(CNN) -- The allegation is shocking: an 8-year-old girl lured to a storage shed with the promise of chewing gum, pinned down and sexually assaulted by four boys, none of them older than 14.
President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has made cracking down on sex crimes a top priority in Liberia.
1 of 3 The response from the girl's family sent a second and equally stunning shockwave through their Phoenix, Arizona, community: "The parents felt that they had been shamed or embarrassed by their child," reported Phoenix police Sgt. Andy Hill.
As a result, the girl was taken into custody by Arizona's child welfare agency.
The prosecutor who charged the four boys called the crime "heartrending" and "deeply disturbing." But to those familiar with Liberia, the west African nation where the families of all of the children are from, the crime and response are both part of a sadly familiar story.
"It's something that happens every day in every community in Liberia," said Tania Bernath, a researcher for the human rights group Amnesty International.
The country was racked by a brutal civil war for most of 14 years. During that time, rape was used by fighters on all sides as a tool of war and a way to spread terror and demoralize enemies.
A United Nations report in 2004, the year after much of the fighting stopped, estimated that 60 to 70 percent of all women in the nation had been the victims of sexual violence.
A 2006 government report said that of 1,600 women surveyed, 92 percent reported some kind of sexual violence, including rape.
"They would have cases where they would rape the wife in front of the husband -- things like that, really breaking down communities," said Bernath, who spent several years in Liberia working for a relief organization.
