Hearing stories and news about child abduction, rape, and beating the kid to death would be really disturbing and heart-bleeding for all of us. We can not even imagine the pain of the parents who lost their children due to these types of crimes. But, somehow all these incidents happen around us daily.
In Ethiopia, a dreadful incident occurred in June 2005. A twelve-year-old girl was kidnapped by four men and tortured for one week continuously. None of us know the name of the girl because it was protected for her innocent state of mind.
According to the news, she was walking home that day and four adult men kidnapped her and took her to a remote place, tortured her, and forced her to marry one of them. Their cruelty crossed all the limits when they tried to beat her to death. Her cries and whimpering were too loud but still no one listened, but fortunately someone did. Here is the shocking twist, apparently the animals around the area heard her cries and three lions reached there to rescue her.
A police officer ( Wondimu Wedajo ) confirmed that the girl had been missing for one week and was found on the outskirts of Bita Genet, a town about 350 miles southwest of Addis Ababa. There were no signs of the abductors so certainly the lions scared the captors and put them to flight, and guarded the girl for half a day. The girl was terrified and in shock when she was found. Not only did the lions not touch her but also they kept her safe under the watchful eyes from a distance.
After the cops arrived, the trio of lions got away and went their own ways. Cops said that if the lions would not rescue her then it might be possible that the girl would have been raped or dead.
Wildlife expert ‘Stuart Williams’ stated an interesting theory about the lions not killing the girl. He said that the lions may have heard her cries and mistook her for a cub. Their protective behavior was an instinctive reaction to her sound of suffering.
None of us know the state of mind of lions but we all are glad that animals are far better than us humans. They protected a kid who was not even from their species. Their predatory instinct should have been killing the girl instead they protected her and rescued her from hell.