Keith Swarnadhipathi shares a very compelling story on his blog:
Let me introduce you to a fourteen year old girl I met in Sri Lanka this summer. Her name is Amanthi, and we met not in a coffee shop or shopping mall but in a courtroom. She was there for her hearing, and I was there for a lack of a better idea. Although I didn’t have a camera with me I can tell you every physical detail about this girl, such was the impact she had on me.
She stood at the front of the court, her eye’s fixated on the floor never looking up, not even to answer any of the questions asked to her by the magistrate. She was so thin, that you would think she had recently recovered from a great illness, her skin was as pale as snow. Her hair was long and straight yet wild and uncontrollable, which she used to hide her face so people would not be able to see her. She wore a red top and an old skirt made of denim, her arms were joined at her back as if she were restrained, but there were no cuffs. She stood there, barefoot and alone, in front of the crowd of onlookers.
What was she doing there, what was her crime? As the hearing unfolded I discovered her reason for being there, she had escaped a children’s correctional facility. The judge asked her why she had been sent to the facility in the first place. She was silent, the question was asked again but she remained silent, her eyes still fixated on the floor.
After a few moments she spoke, in a sad tone of voice, she said she couldn’t answer that question in front of the entire court room. The judge, who by the way is my aunt, called her into chambers to speak to her privately, and asked me to join them as well.
We were now alone, just the three of us. Amanthi looked at me, and for the first time I saw her eyes. They were red from the tears she had been fighting back. Her eyes looked at me as if to ask why was I there, and if I could help her. My aunt looked at her and told her who I was, and that she could talk freely in front of me. It was then that I heard the saddest and most shocking story of my life.
Amanthi told us of how she had been raped by her grandfather when she was thirteen, and how her parents had disowned her because of it and abandoned her at a police station. While at the police station an officer who did not know what to do with the girl, had her sent to the local magistrate, to decide what should become of her. That magistrate decided, as a temporary measure, to have her sent to the correctional facility until something more permanent could be done for her.
A year passed, and she remained in the correctional facility, her plight was ignored by everyone who could have helped her. She spoke to us at length regarding the conditions in the facility, and how poorly treated she was by the staff and of the beatings she had endured from the other girls in the facility.
As she told her story my eyes widened and I looked at my aunt with sheer confusion printed all over my face. I thought to myself how could this happen, this girl has been treated as though she was a criminal when in fact she was the victim of a heinous crime that stole her innocence.
After half an hour Amanthi had finished her story, and now she began to beg to my Aunt not to send her back. Then she turned to me, and stared at me sobbing uncontrollably. I realized she wanted me to say something, to try to help her, but what could I say, I was not a lawyer or a social worker, but in my heart I realized I had to say something. So I told my aunt the only thing I could say, “You can’t send her back.” Yet, she had no choice, she couldn’t just remove her from the facility without finding a place to send her. As I discovered an orphanage was out of the question, because they were full up with legitimate orphans. So, there was no choice but to send her back for now.
A court officer was called into the room to escort her back to the courtroom where the hearing would continue. But, Amanthi wouldn’t leave, she refused to move and had to be dragged out of the chamber by the officer. She didn’t fight for a moment, she just cried and fell to the floor.
As her body was dragged passed me I remember thinking to myself, “Grab her, don’t let this madness continue, get her out of there.” Then my brain kicked in and asked me what would you do once you got her out of there, who would look after her, where would she go? These were questions to which I had no answers so I watched as this poor girl was pulled out of the chamber, and I didn’t even move a muscle.
After she was dragged out of the chambers I sat down and told my aunt that I just had to do something for her. My conscience wouldn’t let me just walk away from what I had just seen and heard. We talked for a while and eventually came up with an idea: …
Read the rest of this compelling story by clicking here.
kainos 
Heartbreaking.