Deaf Girl Brutally Beaten By Family for Her Christian Faith
A family in Central Asia is threatening to beat their young daughter after already sending her to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Saida, whose name has been changed for her protection, is deaf and her family has a problem with her Christian faith.
Rob Myers with Deaf Opportunity OutReach (DOOR) International told Mission Network News about the incident.
"The screams she emitted caused the neighbors to call the police. When the police came, the police saw it was her family beating her and they said, 'Well, this is a family issue, so we won't get involved.' The family then realized they kind of had immunity to continue to beat her, so they continued to do so to the point where she had to be brought eventually to the hospital in intensive care."
Open Doors USA, which serves persecuted Christians around the world, reports her family is threatening to beat her once she's released from the hospital. However, members of the local church are hoping to get to her before her family members do.
DOOR International trains and equips deaf missionaries to share the Gospel and plant deaf-led churches around the world.
Myers said deaf believers face the same level of persecution as other Christians in hostile areas but encounter different barriers.
"If a deaf person who is being beaten is brought to the police by hearing family, many times the deaf person can't communicate with the police, so the only side of the story the police hear is the side of the story that comes from the family," he said.
Myers explained that attacks happen when a parent finds a scripture in the home or a believer refuses to marry someone from their parents' faith.
"What's different for deaf believers is many times parents are unaware of what's going on in their child's life. They may be meeting with people, they may even be signing with friends about Scripture, and their parents have no idea because most parents of deaf children don't actually sign," he said.
DOOR International is working in hostile regions to help deaf believers.
"Many times our staff are able to intervene in some of these situations, either to help move the believers to a different place where the family doesn't know where they are and they don't then experience that type of persecution. Or they're able to intervene with the police, or they're able to negotiate with the family and calm them down," he said.
Despite the work that the ministry is doing, Myers asks for believers around the world to pray.
"Pray that God would open the eyes of the people who are performing these beatings," he said. "We obviously want to pray for safety for many of these missionaries, and we work toward that. But many of them…when we ask them, 'What should we pray for you for?', they don't say, 'Pray for my safety.' Many of them will say, 'Please pray for boldness.'"
