her mother counselled and she listened. Who said that power was all corrupting? At least it's not when we have people and structures like this still.