Emil's Escape

Compass Direct has reported on the kidnap and escape of Laurence Wagih Emil, a teenaged Egyptian Christian girl. As Laurence was riding home in a bus, she noticed that the driver had veered from the normal course just before a man grabbed her from behind and held a cloth over her mouth and nose. When she awoke, four men and a woman were holding her captive in a room. They beat her. They threatened her with rape if she would not convert to Islam.

Fortunately for the fifteen year old, they left her for a time while they broke their Ramadan fast. She fled. Yet her ordeal was not over. A man wanting to help her yet fearing her kidnappers should they trace her to his home took Miss Emil to the police. They were very kind to her at the police station for the first few minutes, bringing her a sandwich and a soda. But within minutes, she could not move her limbs though fully conscious. Apparently, the police had drugged her yet again.

“You should say that you took the bus to Tahrir Square [located in central Cairo] and met a guy named Fady, who took you to sleep at his house with his mother,” Emil said police told her. “Say that; otherwise you won’t see your parents again.”

After Emil had regained use of her limbs, police had her sign a statement that she had met a male friend in Cairo and spent the night at his house, Compass confirmed. She was then reunited with her family…

Reports of kidnappings and the forced conversion of Christian girls are common among Egypt’s Coptic community…

But “there have been credible reports that government authorities have failed to sufficiently cooperate with Christian families seeking to regain custody of their daughters,” the U.S. State Department said in its latest annual International Religious Freedom Report on Egypt.

My sisters-in-Christ are being stolen from their families, raped, and forced to convert to a religion with which they disagree. How can forced conversions be carried out in the name of Islam and how can these men justify to themselves raping women as a punishment for not converting? Is this a religion of peace? Are women so sub-human to them that any abuse is allowable? My heart breaks for them and for all women who are suffering horrible debasement around the world. Thank God that Miss Emil escaped and is home safely with her family. But what about the others who have not been so lucky? And what justice can there be if the government, the police, are complicit?

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