Differing views of shame

Last week, North Americans saw two incidents that caused the concept of shaming a family to come to the forefront.
In Canada, a shocking turn on an already-tragic event occurred when three members of a family were charged with killing four other family members.
The four dead, three teenage sisters and a woman, were found in a car submerged in the Rideau Canal near Kingston, Ont., earlier this year.
All members of the family, those who had died and those who were charged, came to Canada from Afghanistan.
Authorities allege it is a case of honour killings: The four were killed, authorities said, because they were seen to have brought shame in some way upon the family.
In Phoenix, Ariz., last week, four young boys ages nine to 14 were charged with raping an eight-year-old girl. The four boys are children of families who are from Liberia.
It has been reported in the media that the girl's family, whose members are also from Liberia, have shunned her after the alleged rape.
The girl is now in the care of a foster family after authorities said her parents blamed her for the alleged attack and said she had shamed their family.
On Monday, it was reported the girl's father said he wanted her back with the family. He denied he blamed her for anything.
Shame is a troubling and elusive concept - clearly it means different things in different societies.
In North America, many believe the correct course of action on behalf of the eight-year-old girl's family would be wrapping her in a cloak of care and compassion and tending to her physical and emotional wounds with constant re-enforcement of the idea that she was in no way responsible for what happened to her.
If, in fact, her parents did exactly the opposite, it leads to an ironic situation.
By allegedly rejecting the girl, the parents have become the scorn of North American society.
In what was possibly an attempt to avoid shame, they have instead brought heaps and heaps of it upon themselves.