Jesus is Lord, A Worshipping Christian’s Blog

We have often wondered why Amina and Sara Said’s mother, Patricia Owens (or ‘Tissie’, a nickname for her used by many in her family) didn’t take a more vocal role in this situation. This behavior didn’t make sense. Her children had been viciously “honor” killed by their own father, her husband of many years. Was she afraid that the same fate awaited her or, God forbid, was she just uncaring? Some even speculated that she took an active role in delivering the teens to their father. Law enforcement has, of course, cleared her of any wrongdoing in this situation, but still, her silence was baffling.

Yesterday, in what I would consider to be her finally breaking her silence, Patricia stated in an interview that “justice needs to be served for Amina and Sara.”
Why it took over a year for her to do this, I’m not sure.

Gail Gartrell, the great-aunt to the girls, has certainly been much more vocal, and as an extension, has challenged Patricia to take a more active role in championing the cause of bring Yasser to justice. Gail believes that Patricia’s role in the murders was not nearly as innocent as it may appear on the surface. At best, Gail believes that Patricia stood by and allowed this to happen when she could have taken the girls away and stayed away.

We have many post about this and I invite you to read each one. We’ll have Gail’s comments as soon as possible. We still don’t have any idea how this is going to end, other than to say that God will deal out Justice in the end. I am glad though that Patricia has finally decided to break her silence and take a more active role in championing her murdered girls; her “honor killed” girls.

LEWISVILLE (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ― An honor killing. That’s how the mother of two girls murdered in their father’s taxicab last year describes their deaths.

Amina and Sara Said’s father, Yasser Said, is wanted for capital murder for allegedly shooting them 11 times on New Year’s Night 2008.

“Justice needs to be served for Amina and Sara,” Patricia Owens said in an exclusive interview with us today. “I’m here to get the word out on honor killing and justice for Amina and Sara.”

And, referring to her ex-husband, she said, “I want him to be caught; I want him to be punished for what he did to the girls. They did not deserve that.”

Owens cried and wiped away tears throughout the interview.

Patricia Owens says the biggest mistake of her life was to bring her daughters back to their Lewisville home. She had previously left Texas out of fear of their father, her then-husband Yasser Said.

”That was the stupidest thing I could ever do,” she observed. “If I would’ve known he was going to do that I would’ve killed him.”

Owens says their father was offering the girls a night out on January 1, 2008. Amina had even come home from a friend’s house. “Amina said she was hungry and he said he was going to take them to eat,” Owens said, “and the next thing I knew the Lewisville Police was at my door.”

The officers were there to notify her of a 911 call that had come into Irving Police, in which one of her daughters screamed she was being shot.

Owens believes Yasser Said must have had help to escape and to stay on the run.

Asked if she had helped Said in any way, she denied it. “No! No. How could I cover for somebody who killed my kids?” she asked.

But she does feel guilty about their deaths: “I feel totally responsible. Because I’m their mother, and it’s my job to protect them,” she said. “And I let them go with an evil man that took their life away.”

Original Link.

Dr. Phyllis Chesler weighs in on the interview:

The mother who lured her two young daughters, Sarah and Amina, to their tragic deaths at the hand of their father, Yaser Said, now regrets what she did. Downplaying her own role, or rather, insisting that she is innocent, Patricia (“Tissy”) Owens calls the murder of her daughters an “honor killing” by an “evil man.” Despite years of paternal child abuse at home, “Tissy” now insists that she had no idea that Yaser was actually going to kill the girls whom he sexually and physically abused and whose “too Western” ways enraged him.

Sarah and Amina refused to marry older, unknown men from Egypt in arranged marriages. They had American ways, academic ambitions, and Christian friends, including Christian boyfriends. Unthinkable! And, like Rifqa Bary, they knew they were in danger and so they ran away. Their mother sweet talked them back home. They were dead within hours. Their father has never been found.

My guess? “Tissy” is angry that Yaser never sent for her—and that she has also lost her son, Islam, who has mainly been living with his paternal uncles or perhaps with his father. She is alone. She has no one. Perhaps she wants some attention—and the media is only to ready to provide “Tissy” with that for another fifteen minutes of infamous fame.

Here is the issue and it is one that I raise in my book Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman. Are female collaborators guilty, morally if not criminally, in the crimes committed by their husbands, boyfriends, or by their male business associates toward even more vulnerable women and children? Was the battered Hedda Nussbaum guilty in the death of Lisa Steinberg, the five-year-old allegedly adopted daughter who was tragically and repeatedly abused and then finally beaten to death by Joel Steinberg?

Is “Tissy” likewise responsible? Are the wives who don’t ask and don’t tell anyone, including themselves, about their husbands’ sex slaves, also morally and criminally liable? If not, why not?

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 10:19 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.