RAPE REPORT

Increase prostitution age to 23: Amsterdam

2010-01-19T13:43:00.001-08:00

Let's get something straight before I present the article below. I hate all types of prostitution and wish it didn't exist!!! To me, it is evil and all forms of prostitution is *POWER RAPE*!!!!

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2010/01/increase_prostitution_age_to_2.php

Increase prostitution age to 23: Amsterdam

Tuesday 19 January 2010

The age at which young women should be allowed to become prostitutes should be raised from 18 to 23, according to Amsterdam city council executive Lodewijk Asscher.

And Asscher wants the city's famous red light district to be prostitution-free between 4am and 8am, so that efforts can be focused during the day on tracking down pimps and human traffickers.

'18-year-old girls from Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary are extremely vulnerable. They are brought here but they are unable to resist the pressure. Women of 23 are more adult, more resistant,' Asscher is quoted as saying in Tuesday's Telegraaf.

Asscher also says that prostitutes should have to register as freelancers with the local chamber of commerce and prove that they can speak Dutch, or at least English, Spanish or French.

'Amsterdam is an international city and prostitution is part of that,' he told the paper. 'And there is nothing against it, if it is done out of free will. But unfortunately we see many instances where this is not the case.'

The city council launched major clean up of the city centre red light district in 2008 with the aim of cutting back on crime and forced prostitution, and taking the area more upmarket.

© DutchNews.nl

Congolese Women and Girls Suffering the Insufferable

2010-01-16T16:45:00.000-08:00

ttp://www.opednews.com/articles/Congolese-Women-and-Girls-by-Emily-Spence-100110-199.html

January 12, 2010
Congolese Women and Girls Suffering the Insufferable
By Emily Spence

By Emily Spence and Brian McAfee

While in the eastern Congo last summer, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, "With respect to companies that are responsible for what are now being called conflict minerals, I think the international community must start looking at steps we can take to try to prevent the mineral wealth from the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund the violence here."

In relation, the Democratic Republic of Congo's UN supported armed assault against rebels in the eastern Congo has promoted widespread death, rape and other forms of brutality. Indeed, the decade-long war has claimed at least 5.4 million lives -- the most in any conflict since WWII. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of women and girls, including babies, have suffered rapes and sexual mutilation, often with weapons and tools used in the process. Further, it is thought that, in eastern portions of the Congo, up to seventy percent of Congolese women, along with children of all ages, have been sexually attacked, according to the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a research center at Harvard University.

Moreover, some relief workers have estimated that up to twenty percent of new rapes have been instigated by police and civilians in urban rather than rural areas because a culture of violence has set into much of the nation due to the long, drawn out conflict. At the same time, the attacks are so extremely violent that they have been described as sexual terrorism by medical workers at the Panzi Hospital in Bukavuat where thousands of survivors have been treated each year.

Overall, it has emerged that all major groups involved in the wars have committed these and other serious war crimes, including looting peasants, purposefully destroying homes, and forcing the mass dislocations of more than a million terrorized people from their neighborhoods. Countless families and whole communities have been forced to live with constant fear, repeated migrations and insurmountable social turmoil.

In a country with an annual income of $110 per capita and a life expectancy rate of 54.4 years, life is difficult enough as it is. However, individuals on the run can't even have the assurance of this modest sum to support their existence. As a result, massive food, medical and displacement aid is needed in the country at the very time that it is most dangerous to be there as an aid worker. Simultaneously, a shortage of donations negatively impact the quality of care delivered by various assistance organizations, including U.N.sponsored relief programs.

Meanwhile, a rape-friendly culture encourages leniency towards rapists and ostracism towards victims regardless of their ages. Indeed, wounded sufferers are generally shunned by their spouses, other family members and former friends, particularly so if they have any children that resulted from periods of long term bondage accompanied by repeated rapes.

Simultaneously, assailants rarely receive proper trials. Therefore, the lack of punishment has increasingly emboldened Congolese men to find pleasure through physically violating women and children on a routine basis. Consequently, the number of assaults on women and children are increasing and spreading into new regions so as to include ever new groups, such as the Pygmies.

Even as the International Criminal Tribunal recognizes rape as a crime of genocide under international law, there is little by way of meaningful deterrence to the escalating aggression. In relation, this "pandemic of sexual violence," indicates Stephen Lewis, the former United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, is "obscene," "insanely savage," and is nothing short of "femicide" [1].

Despite the prevalence of a social stigma, the abandoned women and girls - some of whom some are pictured at Congo/Women [2] - do sometimes receive substantial help. For example, it comes from groups like SOS AIDS, an organization that works with other relief agencies to get in touch with rural survivors so as to take them to treatment centers for psychological counseling and medical support.

The assistance often includes the successful repair of fistulas, debilitating ruptures of the urinary-genital tract that leave females incontinent and prone to infections for life. The helpers, also, try to provide housing, including for those in need of anti-retroviral and other drug treatments due to the attackers having infected their victims with assorted serious diseases. (The HIV prevalence includes approximately 4.2 percent of the population.) Meanwhile, the high number of injured women and girls makes it impossible to treat them all, aside from the fact that the majority of the assaults, apparently, go unreported.

Thankfully, there are a number of dedicated groups like SOS AIDS taking a stand for justice and human welfare even when it is dangerous for their staff to do so. Tragically, others try to increase the very same kinds of turmoil SOS AIDS is striving to remedy. They are doing so in order to gain control off our main minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold that garner an estimated $180 million in revenues each year.

The main reason that these minerals are in such high demand is because they are critical in the fabrication of digital cameras, laptops, cell phones, portable musical devices and video games. Yet, some of these battlefield minerals are not widely found over much of the world. Therefore, there is great competition for them in the Congo and some individuals will stop at nothing to get them.

All considered, people interested in supporting the necessary reforms in this wartorn land can phone or write letters to Congressional representatives to urge them to ratify the Congo Conflict Minerals Act (S. 891) and the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (H.R. 4128), which are currently undergoing legislative review.[3]

They can also sign petitions directed to members of Congress.[4]

Additionally, they can contact their respective mobile phone manufacturers to indicate that they want the companies to ensure that cell phones are only made from certified conflict-free materials.

As Brian indicated, "The women and girls of the Congo are our sisters and daughters in the larger sense of our all being part of one human family. Therefore, our love and concern for them, as it would be for any other cherished human being, must be present. In relation, I sort of decided to adopt the rest of the world as my family due to my having been orphaned at an early age. Besides, (the) Congolese people deserve unreserved justice and compassion as much as any other people do, as our common welfare is inexorably linked. In fact,only a huge outpouring of care from around the world will help to bring about the kind of changes so desperately needed in this tragically destroyed nation."

Due to a shortage of funds and critical care supplies, the crisis in the Congo is inadequately addressed. Yet many charitable groups are striving their best to provide relief.

Thankfully, several of these agencies have excellent track records. A few of them that come highly recommended are the Women and Girls of the World,Stephen Lewis Foundation, SOS Medical Centres and Women for Women International in the event that any support of their projects might like to be undertaken. [5] As Margaret Mead suggested, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Emily Spence and Brian McAfee are authors living respectively in Massachusetts and Michigan. They have spent many years involved in human rights, environmental and social services efforts. They can be contacted at brimac6@hotmail.com.

References
[1] Ensler E, Lewis S (2008) The never ending war. Huffington Post. Available: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler-and-stephen-lewis/the-never-ending-war_b_150668.html. The Stephen Lewis Foundation (2007 September 13) Stephen Lewis calls for a new UN initiative to end sexual violence in the eastern region of the DRC. Available: http://www.stephenlewisfoundation.org/news_item.cfm?news=1988&year=2007.
[2] Congo/Women, an exhibition featuring photographs by Lynsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, Ron Haviv and James Nachtwey. Available:http://congowomen.org/.
[3] GovTrack.us, 111th Congress, 2009-2010, S. 891: Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009. Available: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-891. GovTrack.us, 111th Congress, 2009-2010,HR 4128: Conflict Minerals Trade Act. Available: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-4128.
[4] Urge Your Senators to Cosponsor the Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009 (Raise Hope for Congo). Available: http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/1659/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6273. Urge Your Representative to Cosponsor the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (Raise Hope for Congo). Available: http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/1659/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6281.
[5] Humanitarian relief organizations: Women and Girls of the World [http://www.womenandgirlsoftheworld.org/],Stephen Lewis Foundation...gt;> Countries...gt; Democratic Republic of ...[http://www.stephenlewisfoundation.org/what_project.cfm?project=3272],
MedicalCentres in Congo -- SOS Medical Centres [http://www.sos-medical-centres.org/africa/congo], and
Women for Women International's Congo initiative at Congo Women Need Your Help | Women For Women International[http://www.womenforwomen.org/global-initiatives-helping-women/help-women-congo.php].

hock study: 12% of kids sexually abused in government custody

2010-01-08T13:25:00.001-08:00

http://rawstory.com/2010/01/study-kids-sexually-abused-govt-custody/

Shock study: 12% of kids sexually abused in government custody
Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Fri, 08 Jan 2010

Some 12 percent of minors held in government custody are sexually abused, and in some facilities the rate reaches a stunning one in three children, says a report released Thursday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The first-ever National Survey of Youth in Custody found that no less than 10 percent of the 26,550 juveniles being held in detention facilities in the US are abused by staff at the facility, while another 2.6 percent report abuse at the hands of other inmates.

Among the facilities studied were six identified to have rates of sexual abuse as high as three in 10. According to the Associated Press, those six facilities are Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in Indiana; Corsicana Residential Treatment Center in Texas; Backbone Mountain Youth Center in Swanton, Maryland; Samarkand Youth Development Center in Eagle Springs, North Carolina.; Cresson Secure Treatment Unit in Pennsylvania; and the Culpeper Juvenile Correctional Center, Long Term, in Mitchells, Virginia.

"The widespread sexual abuse of children in juvenile facilities shows that public officials either aren't paying attention or can't be bothered to do the right thing," said Jamie Fellner, senior counsel for Human Rights Watch. "The high rates of victimization are powerful testimony to the failure of governments to safeguard the boys and girls in their care."

The study was mandated by a 2003 law, the National Prison Rape Elimination Act, which also created the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. Human Rights Watch notes that six months ago the commission set out "comprehensive, effective standards for the prevention, detection, and punishment of prison rape," but the Justice Department has yet to act on those recommendations.

"Every day Attorney General Eric Holder fails to promulgate national prison rape elimination standards is another day in which kids and adults are being abused behind bars," Fellner said. "The attorney general already has on his desk proposed standards that reflect the best thinking and effective practices to end this widespread scourge. There is no need to reinvent the wheel or to delay moving forward."

The survey found that gay youth were at higher risk than heterosexual youth, with one in five reporting abuse at the hands of a staffer or fellow inmate. Males were more likely to report being abused than females (10.8 percent to 4.7 percent). And 95 percent of those abused by staff reported that the abuser was female. But that number may be influenced by the fact that 91 percent of youth in custody are male.

The AP reports:
Although advocates said the level of abuse wasn't surprising, the prevalence of sexual abuse by staff, particularly female workers, was shocking, said Linda McFarlane, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, which fights to end sexual abuse of those who are detained.

"Many of these are already the most vulnerable and traumatized youth from all of our communities and they're placed for custody because they're considered to be a danger," she said. "If sexually abused in those very institutions that are supposed to help them prepare for life in the community, then it's just an incredible travesty."
The Associated Press also notes that sex abuse by staffers was higher in state-run facilities than in privately-run or municipal detention centers, and smaller facilities appear to have lower abuse rates than larger ones.

The study investigated a 12-month period, and was carried out from June, 2008, to April, 2009.

British woman 'arrested in Dubai after being raped'

2010-01-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/dubai/6949008/British-woman-arrested-in-Dubai-after-being-raped.html

A 23-year-old British woman on holiday in Dubai told police she had been raped, only to be arrested herself for having illegal sexual intercourse.
By Chris Irvine
Published: 7:30AM GMT 08 Jan 2010

The woman, a Muslim of Pakistani descent, was celebrating her engagement to her 44-year-old boyfriend, and was allegedly attacked when she passed out in a hotel lavatory.

Despite approaching police about the attack, she was arrested after admitting to "illegal drinking" outside licensed premises as well as having sexual intercourse outside marriage. Her fiancé was also charged with the same offences.

The couple from London are now reportedly on bail and understood to be awaiting trial after having their passports confiscated. Should they be found guilty, they could face up to six years in jail.

The woman, who is said to have accepted her boyfriend's marriage proposal during a three-day break, admitted drinking too much alcohol as they celebrated at Dubai Marina's Address Hotel. The waiter is then said to have followed her into the toilets and raped her while she was in a state of semi-consciousness.

After her fiancé found out about the attack, they contacted police, but they were questioned about breaking the country's strict rules, which contain elements of Sharia law.

She was then made to give a blood test to prove she had been drinking, and only was given access to proper medical checks following an appeal from the British embassy, it is claimed.

A cellmate of the woman told The Sun: "She's a British girl but a Muslim, so I think they were tougher on her because of that.
"She was trying to report the rape but soon realised the policemen were more interested in how often she has sex with her boyfriend."

Her attacker is believed to have denied rape, claiming she consented, but he has also been charged with "illegal sex".

A spokesman for the Foreign Office told The Daily Telegraph: "We can confirm two British nationals were arrested in Dubai on 1 January. Our embassy in Dubai is providing consular assistance and we cannot confirm or release further details about the case"

An Address Hotel spokesman told The Sun: "The matter is being investigated by the authorities".

Dubai has strict rules about sexual intercourse and alcohol. In July 2008, British woman Michelle Palmer, was convicted after being caught having drunken sex outside of marriage with Vince Acors. They were given three-month suspended jail sentences.

Sins of the Fathers - Part II

2010-01-04T14:14:00.000-08:00

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/National_News_2/article_6698.shtml

National News
Victims of sexual abuse by priests share shocking stories
By Ashahed M. Muhammad -Asst. Editor-
Updated Jan 1, 2010 - 5:01:47 PM

Sins of the Fathers - Part II

* Click here to read Part 1 of this 4 Part Series

CHICAGO (FinalCall.com) - As a 13-year-old girl in Chicago, Alicia Sample had her entire life ahead of her. She had dreams of being a childcare provider, and with supportive parents, this goal was within her reach.

Finding the public schools in their neighborhood lacking, like many parents, Alicia's chose to send her and their five other children to a prestigious Catholic school, St. Procopius, located on the lower west side of Chicago.

“My father made it clear to us that we were there for the education,” said Alicia. “Education was very key for my mother and father. They always made it clear that even if you were just a struggling Black person, if you have an education, they can't take that away from you.”

Alicia's hardworking father was a foreman for the Zenith Electronics Corporation and ran his own cleaning service while his wife was a stay at home mother whose primary responsibility was to take care of the children.He also took care of his elderly mother who lived with the family.

One afternoon, just two weeks before her 8th grade graduation, Father Terence Fitzmaurice, who at the time was the presiding pastor overseeing the administration of St. Procopius Catholic Church and school, came and got Alicia and her other siblings out of class for an early dismissal.

When Alicia arrived home with her brothers and sisters, they found their mother crying, and were told that their reliable father—the sole provider and backbone of the family—was shot in the back and killed by members of the Chicago Police Department in what they said was a tragic case of mistaken identity.

Alicia said her family was devastated and the smaller children—the youngest being six-years-old—were distressed, sad and confused. Adding to the trauma, the next morning when they went upstairs to wake their grandmother, they found she had died in her sleep. The emotional trauma sent the family into shock.

Alicia said even though they were the only Black children at the school, and though there was some racism, she and her siblings viewed St. Procopius as a “safe place to learn, to prosper and to grow,” and wanted to stay in school.

Being the second oldest sibling in the family, Alicia always felt responsible to protect and look out for her younger brothers and sisters. She said her older brother, Terrence Sample, who was 14 at the time, had begun to act strange, abusing alcohol. She did not know at the time that he was being sexually abused.

With nowhere to turn, no income possibilities, and a mother needing to pay for two funerals, in came Fr. Fitzmaurice, offering support for the family. However, while he appeared to be a benevolent man of the cloth, allowing them to perform work-study jobs around the St. Procopius property to pay their tuition, it quickly became apparent that he had other, more sinister motives, Alicia recounted.

“I always listened as they said ‘lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil' but they were bestowing evil upon us at the same time,” said Alicia.

Alicia Sample told The Final Call about a six-year ordeal in which she was used as a sex slave, gang raped, sodomized and physically beaten regularly by Fr. Fitzmaurice and others, at his behest.

Fr. Fitzmaurice had a group of young men that acted as his henchmen, and he would sometimes get Alicia out of class during school hours and order Alicia to report to what he called “the clubhouse.”

“It would be explained like I was doing a project or helping with work that needed to be done toward our tuition,” said Alicia.

Once she arrived there, she would be ordered to perform various sexual acts on some of Fr. Fitzmaurice's henchmen, other young priests-in-training, and even other students who went to the school.

Alicia said the priest would order her to perform oral sex on them and tell them to beat her if she refused. He would threaten to have her and her siblings removed from school if she refused to comply with his deviant sexual wishes.

“They would penetrate me sometimes with objects, they would anally rape me,” said Alicia. “Sometimes, they would take all of my clothes and hang me out of the second floor window of the clubhouse and threaten to drop me and say ‘who is going to miss your n----r ass if we drop you?' and my life was just flashing before me,” Alicia said.

Fr. Fitzmaurice also forced her to perform sexual acts on and with him and said if she complied, he would not bother her younger brothers and sisters; however, that proved to be a lie. Thirty years later, Alicia found out that her siblings were abused by Fr. Fitzmaurice. Her sister, who was impregnated when she was 13, had a baby that “came out White as paper,” Alica said.

It doesn't end there

Alicia Sample said Fr. Fitzmaurice would force her and her brother Terrence to commit incest. They would be forced to commit sexual acts on one another while he watched. He would also tell her to do things to her brother, and have her report back whether she did it.

“He (Fr. Fitzmaurice) would become sexually excited, and sometimes he would touch himself in front of me, but if he told me to do something, and I came back and told him I didn't do it, he would beat me. He would get angry and beat me, or he would tell me that I would have to go to the clubhouse and the other guys that would be there would abuse me sexually or beat me,” said Alicia.

For over three decades, she suffered in silence, filled with shame alongside the mental and emotional strain resulting from her abuse as a young teen. She heavily abused drugs and alcohol and suffered from eating disorders. She takes medicine for anxiety, schizophrenia and depression and by her own admission has “been in and out of mental hospitals.”

She also told The Final Call of a 1990 attempt to kill herself and her three sons by sealing the doors and the windows of her apartment and turning on the gas oven. Neighbors smelled fumes, quickly called the fire department and saved Alicia, and her sons from certain death, however, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services removed the children from her custody.

Now 47, Alicia is still trying to put the pieces of her life back together after having her innocent childhood interrupted by a priest she calls a predatory pedophile.

Terrence Sample, her older brother, who now works as a successful paralegal described his mental and sexual abuse by Fr. Fitzmaurice as consisting of “everything under the sun.” He no longer trusts anyone.

“My dreams were corrupted by the church,” said Terrence. “I'm never going to be the same.”

Terry Overton graduated from St. Rita Catholic high school on the southwest side of Chicago. He was a victim of sexual abuse during his teen years at the hands of Father Thomas Swade, who was defrocked by the Archdiocese of Chicago in October 2009. Mr. Overton, now a successful attorney, described years of feeling intimidated, isolated and abandoned as he struggled with drug addiction to ease the pain of his abuse, which he called part of an “institutional pandemic.”

“It is a stripping of your dignity, confidence and humanity,” said Terry, “I was traumatized for decades,” he added.

Terry said priests in the Catholic church are “god-like figures” and that no one intervened on his behalf because his tormentor was “a White man supported by his White institution,” the Catholic church.

Alicia agrees. She was gripped by the same fear.

“I had to keep a mask on my face like nothing was going on, but on the inside you're crying out like ‘somebody please help me' or ‘can I talk to somebody?' but still in your mind, who is going to believe you?” she asked. “Who is going to believe me over a priest? I'm just a young Black girl.”

James Calmese was a victim of Father John Calicott, a Black Catholic priest at Holy Angels Church who admittedly engaged in sexual misconduct with teenage boys back in 1976.

Like many young Black boys, James enjoyed playing basketball and going out to eat with the rest of the youth at the church, but it came with a price.

“Once he took you to that hotel and pinned you to that bed, you had to take your mind elsewhere and leave your body there,” said James. Fr. Calicott was defrocked by the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese in September 2009.

In a report delivered to The Final Call in late November 2009, specifically responding to allegations of racial discrimination in the abuse settlement process, the Archdiocese of Chicago acknowledged that a majority of the allegations they heard from Black victims involved Terence Fitzmaurice (17 claims) and Victor Stewart (33 claims).

The Archdiocese of Chicago has settled with the claimants in this series of articles, however, Atty. Phillip Aaron, charges that the settlement offers were not made in good faith. Atty. Aaron alleges the Archdiocese of Chicago engaged in legal hardball, offering settlements only to avoid further discovery of evidence that could expose higher-ups in the Archdiocese of Chicago to possible criminal liability if the statute of limitations has not run out.

The Archdiocese of Chicago did reach an agreement with Fr. Fitzmaurice's priestly order, the Benedictines, to contribute to the settlement of claims against him, however, according to Susan Burritt, spokesperson for the Archdiocese, the Benedictines are an entity canonically and civilly separate. Even with that being the case, the Archdiocese of Chicago has made every attempt to address the abuse claims of victims, she said.

Atty. Matthew Walsh, lawyer for the Benedictine Order on behalf of the law offices of Hinshaw and Culbertson, LLP confirmed in a recent telephone interview with The Final Call that Terence Fitzmaurice is deceased.

For these victims, despite receiving financial settlements and the defrocking of priests years later, a sense of justice and closure remain elusive.

David Nolan described how at the age of 13, he was abused by Father Victor Stewart, who he viewed as “superhuman” and placed on a high pedestal as a young parishioner at St. Charles Lwanga on Chicago's south side.Instead of finding a mentor to help with his childhood dream of entering the priesthood, he found a tormentor.

“My whole world was shaken,” said David, now 42, recounting emotionally and physically painful episodes of sexual abuse and assault.

David remembers the aftermath of the first assault: Fr. Stewart menacingly told him, “You know you wanted it!” Then the priest ordered him to put his clothes on, and took him on a shopping spree at a nearby mall seemingly as a “reward.”

David was confused and scared, but after gathering up enough courage to go to the Chicago Police seeking justice and armed with over 75 names of individuals who had been molested, he was met with scorn and derision. Police laughed and accused him of lying, David recalled.

Living with shame and constant fear of retaliation from the Chicago police and those loyal to Fr. Stewart, David eventually left the church and abused alcohol and drugs to help him cope. He even attempted suicide by drinking a cocktail of Pepsi and anti-freeze.

David feels current Mayor Richard M. Daley shares responsibility, because he was the Illinois states attorney at the time, as well as Bishop Raymond Goedert, a well-respected member of the Chicago Archdiocese, who at that time was the Vicar of Priests.David alleges Bishop Goedert was complicit in the cover-up of rampant sexual abuse and is dissatisfied with the response from Francis Cardinal George, head of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

“Cardinal George has never even offered to sit down and pray with us,” said David, whose abuser, Fr. Victor Stewart, died in June 1994 at the age of 54.

Alicia has received a financial settlement; however, there are other aspects of the settlement, dealing with her medical and counseling needs that church officials have not lived up to, she said.

“It's not about the money, it never was,” said Alicia. “My life cannot be given back to me in a dollar amount.”

She said the abuse shattered her faith in the institution of the Catholic Church, but did not take away her faith in God. She is committed to helping others who may be suffering silently. Her three sons, age 30, 26 and 19, support her.

“I want to help somebody. I want somebody to know that they're not alone. I felt like I was totally alone, just all alone,” Alicia said.

Sins of the Fathers - Part I

2010-01-04T14:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/National_News_2/article_6632.shtml

Catholic Church accused of denying justice to Blacks abused by priests
BY ASHAHED M. MUHAMMAD -ASST. EDITOR- | LAST UPDATED: DEC 8, 2009 - 8:32:16 AM
Black victims of sex abuse charge inaction, cover-up by the Catholic Church

‘For centuries the Church hierarchy has been a rigid, secretive, all male monarchy and remains so today; that is the crux of the crisis right there.’
—David Clohessy,

Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP)

CHICAGO (FinalCall.com) - Attorney Phillip Aaron said after hearing the emotional stories of victims of sexual abuse by religious authorities within the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church in Chicago, he felt obligated to help.

Part I of a series

Mr. Aaron, a legal representative for dozens of Black men who allegedly were sexually abused by Catholic priests while in their teens, is leading the charge on behalf of his clients, who claim the religious hierarchy was slow to respond to their complaints, and once responding, were uneven in their dispensation of financial compensation and subsequent counseling services that were made available to White victims.

“Somebody had to help these guys,” Atty. Aaron told The Final Call “I think that I would die if I didn't.”

For the last nine years, Atty. Aaron has worked on behalf of at least 50 Black victims of pedophiles. Some say the abuse began when they were as young as age nine.

David Nolan, now 42, said his sordid tale of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest began when he was 13 years old. He said the priest used his position of authority and power to have sex with dozens of young boys at will, and seemingly without fear of punishment.

“We put them (priests) on pedestals almost to the point where I thought they were more than superhuman in a sense,” said Mr. Nolan. At one time, Mr. Nolan tried to tell, however, when he went to the Chicago Police, they called him a liar and laughed at him. Scared with no resources and no protection, Mr. Nolan's victimizer forced him to recant. Even after many complaints by members of the congregation, his victimizer was transferred to a bigger church on Chicago's Southside.

“No one cares about young Black boys being molested, but I'm reading in the news everyday how holy hell is being raised by White victims being sexually abused,” said Mr. Nolan, who said a young male relative was also sexually abused by the same priest.

Reginald Montgomery's nightmare of abuse also began at age 13, when he was homeless after being kicked out of the house.

He looked up to his priest as a father figure, until one evening the priest told him he could sleep upstairs in the rectory. The seemingly benevolent priest came and woke him up.

“I felt somebody rubbing on me.” Mr. Montgomery said when he opened his eyes, “He was standing there in his underwear.”

“He just did what he wanted. I tried to get him off me, but he was stronger then me. He actually raped me,” said Mr. Mongtomery.

David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said the guarded and mysterious nature of the inner-workings of the Catholic Church throughout history were key factors creating an atmosphere where priests could engage in this type of sexual abuse, almost at will.

“For centuries the (Catholic) Church hierarchy has been a rigid, secretive, all male monarchy and remains so today; that is the crux of the crisis right there,” said Mr. Clohessy. “With virtually no checks and balances, you have almost limitless power in the hands of a few secretive men. That alone is a recipe for disaster,” he added.

According to their website, SNAP “is the nation's oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims.”

For its part, the Roman Catholic Church has acknowledged this problem, with an intensified effort and focus over the last two decades in which a number of institutional controls have been put in place.

According to officials from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, every effort is being made to resolve cases of sexual abuse involving priests in order to right the wrongs of the past, no matter how long ago the abuse occurred.

In an exclusive interview with The Final Call at the administrative offices of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago on Nov. 13, John O'Malley, director of the Legal Services Department, while acknowledging that institutional racism and bias exists, categorically denied there was inequity in the treatment of Black and White victims of abuse by Catholic priests that were a part of the Chicago Archdiocese.

“It's not true,” said Mr. O'Malley, adding that he had spoken several times with Atty. Aaron regarding allegations of racial disparity.

“The first was that Blacks receive less in settlements than Whites; that's not true. The second is Blacks are demeaned in the process; that's not true. And the third is (Black) people are offered less in counseling services than White people; that's not true. None of those three allegations are true,” said Mr. O'Malley.

“Cases are unique, they are individual and they are based on a lot of circumstances,” Mr. O'Malley added.

At the time of The Final Call interview, no official numbers were available, Mr. O'Malley said he looked into the charges made by Atty. Aaron's clients and said he was “disappointed” that the race issue has continuously been raised. He challenged Atty. Aaron to identify the financial disparity in the records of those clients who have received financial settlements.

However, on November 20, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago delivered a report to The Final Call complied by the law firm Pugh, Jones, Johnson and Quant. According to the report, there was no evidence of racial discrimination during the review or settlement process.

“It has never been an Archdiocesan practice to compile statistics about abuse claims based on race or ethnicity. However, it felt compelled to do so when these allegations were made,” read the statement from the Chicago Archdiocese.

“The outside investigators found no evidence in determining monetary settlements. They also found no evidence to suggest that the review and settlement process differed based on race.”

In the 27-page report, the law firm did indicate that the “perception of having been demeaned is disproportionately felt by African-American claimants.” This was attributed to the fact that a quarter of the claims brought by Blacks were against a cleric who is a member of the Benedictine Order of St. Procopius Abbey. According to the law firm, it employed a “deposition-style statement” in its evaluation and settlement process that differs from the process used by the Chicago Archdiocese. Any other differences in settlement amounts were attributed to “race neutral factors.”

A crisis in the Catholic Church

In 2002 the powerful United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the governing leadership body comprised of the Catholic hierarchy nationwide, established a “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” to address allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. According to the organization, the charter also contains guidelines for accountability, reconciliation, healing, and the prevention of future abuse.
The late Pope John Paul II, in an April 23, 2002 address to the Cardinals of the U.S. and officers of the USCCB, said the sexual abuse of young people is “by every standard wrong and rightly considered a crime by society; it is also an appalling sin in the eyes of God.”

In his message at Washington Nationals Stadium on April 17, 2008 to the Catholic faithful, Pope Benedict XVI addressed challenges facing the Catholic Church regarding pedophilia within Catholic clergy.

“No words of mine could describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” said the pope. “It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention. Nor can I adequately describe the damage that has occurred within the community of the Church,” he added.

In a 2004 letter written by Francis Cardinal George to all of the parishes within the Chicago Archdiocese, he wrote, “The Church is called to be holy; for our sanctification, Christ died. The Church has saints, but each saint is a reformed sinner. The sins of each harm us all. Each day I pray for those who have been sexually abused by priests of the Archdiocese. No matter when or how that abuse occurred, terrible harm, spiritual and psychological and sometimes physical, was inflicted. I pray also for the priests who have to face the Lord and his people as well as themselves.” In 1990, Francis Cardinal George was appointed a Bishop by then Pope John Paul II and served on the West Coast. In 1997, he was named Archbishop of Chicago. Francis Cardinal George, also serves as president of the USCCB, a position he has held since 2007.

In Mr. Clohessy's view, the words as well as the collective actions of the Roman Catholic hierarchy are “largely public relations,” however, representatives from the Church say that transparency, and a continuous outreach effort is being made to right the wrongs of the past.

Large financial settlements

Media reports of financial settlements awarded to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests are heard daily with dollar figures climbing into the millions.

As a case in point, the Archdiocese of Chicago has paid out millions in financial settlements to victims of sexual misconduct and abuse involving priests over the years.

According to their 2008 annual report, the Archdiocese of Chicago paid out $11 million in fiscal year 2008, $8.6 million in fiscal year 2007 and $17.7 million in fiscal year 2006. For the period covering fiscal years 2001 through 2007, the Archdiocese of Chicago paid a total of $64.7 million “for settlements of sexual misconduct, related legal expenses and other costs related to direct victim assistance,” according to financial reports.

On August 12, 2008, the Archdiocese of Chicago announced a $12.675 million financial settlement to be paid to 16 victims of sexual abuse by eleven Catholic priests and as recently as July 21, 2009, announced another $3.9 million financial settlement to be paid to six victims of sexual abuse involving four former Catholic priests between 1970 and 1986.

Mr. Clohessy says despite the large financial settlements, the Roman Catholic Church is not being financially crippled and the filings by various U.S. Catholic dioceses seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in advance of civil trials are simply used as part of the cover-up strategy.

Seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection halts action in civil lawsuits and bars the filing of new suits while the church reorganizes its finances. Wilmington, Delaware, Davenport, Iowa, Spokane, Washington, San Diego, California and Tucson, Arizona are just some of the dioceses that used Chapter 11 bankruptcy to allegedly shield themselves from claims by victims.

“The common denominator is they all filed for bankruptcy on the eve of a trial at which the bishop was going to have to take the witness stand and put his hand on that Bible, and face tough questions in open court about what he did,” said Mr. Clohessy. “The bottom line is what the bishops fear is their own complicity (being) scrutinized and they will do anything to prevent that, even if it means seeking bankruptcy protection,” he added.

Black Catholics in the U.S.

It would not be unusual if an image of a Black person did not immediately come to mind when thinking of adherents to Catholicism. The vast majority of Catholics in Chicago are White and Latino, and the same is true nationwide.

The Chicago Archdiocese serves a little over 2.3 million Catholics, of those, approximately 90,000 or 4 percent are Black.

According to the Department of Communications for the USCCB, there are a little over 68 million Catholics in the U.S., and of those, 3 million are Black. Of the 195 archdioceses and dioceses in the U.S., only six are led by Black Bishops. There are 41,489 diocesan and religious order priests in the U.S., with only 250 being Black. Of 16 Cardinals in the U.S., none are Black.

Similar to findings that rogue police officers with numerous complaints are often stationed in neighborhoods largely populated by Blacks and Latinos who lack economic and political power, and despite denials from the Catholic Church, a similar dynamic appears to be at work with offending Catholic priests finding themselves quietly transferred to parishes in Black and Latino neighborhoods.

“The sad fact is they are less inclined to tell if abuse occurred, less inclined to be believed if they do report it, distrustful of law enforcement and more trusting of religious authorities,” said Mr. Clohessy.

“People coming forward to talk about being abused by priests is a difficult thing,” said Mr. O'Malley. “Priests are trust figures in their lives like a parent or a family member and talking about that is hard, so I would not speak harshly of anyone who said it was a difficult process,” he added.

“This is true racism in America,” said Mr. Nolan. “We found out that the Catholic Church doesn't have love for young Black Catholics.

“We were young devout Black Catholics who cared about God, who were good kids, not in gangs, not in trouble, but this man took our innocence and they helped cover it up.”

(Coming soon: Part II: “The Silent Screams of the Victims.”)

A Peril in War Zones: Sexual Abuse by Fellow G.I.’s

2009-12-28T16:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/us/28women.html

December 28, 2009
WOMEN AT ARMS
A Peril in War Zones: Sexual Abuse by Fellow G.I.’s
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

BAGHDAD — Capt. Margaret H. White began a relationship with a warrant officer while both were training to be deployed to Iraq. By the time they arrived this year at Camp Taji, north of here, she felt what she called “creepy vibes” and tried to break it off.

In the claustrophobic confines of a combat post, it was not easy to do. He left notes on the door to her quarters, alternately pleading and menacing. He forced her to have sex, she said. He asked her to marry him, though he was already married. He waited for her outside the women’s latrines or her quarters, once for three hours.

“It got to the point that I felt safer outside the wire,” Captain White said, referring to operations that take soldiers off their heavily fortified bases, “than I did taking a shower.”

Her ordeal ended with the military equivalent of a restraining order and charges of stalking against the officer. It is one case that highlights the new and often messy reality the military has had to face as men and women serve side by side in combat zones more than ever before.

Sexual harassment and sexual assault, which the military now defines broadly to include not only rape but also crimes like groping and stalking, continue to afflict the ranks, and by some measures are rising. While tens of thousands of women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, often in combat, often with distinction, the integration of men and women in places like Camp Taji has forced to the surface issues that commanders rarely, if ever confronted before.

The military — belatedly, critics say — has radically changed the way it handles sexual abuse in particular, expanding access to treatment and toughening rules for prosecution. In the hardships of war, though, the effects of the changes remain unclear.

The strains of combat, close quarters in remote locations, tension and even boredom can create the conditions for abuse, even as they hinder medical care for victims and legal proceedings against those who attack them.

Captain White said she had feared coming forward, despite having become increasingly despondent and suffered panic attacks, because she was wary of she-said-he-said recriminations that would reverberate through the tightknit military world and disrupt the mission. Despite the military’s stated “zero tolerance” for abuse or harassment, she had no confidence her case would be taken seriously and so tried to cope on her own, Captain White said.

A Pentagon-appointed task force, in a report released this month, pointedly criticized the military’s efforts to prevent sexual abuse, citing the “unique stresses” of deployments in places like Camp Taji. “Some military personnel indicated that predators may believe they will not be held accountable for their misconduct during deployment because commanders’ focus on the mission overshadows other concerns,” the report said.

That, among other reasons, is why sexual assault and harassment go unreported far more often than not. “You’re in the middle of a war zone,” Captain White said, reflecting a fear many military women describe of being seen, somehow, as harming the mission.

“So it’s kind of like that one little thing is nothing compared with ‘There is an I.E.D. that went off in this convoy today and three people were injured,’ ” she said, referring to an improvised explosive device.

Common Fears

By the Pentagon’s own estimate, as few as 10 percent of sexual assaults are reported, far lower than the percentage reported in the civilian world. Specialist Erica A. Beck, a mechanic and gunner who served in Diyala Province in Iraq this summer, recalled a sexual proposition she called “inappropriate” during her first tour in the country in 2006-7. “Not necessarily being vulgar, but he, you know, was asking for favors,” she said.

She did not report it, she said, because she feared that her commanders would have reacted harshly — toward her.

“It was harassment,” she said. “And because it was a warrant officer, I didn’t say anything. I was just a private.”

Her fears were common, according to soldiers and advocates who remain skeptical of the military’s efforts to address abuse. A report last year by the Government Accountability Office concluded that victims were reluctant to report attacks “for a variety of reasons, including the belief that nothing would be done or that reporting an incident would negatively impact their careers.”

When Sgt. Tracey R. Phillips told a superior about an unwanted sexual advance from a private the night their unit arrived in Iraq in May, the accusations unleashed a flurry of charges and countercharges, an initial investigation of her on charges of adultery, a crime in the military justice system, and, according to her account, violations by her commanders of the new procedures meant to ease reporting of abuse.

In the end, she was kicked out of Iraq and the Army itself, while the private remained on duty here.

The military disputed her account but declined to state the reasons for sending her out of Iraq. Her paperwork showed that she received an honorable discharge, though with “serious misconduct” cited as the reason. The so-called misconduct, she said, stemmed from the Army’s allegation that she had had an inappropriate relationship with the private she accused. She denied that.

“If I would have never, ever, ever said anything, I wouldn’t be sitting here,” she said in an interview at her parents’ home near San Antonio. “I’d still be in Iraq.”

At bases around Iraq, many said that acceptance and respect for women in uniform were now more common than the opposite. In part, they said, that reflects a sweeping change in military culture that has accompanied the rise of women through the ranks and into more positions once reserved for men.

“It’s not tolerated — it’s just not,” said Lt. Brenda L. Beegle, a married military police officer, referring to sexual harassment and abuse.

In an interview at Liberty Base, near Baghdad’s airport, she said: “Everyone has heard stories about bad things that have happened. I’ve never had an issue.”

Although exact comparisons to the civilian world are difficult because of different methods of defining and reporting abuse, Pentagon officials and some experts say that the incidence of abuse in the military appears to be no higher than in society generally, and might be lower. It appears to be even lower in combat operations than at bases in the United States, because of stricter discipline and scrutiny during deployments, as well as restrictions on alcohol, which is often a factor in assaults, for example, on college campuses.

Complaints Increase

The number of complaints, though, is rising. Across the military, there were 2,908 reported cases of sexual abuse involving service members as victims or assailants, in the fiscal year that ended in September 2008, the last year for which the Pentagon made numbers available. That was an 8 percent increase from the previous year, when there were 2,688.

In the turbulent regions from Egypt to Afghanistan where most American combat troops are now deployed, the increase in reported cases was even sharper: 251 cases, compared with 174 the year before, a 44 percent increase. The number in Iraq rose to 143, from 112 the year before. Everyone agrees that those represent only a fraction of the instances of assault, let alone harassment.

“A woman in the military is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq,” Representative Jane Harman, a Democrat from California, said at a Congressional hearing this year, repeating an assertion she has made a refrain in a campaign of hers to force the military to do more to address abuses.

At least 10 percent of the victims in the last year were men, a reality that the Pentagon’s task force said the armed services had done practically nothing to address in terms of counseling, treatment and prosecution. Men are considered even less likely to report attacks, officials said, because of the stigma, and fears that their own sexual orientation would be questioned. In the majority of the reported cases, the attacker was male.

Senior Pentagon officials argued that the increase in reports did not necessarily signify a higher number of attacks. Rather, they said, there is now a greater awareness as well as an improved command climate, encouraging more victims to come forward.

“We believe the increase in the number of reported cases means the department is capturing a greater proportion of the cases that occurred during the year, which is good news,” said the Pentagon’s senior official overseeing abuse policies, Kaye Whitley.

The military can no more eradicate sexual abuse than can society in general, but soldiers, officers and experts acknowledge that it is particularly harmful when soldiers are in combat zones, affecting not only the victims but also, as the military relies more than ever on women when the nation goes to war, the mission.

“For the military the potential costs are even higher as it can also negatively impact mission readiness,” the Pentagon’s annual report on sexual abuse said, referring to sexual violence. “Service members risk their lives for one another and bear the responsibility of keeping fellow service members out of harm’s way. Sexual assault in the military breaks this bond.”

Even investigations into accusations, which are often difficult to prove, can disrupt operations. In Sergeant Phillips’s case, she was relieved of her duties leading a squad of soldiers refueling emergency rescue helicopters and other aircraft at Camp Kalsu, south of Baghdad.

Cases like hers suggest that the vagaries of sex and sexual abuse, especially in combat zones, continue to vex commanders on the ground, despite the transformation of the military’s policies.

The majority of sexual abuse allegations end with no prosecution at all. Of 2,171 suspects of investigations that were completed during the fiscal year that ended in September 2008, only 317 faced a court-martial. Another 515 faced administrative punishments or discharges. Nearly half of the completed investigations lacked evidence or were “unsubstantiated or unfounded.”

The Pentagon, facing criticism, maintains that it has transformed the way it handles sexual abuse. In the wake of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as highly publicized cases and revelations of rampant abuse at the Air Force Academy in 2003, the Pentagon created a single agency to oversee the issue and rewrote the rules of reporting, treatment and prosecution. Beginning in October 2007, the Uniform Code of Military Justice expanded the provision that once covered rape — Article 120 — to include other offenses, like indecent exposure and stalking.

The Army, which has provided the bulk of the forces in Iraq, has increased the number of investigators and lawyers trained to investigate accusations. Most bases now have kits to collect forensic evidence in rape cases, which was not the case immediately after the invasion in 2003.

Larger field hospitals in Balad and Mosul now have the same type of sexual assault nurse examiners widely used in the civilian world, as well as a dozen other examiners who are not nurses but are trained to conduct forensic examinations.

The military has set up a system of confidential advisers women can turn to who are outside the usual chain of command — an avenue Sergeant Phillips said she had been denied.

If they want to, the women can now seek medical treatment and counseling without setting off a criminal investigation. And all the services have started educational programs to address aspects of a hierarchical warrior culture that some say contributes to hostility toward women. Posters for the campaign blanket bulletin boards in offices, chow halls and recreational buildings on bases across Iraq.

The military’s efforts, however well intentioned, are often undermined by commanders who are skeptical or even conflicted, suspicious of accusations and fearful that reports of abuse reflect badly on their commands. The Pentagon task force also reported that victims of assault did not come forward because they might “have engaged in misconduct for which they could be disciplined, such as under-age drinking, fraternization or adultery.”

Marti Ribeiro, then an Air Force sergeant, said she was raped by another soldier after she stepped away from a guard post in Afghanistan in 2006 to smoke a cigarette, a story first recounted in “The Lonely Soldier,” a book by Helen Benedictabout women who served in Iraq and elsewhere. When she went to the abuse coordinator, she was threatened with prosecution for having left her weapon and her post.

“I didn’t get any help at all, let alone compassion,” said Ms. Ribeiro, who has since retired and joined the Service Women’s Action Network, a new advocacy organization devoted to shaping the Pentagon’s policy.

The hardships of combat operations often compound the anguish of victims and complicate investigations, as well as counseling and treatment. The Government Accountability Office suggested that the “unique living and social circumstances” of combat posts heightened the risk for assault. Both the G.A.O. and the Pentagon’s task force found that, despite the Pentagon’s policy, remote bases did not have adequate medical and mental health services for victims. The task force also found that abuse coordinators and victim advocates were often ill trained or absent.

As a result, victims often suffer the consequences alone, working in the heat and dust, living in trailers surrounded by gravel and concrete blast walls, with nowhere private to retreat to. In Captain White’s case, she had to work and live beside the man who assaulted and stalked her until their deployment ended in August and they both went home.

“You’re in such a fishbowl,” she said. “You can’t really get away from someone. You see him in the chow hall. You see him in the gym.”

The Danger Nearby

Captain White’s case is typical of many here, according to military lawyers and experts, in that she knew the man she said assaulted her, circumstances that complicated the investigation and prosecution.

She had dated the warrant officer when they arrived in Fort Dix, N.J., for predeployment training with the 56th Stryker Combat Team. The newly revised article of the Uniform Code of Military Justice says that “a current or previous dating relationship by itself” does not constitute consent.

Once at Camp Taji, a sprawling base just north of Baghdad, she grew troubled by his behavior. He cajoled her with presents and sent her e-mail messages. She said that for fear of running into him, she stopped drinking water after 7 p.m. so she would not have to go to the latrine at night alone.

She never came forward herself. Her case came to light only when military prosecutors questioned her about another investigation involving the warrant officer. He was ultimately charged with 19 offenses, said Lt. Col. Philip J. Smith, a spokesman for the division that oversaw operations in central Iraq. The charges included seven counts of fraternization and two of adultery, interfering with an investigation and, in Captain White’s case, stalking.

After their deployment ended in September, the officer pleaded guilty and resigned from the Army in lieu of prosecution, Colonel Smith said.

Captain White said that she was satisfied with the legal outcome of her case, though her account of it highlighted the emotional strains that sexual abuse causes.

“I’m not saying that I handled it the best way,” she said in an interview after her own retirement from the Army, “but I handled it at the time and in the situation what I thought was the best way, which was just to keep my head down, keep going — which was kind of an Army thing to say: Drive on.”

Kassie Bracken contributed reporting from San Antonio and Houston.

More Irish Bishops Quit Over Abuse Scandal

2009-12-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/more-irish-bishops-quit-over-abuse-scandal-1850111.html

More Irish Bishops Quit Over Abuse Scandal
Ed Carty and Sarah Stack
The Independent
Fri, 25 Dec 2009 00:00 EST

Catholics across Ireland were attending Christmas Day Mass today as two more bishops resigned in the wake of a devastating clerical child abuse inquiry.

Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field bowed to weeks of intense criticism and pressure, announcing at services across Dublin that they planned to quit their posts as auxiliaries in the archdiocese.

They are the latest senior clerics to stand down after Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin James Moriarty and Bishop of Limerick Donal Murray resigned over the damning Murphy report.

It exposed the Catholic hierarchy's shocking inaction and cover-up of paedophile priests over decades.

Bishops Walsh and Field announced their resignations in a statement as Midnight Mass took place around the country.

"As we celebrate the Feast of Christmas, the Birth of our Saviour, the Prince of Peace, it is our hope that our action may help to bring the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims/survivors of child sexual abuse," they said.

"We again apologize to them."

The bishops added: "Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have so bravely spoken out and those who continue to suffer in silence."

Last night in St Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin - who stopped short of publicly calling for resignations but repeatedly pressured senior churchmen who have served in the capital to reflect - described 2009 as a painful year for the Church.

"The diocese failed its most vulnerable members. The archdiocese failed to recognise what was to be done," the Archbishop said.

Dublin Labour councilor Aodhan O Riordain attended Midnight Mass in Malahide, north of the city, where the bishops' resignations were announced.

"The timing of the announcement is open to question, but the resignations are welcome nonetheless," Mr O'Riordain said.

"It is now time for a full and frank debate about the relationship between the church and state institutions in Ireland, especially education.

"As a principal of a Catholic school, I feel we can hide from that debate no longer."

The Murphy inquiry, based on a sample 46 priests, revealed a catalogue of paedophilia and subsequent cover-ups over three decades because the Catholic hierarchy was obsessed with secrecy and was effectively granted immunity by the police.

Archbishop Martin told Mass-goers last night that the diocese must now be called to renewal by recognising what happened in the past, accepting responsibility for it and investigating criminal behaviour.

In his homily he said it would be foolish to say this was the happiest Christmas in his life or for many in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

Archbishop Martin said the interests of the ordained had been given priority over the needs of the baptised.

"It has been a painful year. But the Church today may well be a better and safer place than was the Church of 25 years ago when all looked well, but where deep shadows were kept buried," he continued.

"The church in Dublin is called to conversion and to renewal."

He said when survivors turned to a priest, they were met by betrayal of priesthood through abuse.

But Archbishop Martin maintained there were also great priests in the diocese.

"They too feel betrayed," he said.

"Many feel that I have not defended them enough and not supported them adequately at this moment.

"If I have failed them, from this mother church of the archdiocese I ask their pardon. I recognise their dedication and I am sure that the people of the diocese do too.

"Similarly from this mother church of the archdiocese I repeat my words to survivors: no words of apology will ever be enough for the hurt caused and the way your hurt was brushed aside."

Delaware Pediatrician Video-taped Himself Raping or Molesting 100 Children

2009-12-28T16:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/us/24pediatrician.html?_r=3&_r

Mask of Sanity: Delaware Pediatrician Video-taped Himself Raping or Molesting 100 Children
Ian Urbina
New York Times
Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:10 EST

For more than a decade, Dr. Earl B. Bradley was a trusted fixture of the small coastal town of Lewes, Del., seeing thousands of children at a private practice he called BayBees Pediatrics.

On Wednesday, an official from the state attorney general's office said that Dr. Bradley might have raped or molested as many as 100 children over the last 11 years, and the police scrambled to identify victims seen on videos that they say the doctor made of the assaults. They also began contacting law enforcement agencies in Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where they believe the doctor may have also seen patients.

Last week, Dr. Bradley, 56, was charged with molesting or raping at least seven patients, including some infants. A court hearing in the case was canceled Wednesday because Dr. Bradley had been placed on suicide watch.

"We are acting as quickly as possible," the attorney general, Joseph R. Biden III, said Wednesday at a news conference.

Mr. Biden said his office would "use every resource necessary to continue to conduct a methodical and deliberate investigation."

Dr. Bradley has been charged with 33 felony counts of first- and second-degree rape, sexual exploitation of a child by photo or film, and endangering the welfare of a child, said Paula T. Ryan, the chief prosecutor in Sussex County.

"The accusations are awful," said Dr. Bradley's lawyer, Eugene J. Maurer Jr. "But they are still just accusations."

Mr. Maurer added that while he had not had enough time to study the case, he suspected that Dr. Bradley had severe mental health issues.

Editor Comment: He has severe mental health issues alright, but not in the conventional sense. The man is, in all probability, a psychopath. Many will be devestated that the man they entrusted with their children's care could do such things, but such deviants routinely select the very role that will grant them maximum trust and exposure to their source of gratification. Psychopaths do not stop until they are realised for what they are and permanently incarcerated.

The police said they had received multiple complaints about the doctor roughly a year ago. "We investigated as far as we could, but there wasn't enough evidence to go forward with charges," said Sgt. Walter Newton, a Delaware State Police spokesman.

Though most of the victims remained unidentified, the police said one was a 2-year-old girl who was interviewed after her mother said Dr. Bradley had touched the girl's genitals.

The police arrested Dr. Bradley on Dec. 16 after the girl's parents complained. Dr. Bradley was released for one night while the police sought search warrants for his office and home. After obtaining those warrants and conducting the searches, he was arrested again on Friday, Ms. Ryan said.

Court documents say that during those searches, the police seized at least six cameras, 100 DVDs and VHS tapes, dozens of reel-to-reel films and a small computer data storage device that contained videos of multiple forced sexual acts with child patients - including intercourse, oral sex and fondling.

Several of the videos, court documents say, show the doctor, in blue scrubs, yelling orders at the toddlers, some of whom are crying or trying to run away. In one video, Dr. Bradley has a "violently enraged" expression on his face, the court papers say.

Dr. Bradley is being held on $2.9 million bond at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Facility in Smyrna, pending a preliminary hearing scheduled for Jan 14.

The police said that they did not know whether Dr. Bradley had practiced in Florida or New Jersey, where he has held medical licenses, or in Pennsylvania, where he attended medical school and did his residency. But they said they were notifying those states of his arrest.

The improper contact between Dr. Bradley and the 2-year-old girl took place during a Dec. 7 visit to his office, according to court records. Afterward, the child told her mother that when Dr. Bradley took her to a basement with toys and candy, he had "hurt" her private area.

The girl's father later said the child made a similar complaint after an October office visit. Following the complaint from her parents, the girl was interviewed Dec. 9 at a Children's Advocacy Center, where medical officials concluded that there was evidence of trauma consistent with sexual contact, according to court papers.

The papers describe one video in which Dr. Bradley abuses a patient who tried twice to run away.

They also describe the reaction of one veteran detective. "Detective describes this as one of the most violent and brutal attacks on a child of any age that he has seen captured on video," the court papers said.

Al Franken's Anti-Rape Amendment Passes, Infuriating Several (Male) Republicans

2009-12-23T05:45:00.001-08:00

Al Franken's Anti-Rape Amendment Passes, Infuriating Several (Male) Republicans
By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
December 23, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/144740/

FRANKEN AMENDMENT BECOMES LAW.... In October, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) proposed a key amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill. Yesterday, it was signed into law.

Motivated by the harrowing violence Jamie Leigh Jones suffered in 2005 while working for Halliburton/KBR in Iraq, Franken pushed a measure to withhold defense contracts from companies that "restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court." Franken's measure passed, 68 to 30. The 30 opponents -- representing 75% of the entire GOP Senate caucus -- were Republican men.

There were some implantation questions from the Pentagon, but after some additional efforts, and overcoming a Republican filibuster, Franken's measure became law after President Obama signed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act over the weekend.

Digby had a good take on this.

The reason I think it's good news isn't just on the substance (which it certainly is) but on the politics. Franken's amendment is driving the Republicans crazy because they basically voted to protect rapists and are now paying a political price for that. And now they are whining that Franken was somehow "uncollegial" because the amendment put them in an embarrassing position (which makes me wonder how many other things issues are swept under the rug because it would make members of the opposition uncomfortable.)

That's the kind of thing the Democrats should do more of. Expose the Republicans' hypocrisy and cruelty by forcing these issues on to the agenda.

Remember, Republicans can barely contain their outrage over this -- Franken proposed a common-sense measure; it passed easily; and opponents of the amendment have faced some severe criticicism as a result. "The nerve of that guy," conservative senators keep saying.

For his part, this is Franken's first key legislative success. Here's to many more like it.

Plight of Contractor Raped in Iraq Spurs Push in Congress

2009-12-21T15:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.truthout.org/topstories/122009ms01

Plight of Contractor Raped in Iraq Spurs Push in Congress
Sunday 20 December 2009
by: Maria Recio | McClatchy Newspapers

Washington - Four years ago, Jamie Leigh Jones, a 20-year old Texas contract employee working in Iraq, was drugged, stripped, beaten and gang-raped by her co-workers on her fourth day in country. She finally managed to get a phone call out from the shipping container where she was being detained — by her employer, KBR, then a Halliburton company.

That call to her father led to a call to her congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, and her rescue after Poe had the State Department locate her. But Jones' attempts at justice — and restitution — were blocked by a little-noticed compulsory arbitration clause in the contracts of private employees working for federal government contractors.

Now, a move by Congress last week, jump-started by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., would protect contract employees by ensuring they have legal recourse.

The provision is in the defense appropriations bill that the Senate approved Saturday after the House passed it Wednesday. It only needs the president's signature to become law.

"This amendment makes all the hard times that I have gone through, when going public with such a personal tragedy, worth every tear shed from telling and retelling my horrific experience," Jones said after the Senate first acted on the bill in October. Jones most recently testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October: "I know this amendment will save so many in the future."

Jones herself is not directly affected by the amendment. But after a hard-fought four-year battle, she won the right to sue her attackers and the company under a ruling in September by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Her case is expected to go to trial next year.

"The congressional amendment tracks the Fifth Circuit decision," said Poe. For Poe, a former Texas district judge who chairs the House's Victims' Rights Caucus and who has been one of Jones' strongest advocates, the new law is a milestone.

Under the congressionally approved provision, the federal government would not be able to do business with companies with $1 million or more in contracts that deny court hearings for victims of assault, false imprisonment or emotional distress. Victims of assault would be able to sue the employers of the alleged attacker, as well as the attacker. The Defense Department can apply a waiver for national security reasons.

Jones, now married and with a child — who she named after Poe — is a teacher, lives in a Houston suburb and advocates for victims through a foundation that bears her name.

Franken was the prime mover behind the legislation, which came about this fall after he was moved by her story.

"Jamie Leigh Jones is a strong, courageous woman, who used her own horrific experience to inspire change," said Franken in a statement.

"I am honored to know her, and honored to have been a part of her cause," Franken said. "I came to Washington to stand up for folks like Jamie Leigh, and stand up to the powerful interests that too often silence their voices."

The provision had a contentious debate in the Senate, where it passed in October 68-30 — engendering a vocal critique of the 30 all white, all male "no" voters, including Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. Cornyn, a former Texas Supreme Court judge, said that he was a strong advocate for victims but he was opposed to a provision that would benefit trial lawyers.

All 17 female senators voted for the amendment.

"This kind of violent crime should not be obscured by politics or partisanship," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. "The fact is, a Texas woman serving our country in Iraq was brutally sexually assaulted. She deserves to have her day in court."

England: Two 10-year-old boys charged with raping girl, 8

2009-12-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/6828579/10-year-old-boys-charged-with-raping-girl-8.html

England: Two 10-year-old boys charged with raping girl, 8
Matthew Moore
Telegraph
Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:34 EST

Two 10-year-old boys have been charged with the rape of an eight-year-old girl. The alleged sex attack relates to an incident at a park in Hayes, west London, during the half-term holidays in October.

Police launched an investigation after the girl told her mother that she had been raped by the boys while they were left to play in the park unsupervised. The park where the alleged attack took place, which is overlooked by houses, is next to Uxbridge College's Hayes Community Campus.

The girl was interviewed by detectives from the Metropolitan Police's Sapphire Unit who are specially trained in dealing with sex offences. A Met Police spokesman said the charges were made following advice from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

He added that the two boys, who cannot be named for legal reason, would appear before magistrates in Uxbridge on Thursday. The two boys accused of rape are just over the age of criminal responsibility, which is currently set at 10 years.

Most priest abusers had free rein in schools

2009-12-15T11:02:00.001-08:00

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1215/1224260711618.html

Most priest abusers had free rein in schools
Tue, Dec 15, 2009

ANALYSIS: SINCE ITS publication, it is clear that the Murphy report has accentuated a fundamental shift in the relationship between the Irish people and the Roman Catholic Church, writes MARY RAFTERY

The intimacy of trust which for over a century defined that relationship is nowhere more evident than in the unquestioning access which people allowed priests have to their children. Priests, together with the schools in which they played such a big part, were the other half of the partnership which provided moral foundation to the vast majority of the nation’s children.

In this context, it is worth searching the Murphy report for what it has to say about the exposure of children to abuse directly as a result of clerical access to schools. Every priest in Dublin has some involvement with schools, usually as a member of a board of management and invariably through direct contact with the seven- or eight-year-olds making their First Communion and the 11/12-year-old Confirmation class.

The Dublin diocesan report singles out 21 priests (out of its sample of 46 examined) for mention in the context of their connections to schools. Most of the prominent clerical paedophiles had continuous access to schools. Fr Noel Reynolds for instance, who finally admitted to sexually abusing over 100 children, was parish priest in Glendalough in the 1990s and chair of the board of management of the local primary school.

The Dublin report details complaints made about his behaviour with children in the school, whom he was able to take on various outings, although the principal told the commission that he “never left him in a class on his own”.

Throughout his long career, Reynolds had also been chaplain to numerous schools, including the exclusive, fee-paying Mt Anville Convent in Goatstown, Dublin. Before Glendalough, however, it appears he was viewed with suspicion in only one school – he himself referred to a nun in East Wall who “made life difficult – wanted me in and out of the school in half an hour – because of my talks on the facts of life with children”.

Fr Thomas Naughton’s abuse of children was widely known to the bishops of Dublin by the time they transferred him to yet another parish in 1986. Bishop Donal Murray was deeply immersed in his case and was aware of his criminal activities in the parishes of Valleymount and Donnycarney.

Upon his arrival in Ringsend, Naughton was, according to the Dublin report, “despite his background, given responsibility for some work in schools”. Inevitably, he continued his abuse. The principal of the local girls’ primary school complained about his engaging in “horseplay” with the children and refusing to stop when asked. We also know that he sexually abused a number of boys in this parish.

Then there is the case of Fr Patrick Maguire, another priest who admitted sexually abusing more than 100 children. He was a member of the Columban order, but did some parish work in Dublin and around schools. At one stage, his order sent him around the country on a recruitment drive for youngsters. The Dublin report describes this decision as “disastrous” as it gave him access “to every Catholic school in the country, in effect, to virtually every child in the country”.

“He duly took advantage of that access”, the report notes.

Another priest who made extensive use of schools to source his child victims was Vincentian priest Fr Donal Gallagher. His particular targets were deaf girls. Despite knowledge in the 1980s that he was a child abuser, he was appointed chaplain to St Mary’s School for deaf girls in Cabra. His habit was to abuse the children in confession and then wash his hands afterwards in the altar bowl.

Fr James MacNamee, the Crumlin parish priest and serial paedophile who built a swimming pool in his back garden, was also intimately bound up within the education system. One victim described to the Murphy commission how children would flock around him whenever he arrived at the local primary school. He invariably spent school break times holding hands with boys in the yard.

Fr X (his name is concealed by court order) had a lengthy career of child abuse, much of which was well known to the Dublin bishops. Archbishop Dermot Ryan remarked in the early 1980s that one of the ways he accessed victims was by befriending families involved in “good works” for the parish, including parents who were members of school boards.

Despite this knowledge, Fr X was glibly transferred around the diocese. In one parish, the Dublin report informs us, he “stepped into the role of the previous curate and in that capacity was given free access to the schools of the parish. No information was given to the three other priests who were ministering in the parish. Fr X was given charge of the Confirmation class in one of the schools and it was from that source that the next official complaint arose”.

Fr Septimus, a parish priest, abused a number of boys by savagely beating them on their bare buttocks and masturbating during it in at least one case. He used the local school, to which he had a key, for some of this abuse. One child was so badly beaten that he had to remain in bed for three weeks.

Fr Bill Carney, another serial paedophile, had a long career in schools in Ballyfermot, Ayrfield (on Dublin’s northside), Clonskeagh and Crumlin (Clogher Road). Even after his conviction for the abuse of two young brothers in 1983, he was still saying Mass in schools all over the diocese, and was described by one parish priest as someone who could “really communicate with the children”. This apparently raised no alarm bells among the bishops of Dublin.

Fr Sergius, another career paedophile, was in a new parish in 1999, and was in and out of the local school instructing the children making their Confirmations. Parents began to complain that he “arrived late, smelled strongly of alcohol and was truculent in his demeanour”.

There followed a meeting between the principal, the children’s class teacher, the parish priest and members of the board of management. According to the Dublin diocesan report: “the parish priest expressed surprise that Fr Sergius had been appointed as chaplain to the school. This seems to the commission to be an extraordinary statement. As the archbishop is the patron of the school, the appointment of chaplain is delegated to the parish priest, so the parish priest must himself have asked Fr Sergius to deal with the Confirmation class.”

The report concludes that Fr Sergius “should not have been allowed involvement with the Confirmation class”.

The cases outlined above provide just a sample of how paedophile priests had such easy access to children through the school system. Involvement with schools was (and continues to be) an intrinsic part of the ministry of most diocesan priests.

Consequently, when the Dublin bishops discussed problems of child-abusing priests at their monthly meetings during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and decided to return many of them to parish work, this automatically gave these highly dangerous men immediate and intimate access to schools, to hundreds of children and to more small victims.

As a society, we have chosen to give these bishops enormous and unaccountable power over our education system and over the lives of the vast majority of our children. The Catholic Church has a controlling involvement with 3,000 out of the country’s 3,200 primary schools.

For as long as each local bishop is enshrined in law as patron of all Catholic primary schools in his diocese, with power over the appointment of boards of management, teachers and principals, we should ponder carefully the findings of the Dublin report as they pertain to the negligence of the Dublin bishops in this regard.

© 2009 The Irish Times

Obama Denounces Rape But Washington Has Yet to Do Much About It

2009-12-14T16:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.commondreams.org/print/50579

December 14, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
As War Bleeds Central Africa, Obama Denounces Rape But Washington Has Yet to Do Much About It
Scene on the Ground: Some Hopeful Signs Amidst Pain and Misery
by Danny Schechter

GOMA, KIVU, EASTERN CONGO - After a week in Kinshasa talking about war in Congo, it was time to see it, or at least visit its epicenter in the East. This is where rape is used as a weapon of war, where rebel groups challenge government forces militarily and occupy territory. 1.8 million people have been displaced causing a major humanitarian crisis; territory seems to change hands regularly and, as they say, tension is high.

Will peace break out or should we expect a country in pieces?

It wasn't surprising that President Obama cited rape in the Congo as part of his Nobel rationalization for just wars. But the US is not planning a humanitarian intervention here anytime soon, nor did the President elaborate on the causes of a war that's been underway for at least 15 years. Many argue that US policy contributed to the problem, while its aid program here is anemic.

Hillary Clinton announced a gift of $17 million for a new hospital for rape victims -- that is the cost of 17 US soldiers in Afghanistan -- but local bloggers noted that the US is not supporting HEAL AFRICA, a respected hospital that has provided services to victims for years, but is instead giving the money to a US NGO, the neo-con International Rescue Committee, which does not specialize in medical services.

The South African based Pamazuka news service reports Washington is expanding its military presence in Africa with aid to African countries including Congo:

"... all the available evidence demonstrates that he is determined to continue the expansion of US military activity on the continent initiated by President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s and dramatically escalated by President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. While many expected the Obama administration to adopt a security policy toward Africa that would be far less militaristic and unilateral than that pursued by his predecessor, the facts show that he is in fact essentially following the same policy that has guided US military involvement in Africa for more than a decade.

The State Department budget request -- which includes funding for all US arms sales, military training, and other security assistance programs -- proposes major increases in funding for US arms sales to a number of African countries through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program....

The same trend is evident in the Obama administration's request for funding for the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. With 350,000 committed. There is also $21 million to continue operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo to reform the military (including the creation of rapid reaction force for the eastern Congo and the rehabilitation of the military base at Kisangani)."

The efforts here for peace, and even for the alleviation of the massive rape crisis, has not been a major US priority. While the US helps fund the UN peacekeeping mission MANUC -- which has just been renewed for six months -- Americans are not part of it and Washington does not use its influence to insure its effectiveness. A UN expert's report recently found that the UN itself has helped support some of the very armed groups accused of human rights abuses. The Washington Post reported during the summer that the US-supported military operations also perpetuated the problem; MANUC spends $4 billion a year trying to ease the situation and protect the people.

Last year, the Congo initiated a joint military operation called UMOJA WETU to neutralize a particularly murderous "rebel" force organized by the folks that brought us the Rwandan genocide and who later fled across the border into Congo. It is thought they are being funded by those who profit from the country's instability and chaos.

The FDLR also seemed to benefit Rwanda's strategy vis-a-vis Congo. The Rwandans denied it and finally sent troops to battle against it alongside the Congolese government. There were initial successes in the one-month campaign in which Congo's President Joseph Kabila reached out to his counterpart in Rwanda, President Paul Kagame, in the belief that both sides had an investment in making peace. (Kagame's Rwanda gets more US help than its much larger neighbor, perhaps because of Bill Clinton's guilt about not stopping the genocide.)

Kabila took a risk, a big political risk, because if it failed, he would be accused of collaborating with an enemy.

Many Congolese blame the Rwandans for starting this chaos in the aftermath of the Genocide where a largely Hutu army took refuge in Congo. In those days the war seemed straightforward -- Rwanda's surviving Tutsis pursuing the Hutu that murdered them en masse, but the battles were taking place not in Rwanda, but across the border where Congolese civilians were caught in the crossfire and all sides began plundering Congo's wealthy resources. Slowly this was not just an ethnic conflict, but an economic war fought by militias and armies funded by outside, or with funds stolen from the Congolese.

The Congo had been weakened by the overthrow of the Mobutu regime, the death of President Laurent Kabila and a difficult process of preparing elections, which Kabila's son Joseph won, although the results were challenged by opposition forces who were given positions but later withdrew.

Allies of the Congo, armies from Namibia, Zimbabwe and Uganda went to help Congo while helping themselves to the resources they could grab. Congo was under attack by its friends and enemies while trying to reassert control in the Kivu region at a great cost in lives and instability. On top of everything else, back in 2002 a volcano erupted sending its scalding lava to devastate the city of Goma.

The issue that has put this war on the front burner for many is rape -- and it goes on and on with impunity with human rights groups denouncing the government and the government saying their statistics are distorted. There have been an estimated 500,000 cases.

Kinshasa says there have been prosecutions and they have a "zero tolerance" policy, but when you speak to woman in camps for internal refugees as I did, they are not convinced and live in fear.

The terrorism of grinding poverty is not as big priority for Washington, although I was told by one official here that the US became a superpower because it was Congo's Katanga province that provided the uranium used in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.

It's hard for a first time outsider to understand all the dynamics in what is an incredibly complex mosaic of ethnic groups, ancient hatreds, and the avaricious but covert role of foreign countries and companies.

One UN official told me the Congo is emblematic of a "resource curse" -- lots of wealth the world covets and schemes to get, no matter the cost in lives. Clearly someone is benefiting from all the instability. There are forces, both inside Congo and abroad, that want this country to remain destabilized.

It is easy to latch on to a conspiracy theory or many. Many Congolese blame the Rwandans for perpetuating the conflict for the interests of their leaders. Suspicion is rife; rumors are pervasive. People who have spent a lifetime studying the conflict admit to their own confusions about what is going on.

Keith Harmon Snow writes on Dissident Voice that we are all being snookered, although a lot of his argument is very detailed but based on unnamed "intelligence sources." He reports on a new uprising against Kabila in Equateur Province and says the government has asked that Belgian paratroopers be sent in.

I tried to check this out with my own "sources" in Kinshasa. The response: little evidence. A Parliamentary source wrote me:

"There is absolutely nothing about this in the Belgian media (Dutch nor French language). I passed your question on to a reliable journalist on the national flemish radio and to a member of parliament... But your information confirms rumors here in KIN about dead bodies in the streets of villages in the Equateur Province. And then there are the rumors about a new invasion of Goma by rebels there."

Snow also writes, "The western media broadcasts the suffering in Congo, but the propaganda is simplistic disinformation, and the western news [sic] consuming public eats it up and dismisses the Congo, abandoning the people whose lives are determined in part by the raw materials stolen from them in a state of war and organized crime."

Alas, most of the so-called "consuming public" overseas is not informed and what's worse, largely indifferent. (Why wouldn't they be, given the lack of ongoing media coverage?) As for crime, that is likely. The Observer in London reports, "an estimated $352bn of drug and mafia money was laundered by the major banks at the peak of the credit crunch, while regulators turned a blind eye, since the highly liquid criminal underworld was the only source of the cash necessary to keep the banks' doors open."

American politicians have yet to cite a report by Global Witness that showed foreign mining and trading companies that are buying minerals from suppliers linked to the various armies plundering the Central African treasure house.

"The mineral wealth in eastern Congo is vital to running the modern technological and military machinery of today's world," a friend steeped in African issues writes. "An American University professor named Kenneth Anderson says that the West is attempting to sever Sino-Congolese ties, which means the north to south highway that China is building to give Congo its own lifeline..."

So here we are in the final days of 2009 with a story that goes back to colonialism. If any country needs a "Surge," this is it, but, like in Afghanistan, more soldiers alone will not necessarily help the people because the crisis is not just a military one. It is as much about aggression as ethnic antagonism.

MediaChannel's News Dissector Danny Schechter, author of THE CRIME OF OUR TIME, is making a film in Congo (DRC). For more on his work on the financial crisis, see Plunderthecrimeofourtime.com

Women Left for Dead and the Man Who's Saving Them

2009-12-10T16:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Women-Left-for-Dead-and-th-by-Rady-Ananda-080712-170.html

July 12, 2008
Women Left for Dead and the Man Who's Saving Them

Fahamu (Oxford) granted permission for full reprint.

In the Congo, where hundreds of thousands of women are brutally raped every year, Dr. Denis Mukwege repairs their broken bodies and souls. Eve Ensler visits him and finds hope amid the horror.

I have just returned from hell. I am trying for the life of me to figure out how to communicate what I have seen and heard in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. How do I convey these stories of atrocities without your shutting down, quickly turning the page or feeling too disturbed?

How do I tell you of girls as young as nine raped by gangs of soldiers, of women whose insides were blown apart by rifle blasts and whose bodies now leak uncontrollable streams of urine and feces?

This journey was a departure for me. It began with a man, Dr. Denis Mukwege, and a conversation we had in New York City in December 2006, when he came to speak about his work helping women at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. It began with my rusty French and his limited English. It began with the quiet anguish in his bloodshot eyes, eyes that seemed to me to be bleeding from the horrors he'd witnessed.

Something happened in this conversation that compelled me to go halfway around the world to visit the doctor, this holy man who was sewing up women as fast as the mad militiamen could rip them apart.

I am going to tell the stories of the patients he saves so that the faceless, generic, raped women of war become Alfonsine and Nadine--women with names and memories and dreams. I am going to ask you to stay with me, to open your hearts, to be as outraged and nauseated as I felt sitting in Panzi Hospital in faraway Bukavu.

Before I went to the Congo, I'd spent the past 10 years working on V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. I'd traveled to the rape mines of the world, places like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti, where rape has been used as a tool of war. But nothing I ever experienced felt as ghastly, terrifying and complete as the sexual torture and attempted destruction of the female species here. It is not too strong to call this a femicide, to say that the future of the Congo's women is in serious jeopardy.

I learned from my trip that there are men who take their sorrow and helplessness and destroy women's bodies--and there are others with the same feelings who devote their lives to healing and serving. I do not know all the reasons men end up in one or the other of these groups, but I do know that one good man can create many more. One good man can inspire other men to ache for women, to fight for them and protect them. One good man can win the trust of a community of raped women--and in doing so, keep their faith in humanity alive.

Dr. Mukwege picks me up at 6:30 A.M. It is a lush, clean morning. Eastern Congo, where Panzi Hospital is located, is wildly fertile. You can almost hear the vegetation growing. There are banana trees and cartoon-colored birds. And there is Lake Kivu, a vast body of water that contains enough methane to power a good portion of the sub-Sahara--yet the city of Bukavu on its banks has only sporadic electricity. This is a theme in the Congo. There are more natural resources than almost anywhere else on the planet, yet 80 percent of the people make less than a dollar a day. More rain falls than one can imagine, but for millions, clean drinking water is scarce. The earth is gorgeously abundant, and yet almost one third of the population is starving.

As we drive along the semblance of road, the doctor tells me how different things were when he was a child. "In the sixties 50,000 people lived here in Bukavu. It was a relaxed place. There were rich people who had speedy boats in the lakes. There were gorillas in the mountains." Now there are at least a million displaced Congolese, many of whom arrive in the city daily, fleeing the numerous armed groups that have ravaged the countryside since fighting erupted in 1996. What started as a civil war to overthrow dictator Mobutu Sese Seko soon became "Africa's first world war," as observers have called it, with soldiers from neighboring countries joining in the mayhem. The troops have various agendas: Many are fighting for control of the region's extraordinary mineral wealth. Others are out to grab whatever they can get.

But you have to go back further than 1996 to understand what is going on in the Congo today. This country has been tortured for more than 120 years, beginning with King Leopold II of Belgium, who "acquired" the Congo and, between 1885 and 1908, exterminated an estimated 10 million people, about half the population. The violent consequences of genocide and colonialism have had a profound impact on the psyche of the Congolese. Despite a 2003 peace agreement and recent elections, armed groups continue to terrorize the eastern half of the country. Overall the war has left nearly 4 million people dead--more than in any other conflict since World War II--and resulted in the rape of hundreds of thousands of women and girls.

In Bukavu, the people escaping the fighting walk from early morning to late at night. They walk and walk, searching for a way to buy or sell a tomato, or for a banana for their baby. It is a relentless river of humans, anxious and hungry. "People used to eat three meals a day," says Dr. Mukwege. "Now they are lucky to eat one."

Everyone knows the doctor, an ob-gyn. He waves and stops to inquire about this person's health, that person's mother. Most doctors, teachers and lawyers fled the Congo after the wars started. It never occurred to Dr. Mukwege to leave his people at their most desperate hour.

He first became aware of the epidemic of rape in 1996.

"I saw women who had been raped in an extremely barbaric way," he recalls. "First, the women were raped in front of their children, their husbands and neighbors. Second, the rapes were done by many men at the same time. Third, not only were the women raped, but their vaginas were mutilated with guns and sticks. These situations show that sex was being used as a weapon that is cheap.

"When rape is done in front of your family," he continues, "it destroys everyone. I have seen men suffer who watched their wives raped; they are not mentally stable anymore. The children are in even worse condition. Most of the time, when a woman suffers this much violence, she is not able to bear children afterward. Clearly these rapes are not done to satisfy any sexual desire but to destroy the soul. The whole family and community are broken."

We arrive at Panzi Hospital, a spread-out complex of about a dozen buildings. Eight years ago Dr. Mukwege created a special maternity ward here with an operating room. Panzi as a whole has 334 beds, 250 of which now hold female victims of sexual violence. The hospital and its surrounding property have become, essentially, a village of raped women. The grounds are overwhelmed with children and hunger and need. Every day at least two children here die from malnutrition. Then there are the many problems that result from severe trauma: women with nightmares and insomnia, women rejected by their husbands, women who have no interest in nurturing the babies of their rapists, women and children with nowhere to go.
It is early morning, and the hospital courtyard has been transformed into a temporary church. Women dressed in their most colorful, or perhaps only, pagne (a six-yard piece of brightly patterned cloth that can be wrapped into a dress or skirt) sit waiting for the doctor to arrive and lead the prayer service that begins each day. A dedicated staff of female nurses and social workers are there as well, dressed in their starched white jackets. There is singing, a combination of Pentecostal calls and Swahili rhythms, Sunday-morning voices calling up Jesus.

This morning service is a kind of daily gathering of strength and unity. When the women sing, everything else seems to disappear. They are with the sun, the sky, the drums, each other. They are alive in their bodies, momentarily safe and free.

As they sing, Dr. Mukwege tells me stories about the women in the chorus. Many were naked when they arrived, or starving. Many were so badly damaged he is amazed they are singing at all. He takes enormous pride in their recovery. "I will never be ashamed," the women sing. "God gave me a new heart that I can be very strong."

"At the beginning I used to hear patients' stories," Dr. Mukwege tells me. "Now I abstain." I soon understand why. I meet Nadine (like others in this story, she agreed to be photographed, but asked that her name be changed, as she could be subject to reprisals for speaking out), who tells me a tale so horrendous it will haunt me for years to come.

When we begin talking, Nadine seems utterly disassociated from her surroundings--far away.

"I'm 29," she begins. "I am from the village of Nindja. Normally there was insecurity in our area. We would hide many nights in the bush. The soldiers found us there. They killed our village chief and his children. We were 50 women. I was with my three children and my older brother; they told him to have sex with me. He refused, so they cut his head and he died."

Nadine's body is trembling. It is hard to believe these words are coming out of a woman who is still alive and breathing. She tells me how one of the soldiers forced her to drink his urine and eat his feces, how the soldiers killed 10 of her friends and then murdered her children: her four-year-old and two-year-old boys and her one-year-old girl. "They flung my baby's body on the ground like she was garbage," Nadine says. "One after another they raped me. From that my vagina and anus were ripped apart."
Nadine holds onto my hand as if she were drowning in a tsunami of memory. As devastated as she is, it is clear that she needs to be telling this story, needs me to listen to what she is saying. She closes her eyes and says something I cannot believe I'm hearing. "One of the soldiers cut open a pregnant woman," she says. "It was a mature baby and they killed it. They cooked it and forced us to eat it."

Incredibly, Nadine was the only one of the 50 women to escape.

"When I got away from the soldiers, there was a man passing. He said, 'What is that bad smell?' It was me; because of my wounds, I couldn't control my urine or feces. I explained what had happened. The man wept right there. He and some others brought me to the Panzi Hospital."

She stops. Neither of us has breathed. Nadine looks at me, longing for me to make sense of what she's related. She says,

"When I got here I had no hope. But this hospital helped me so much. Whenever I thought about what happened, I became mad. I believed I would lose my mind. I asked God to kill me. Dr. Mukwege told me: Maybe God didn't want me to lose my life."

Nadine later tells me that the doctor was right. As she fled the slaughter, she says, she saw an infant lying on the ground next to her slain parents. Nadine rescued the girl; now having a child to care for gives her reason to keep going. "I can't go back to my village. It's too dangerous. But if I had a place to live I could go to school. I lost my children but I'm raising this child as my own. This girl is my future."
I stay for a week at Panzi. Women line up to tell me their stories. They come into the interview numb, distant, glazed over, dead. They leave alive, grateful, empowered. I begin to understand that the deepest wound for them is the sense that they have been forgotten, that they are invisible and that their suffering has no meaning. The simple act of listening to them has enormous impact. The slightest touch or kindness restores their faith and energy. The strength of these women is remarkable, as is their unparalleled resiliency. Dr. Mukwege tells me I need to meet Alfonsine (her name also has been changed). "Her story really touched me," he says. "Her body, her case is the worst I have ever seen, but she has given us all courage."

Alfonsine is thin and poised, profoundly calm. She tells me she was walking through the forest when she encountered a lone soldier.

"He followed me and then forced me to lie down. He said he would kill me. I struggled with him hard; it went on for a long time. Then he went for his rifle, pressed it on the outside of my vagina and shot his entire cartridge into me. I just heard the voice of bullets. My clothes were glued to me with blood. I passed out."

Dr. Mukwege tells me, "I never saw such destruction. Her colon, bladder, vagina and rectum were basically gone. She had lost her mind. I was sure she wouldn't make it. I rebuilt her bladder. Sometimes you don't even know where you are going. There's no map. I operated on her six times, and then I sent her to Ethiopia so they could heal the incontinence problem, and they did."

"I was in bed when I first met Dr. Mukwege," Alfonsine says. "He caressed my face. I lived at Panzi for six months. He helped me spiritually. He showed me how many times God makes miracles. He built me up morally."

I look at Alfonsine's petite body and imagine the scars beneath her humble white clothes. I imagine the reconstructed flesh, the agony she experienced after being shot. I listen carefully. I cannot detect a drop of bitterness or any desire for revenge. Instead, her attention is fixed on transforming the future. She tells me with great pride, "I am now studying to be a nurse. My first choice is to work at Panzi. It was the nurses who nurtured me day after day, who loved me back into living."
Alfonsine has ambitions that go beyond Panzi: "I feel like a big person in my community; I can do something for my people. Women must lead our country. They know the way."

Every day about a dozen new women arrive at Panzi Hospital. Most come for surgery to repair a fistula, a rip in their internal tissue. There are two types of fistulas seen here: One is the aftermath of brutal rape, the other the result of birth complications, something that could be prevented if there were adequate maternity health care. These obstetric fistulas are the result of abnormal tearing during the birth process. Many occur when women flee the militias while they are in labor; there is no time to give birth, and the baby dies inside. The women who make it here are the lucky ones. They limp on homemade canes made from tree branches; they trudge slowly in deep pain. Some have walked 40 miles. Because it takes so long to get to the hospital, women have no chance to receive the anti-HIV medications that must be taken within 48 hours after rape. Health experts fear that in a few years, there will be an explosion of AIDS in the Congo.

Dr. Mukwege was once the only doctor at Panzi Hospital able to perform fistula surgery; now he has trained four others. The hospital does 1,000 such operations a year.

I sit in on a typical operation in a clean, safe, but seriously underequipped operating room (nurses use torn pieces of a green dressing gown to tie the woman's ankles to the stirrups). I am able to see the fistula--a hole in the tissue between the woman's vaginal wall and bladder. A hole in her body. A hole in her soul. A hole where her confidence, her esteem, her spirit, her light, her urine leak out.

Because of the prevalence of fistulas, the Panzi complex is soaked in urine. The smell pervades everything. Pee spills out of women in a huge, dirt-floored hangarlike space where hundreds sit all day. Pee spills out in classrooms, leaving puddles on the floor. The women are always wet. Their legs chafe and their skin burns. There are many little girls in pee-stained dresses roaming around Panzi; shy and ashamed, they, too, are victims of rape. The week of my visit, a state agency had turned off the water for the hospital after billing Panzi $70,000 (an insane amount by Congolese standards) because it heard that the hospital, which is private, was receiving money from the West. Staff had to bring in buckets of water from the surrounding neighborhood. To have hundreds of women with fistula-caused incontinence and no water seemed like a crime upon a crime.

I can't help wondering what happened in Dr. Mukwege's life that compelled him to work here, sometimes 14 hours a day. "I was born in Bukavu on March 1, 1955," he tells me. "During my young age my mother was suffering with asthma. In the night when she became ill, I was the one who would go and look for a nurse or bring her medication. We all thought she would die. Even now, each birthday she celebrates, I am so happy to see her alive.

"My father was a pastor. He was very gentle, very human. From him I got the caring to treat patients. When we would go and visit sick people together, he would pray. I would ask, 'Why can't you give them tablets or prescriptions?' He said, 'I am not a doctor.' I decided then that prayer is not enough. People must take things into their own hands. Asking God does not change anything. He gives us the ability to say yes or no. You must use your hands, your mind. When I receive women here who are hungry, I can't say, 'God bless you.' I have to give them something to eat. When someone is suffering, I can't tell her about God, I have to treat her pain. You can't hide yourself in religion. Not a solution."

Dr. Mukwege began as a general practitioner, focusing on pediatrics. When he worked in a clinic in Lemera, a village south of Bukavu, he saw dreadful things happening in maternity. "Women were coming in bleeding day after day, many with severe infections. A woman had a baby and carried it dead in her vagina for a week. It was terrible. This helped me make a total engagement in a new career."
He went back to school to study gynecology in Angers, France, and then returned to Lemera to train the staff in obstetrics and gynecology. After he moved to Bukavu he created a special maternity ward at Panzi. Women who were victims of extreme sexual violence began to arrive. The number grew every day.

Who was--and is--raping the women? The better question might be, who isn't?

The perpetrators include the Interahamwe, the Hutu fighters who fled neighboring Rwanda in 1994 after committing genocide there; the Congolese army; a loose assortment of armed civilians; even U.N. peacekeepers. Christine Schuler Deschryver, who works for a German aid organization and is a fierce advocate for Panzi Hospital and Congolese women, says, "All of them are raping women. It is a country sport. Any person in uniform is an enemy to women."

Many women do not even report the violations, because they are afraid of rejection by their husbands and families. Although there are laws against rape in the Congo, if a woman reports her rape and her rapist is arrested, he can pay his way out and come back and rape her again. Or murder her.

Dr. Mukwege, in contrast, is motivating a different kind of healing army. I speak with a hospital employee named Bonane. "I was in Uganda," he says. "I saw the doctor on TV. He was explaining the atrocities. I realized these are my mothers and sisters. I was so inspired, I came here to work with him."

Dr. Mukwege is married with five children, but his brother, Herman, tells me his family doesn't see him much because his devotion to the women has consumed his life. Although the doctor's energy never flags, I notice an underlying exhaustion in his face and his being, a sleepless despair that comes from dwelling constantly amid violence and cruelty. He says to me, "When you rape a woman, you destroy life and you destroy your own life. Animals don't do this. When a pigeon has sex with another pigeon, it is kind. I am wondering how man has the power of such destruction."

And yet, the status of women in the Congo was dismal long before the wars started. The women work all day in the field and market, carrying the Congo on their backs (sometimes up to 200 pounds in bags strapped to their foreheads). They prepare the dinner, wash the clothes, clean the house, take care of the children, have mandatory sex with their husbands. They have no power, no rights and no value. Many women I talk to ask why I am "wasting my time" with them.

I interview a man who is the keeper of a gorilla preserve. He tells me that when dangerous militias began staking out territory in the park, he went to their commanders and asked if their soldiers would work with him to protect the gorillas. In the end they all agreed. I ask him why he didn't feel compelled to do the same for the women. The question surprised him. He had no answer.

I ask the doctor about the Congo's leader, Joseph Kabila, who in November 2006 became the country's first democratically elected president in 46 years and promised to be the "craftsman of peace." Are things getting better?

Dr. Mukwege sighs. "Kabila," he says, "has done nothing. The fighting here in the east has not stopped. During 2004 my life was threatened; I got phone calls warning me to stop my work or die. The calls have ceased, but it is still very dangerous.

"Visitors come from the international community," he continues. "They eat sandwiches and cry, but they do not come back with help. Even President Kabila has never put his foot here. His wife was here. She wept, but she has done nothing."

UNICEF, ECHO (the humanitarian aid office of the European Commission) and PMU (a Swedish humanitarian organization) are the major supporters of Panzi. Although the hospital can always use more money, the real need is for a political response to the violence. Barring that, Dr. Mukwege would at least like to get real protection for the women once they leave the hospital. "I patch them up and send them back home," he says, "but there is no guarantee they will not be raped again. There have been several cases where women have come back a second time, more destroyed than the first."
On my last day, the doctor asks me if I will lead some exercises for the women that will help alleviate their trauma. We go to the hangarlike building where 250 depressed and sick women are waiting. We begin with breathing. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Then we attach a noise to the breath. Other noises follow. One after another, noise after noise. Then we attach a movement. There is stomping. There is punching. There is mad waving of arms. The women are up on their feet, screaming, releasing guttural sounds of sorrow, rage, terror. In a matter of minutes, I watch them go from broken, mute women to wild, laughing, ferocious beings.

In the midst of this energy, Dr. Mukwege challenges the women to a dance contest. Celebration and power explode from their bodies. A part of each woman is fierce, unbreakable. No one has killed their spirits. The doctor whispers to me, "When I see this joy, this life in the women, I know why I must come back here every day."

The women's frenzy builds and builds. They dance in the hot African sun. They dance in the open road. They literally dance us up a steep hill, hundreds of women and children moving in a single, radiant feminine mass.

If 250 women who have been raped, torn, starved and tortured can find the strength to dance us up a mountain, surely the rest of us can find the resources and will to guarantee their future.

*Eve Ensler is a playwright, an activist and the founder of V-Day. Her latest books are Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security-Obsessed World and Insecure at Last: A Political Memoir. First posted in Glamour Magazine in 2007. Permission to repost piece from Pambazuka News granted by Fahamu (Oxford).

How you can help

The women of Eastern Congo, V-Day and UNICEF-the latter acting on behalf of United Nations Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict are launching a new campaign to urge an end to the femicide and raise money for women's groups in the Congo. You can...

Write a letter addressed to His Excellency, the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila Kabange; demand that he take action to stop the attacks on women. Send it to U.N. Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, P.O. Box 3862, New York, NY 10163, and it will be delivered to Kabila.

Donate directly to Panzi Hospital through vday.org. Money donated to Panzi also goes to establish a City of Joy, a safe haven for the healed women, where they'll learn to become political leaders.
Also see Fahamu Networks for Social Justice (fahamu is kiswahili for 'understanding' or 'consciousness'). "Fahamu has a vision of the world where people organise to emancipate themselves from all forms of oppression, recognise their social responsibilities, respect each other's differences, and realise their full potential."

'Corrective Rape'?

2009-12-10T13:01:00.001-08:00

December 9, 20093:20

A proposed law in Uganda would make execution a possible penalty for homosexuality. And in South Africa, lesbians are targets of "corrective rape."

Girl Gang Raped While Others Watched

2009-12-09T16:41:00.000-08:00

October 31, 20092:03

A 15-year-old girl was gang raped by as many as seven men, while up to a dozen witnesses failed to call the police. Media sources question why no one intervened.

8-year-old's rape opens window to war's legacy for Liberians

2009-12-07T14:08:00.001-08:00

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/12/06/20091206liberia1206.html

8-year-old's rape opens window to war's legacy for Liberians
Daniel González
The Arizona Republic
Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:14 EST

Case of Liberian girl reveals how horrors shattered lives

It was a late afternoon in mid-July. A dozen teenagers and younger children were watching TV in an apartment, waiting for a birthday party to begin.

They were all friends with a shared background: refugees from Liberia whose families had come to the U.S. after fleeing the country's 14-year civil war. In Phoenix, they had formed a tight-knit community concentrated in a sprawling 300-unit apartment complex on the west side.

Suddenly, one of the teenagers had an idea: Let's go to my secret place!

Three other boys and a girl followed him out of the apartment, through the complex and across a narrow, dirt-covered courtyard.

On the way to the secret place - an empty storage shed, 3 feet wide by 5 feet long, attached to a vacant apartment - the boy made a startling proposition. He wanted one of the younger boys, a 10-year-old, to have sex with the girl, who was 8.

No, the girl said. But the older boy persisted.

Come on, he said. I'm going to give you guys gum.

How much, the girl wanted to know.

A whole pack, said the boy, showing her sugar-free Extra gum. Blue Polar Ice. Fifteen pieces.

The boys and the girl entered the shed. The door closed. And then, the single proposition quickly escalated into something even worse. For 10 minutes, police said, the four boys took turns raping the girl.

The episode, and the subsequent rejection of the girl by her father, made international headlines. It also opened a window into the shattered lives of Liberian refugees struggling to adjust in a new land after living through one of the most horrific wars in modern times.

Land of the free

Liberia was supposed to be a paradise.

Private organizations in the United States sent former slaves and free Blacks to West Africa in the early 1800s as part of the Back to Africa Movement, an effort that encouraged African-Americans to return to their ancestral homelands.

The country the African-Americans founded was dubbed Liberia, the land of the free. They named the capital, Monrovia, after James Monroe, the former U.S. president who was a major supporter of the movement.

The former slaves and free Blacks became known as Americo-Liberians, and they prospered in their new country. But they treated the indigenous African people, who made up 95 percent of the country's population, like second-class citizens. Tensions between the Americo-Liberians and the indigenous tribes simmered for more than 100 years.

Finally, in 1980, paradise descended into hell.

A member of the indigenous Krahn tribe staged a military coup, killing the Americo-Liberian president. The new dictatorship was plagued by massive corruption and major human-rights abuses, leading to another coup in 1989. That triggered a full-scale civil war.

The fighting was particularly vicious. Rampaging mobs battled each other in the streets with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, blazing away indiscriminately. Those without guns used machetes and swords. Young boys took part in the fighting and killing, often to avenge the deaths of parents. In all, more than 200,000 people were killed, 5 percent of the population.

Famata Foulkner, 40, a Liberian refugee who lives in Glendale, remembers the day rebels hacked her husband to death in front of her children. "They cut his body into pieces," she said.

But guns, machetes and swords weren't the only weapons of war in Liberia. The mobs also used an especially awful tool to terrorize and control: rape.

An effective weapon

Rape was rampant during the war. So rampant it became part of the culture.

Amnesty International reported that an estimated 60 to 70 percent of the Liberian population were victims of rape or other sexual violence. Men with guns would burst into houses, kill the men and rape the women. The victims included old women, young girls and even men. Children often were forced to watch. Sometimes children were forced to do the raping. Gang rape also was common.

Rape was so common during the war, it became embedded in society.

"The sheer prevalence of this level of sexual violence can begin to seem normal, and the widespread terror can deaden emotions," said Douglas A. Johnson, executive director of the Center for Victims of Torture, a non-profit in Minneapolis that treats torture survivors.

Rape was inexpensive and effective. It inflicted horrible physical trauma on the victim and emotional suffering. Rape victims also were often shunned. Some were thrown out of their houses by family members. Some parents stopped paying for school after their daughters had been raped. In their eyes, their daughter had been "spoiled" in a culture where having children is seen as one of the principal roles of women.

Rape also has a ripple effect, traumatizing not just the victim but also the victim's spouse, children, parents and other family members.

Families - the cornerstone of Liberian society - began to break down, unable to cope.

"Rape can be exceedingly effective in destroying individuals, families and the entire social fabric," said Rebecca Singer, a nurse from Denver who spent many months in Liberia treating rape victims with Doctors Without Borders, an international aid organization.

Years later, many victims, and their families, still haven't recovered from the rapes.

Fleeing Liberia

The raping and killing forced tens of thousands of Liberians to seek refuge in neighboring countries, including the Ivory Coast, where the 8-year-old girl, the four boys accused of attacking her, and their families lived for years.

The conditions in their tiny town were deplorable. The refugees foraged for roots and plants in the bush to eat. They fashioned snares out of old automobile brake cables to catch snakes and rodents for food. They made houses out of sticks and mud. They slept on straw mats laid upon dirt floors. The families lived in such tight quarters, it was not unusual for kids to see parents having sex.

For many Liberians, life continued like this for more than a decade. And even in the camps, where security was weak, rape continued to be a problem in a culture that had come to see it as part of society.

In 2002, war spilled over from Liberia into the Ivory Coast. Thousands of Liberian refugees were forced to flee again. This time, they headed for Abidjan, the Ivory Coast's largest city.

The influx created a refugee crisis, prompting a massive resettlement program by the United Nations. The United States took in some 8,000 Liberian refugees, but many had a hard time adjusting. They had fled not one but two wars. Nightmares, insomnia and other signs of post-traumatic stress disorder were common.

Many of the families were led by young, single mothers, some of whom bore children fathered by their rapists. And some of the children didn't have parents at all - they were killed or lost during the war. So the children came with grandparents or other relatives. Many children had never been to school or had attended only sporadically.

"You had many, many fractured families with very young mothers often trying to raise children with no older family to help guide them or show them what to do," said Larry Yungk, the senior U.S. resettlement officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Liberian refugees also came with cultural norms that sometimes clashed with American ways.

Although English is the main language in Liberia, many of the refugees had lived isolated and uneducated in small villages, where tribal languages are spoken. Children ran around unattended by parents so long as other adults were nearby. Punishing children with a rattan switch or a belt was common. Some parents even punished children by putting hot pepper on their eyes or other sensitive areas.

The first wave of 103 Liberian refugees arrived in Phoenix in 2003. Since then, more than 1,050 have been resettled in the Valley. They clustered mostly in apartment complexes on the west side.

Resettlement agencies helped them with clothing, food, housing and jobs. Counseling to help them cope with all the upheaval and horrendous violence they had experienced also was offered.

But the emphasis was on finding them jobs and places to live, not on coming to grips with the hell that they had endured.

Screams

The neighbors heard the screams first.

They saw the door open and three boys run out of the shed. The boys stopped at a water spigot next to the door, quickly washed their hands and kept running.

Then the little girl came out. She was wearing only her underwear. In her left hand she held her dress. It was black with white straps. A moment later, the fourth boy came out.

The neighbors called the apartment manager. The manager called the police. When police arrived, they found the girl sitting on the curb. Her legs were curled under her. She held her hand over her body below her stomach.

She was tiny. Four feet tall, 59 pounds. Black hair and brown eyes. Tears stained her cheeks. Dirt was smeared on her legs. She had put the dress back on, but it was bunched up in the back, tucked into her underwear. When police walked over, she reached back and fixed the dress.

What happened? the officers asked.

The girl pointed to one of the four boys who hadn't run away.

That boy had sex with me.

Struggles in school

The oldest boy is a member of the Kru ethnic group in Liberia. The other three boys, and the girl, are part of a different ethnic group, known as the Grabo people. The families of the four boys and the girl are originally from Maryland County on the southern coast of Liberia, where the Grabo are the original ethnic group. They lived in the same refugee communities in the Ivory Coast. They became friends at the apartment complex in west Phoenix.

The youngest boy is 9, the oldest is now 15, though he was 14 when police say the girl was attacked. The other boys are 10 and 13. They came to Arizona in 2004 and 2005.

When interviewed separately by police, each boy told officers how one of them had held the girl down while the others, according to police, took turns attacking her.

A detective asked about their demeanor. Were you laughing, crying, joking?

Joking, one boy said.

Each of the boys is accused of violating the girl through various methods. All face charges of sexual assault - the equivalent of rape in Arizona - and sexual conduct with a minor under 15. The two older boys also face kidnapping charges.

The oldest, Steven Tuopeh, was charged as an adult. If convicted, Tuopeh could spend 10 years to life in prison. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also has placed a hold on him, meaning he could eventually be deported. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office is trying to have the 13-year-old tried as an adult, as well. He was the one with the original idea to go to the "secret place," police say. The other boys are charged in juvenile court. The Republic is not identifying the three who are charged as juveniles.

The two youngest boys are related and lived in the same apartment with two distant relatives they considered their grandmothers, though the boys are now in foster care. During hearings, the two grandmothers sit stern-faced on a wooden bench in the back of the courtroom wearing traditional African clothing while the boys sit in big leather chairs next to their lawyers. The boys are so small, the backs of the swivel chairs tower over their heads, making them invisible from behind.

Some of the boys struggled in school. The oldest is in high school. The youngest was about to enter third grade.

A detective asked one of the older boys what kind of grades he got.

Bad, the boy said.

Why is that? the detective said. Do you like school?

No, the boy shook his head. It's boring.

The youngest boy's foster mother testified during a hearing that he likes reading the Bible and going to church. He was placed in foster care shortly after he was arrested.

But his second-grade teacher testified during the same hearing that he was "a challenge for me." She said the boy got into fights often. Students picked on him because he wore the same T-shirt every day. The shirt was so dirty, it was stiff, she said.

She said his guardian rarely signed his homework sheet at night and sometimes the boy signed it himself. She said he didn't like to read or write but liked math.

At the end of the year, the teacher considered holding the boy back. But she talked to the principal. They decided to move him ahead because, based on his age, he was already a year behind in school.

At the apartment complex, the two older boys did not cause problems. The two younger boys, however, were known as troublemakers. They bounced around unsupervised from apartment to apartment. And, according to a complex manager, their names frequently showed up on reports from apartment complex security guards.

Playing with Barbies

The girl told police that she was going to be in second grade. She said she liked to play Barbies and a pretend game she called "Mommy and Daddy."

She was no stranger to police or Child Protective Services. In October 2007, her principal called authorities after a teacher noticed she had a bruise and a cut. The principal also told Glendale police the girl's parents often treated her badly when they came to pick her up at school. The principal had seen the girl's father pull her by the ear and yell at her in front of others. Once, during a home visit, the principal found the girl in a dirty apartment.

When police visited her apartment later that month, a neighbor told authorities that the girl had said her mother beat her with a wire, police reports said.

Other neighbors told police the abuse was an ongoing problem, the reports said. They had seen the girl's mother hitting her with her fist on top of her head, according to the reports, and they had seen the girl slapped and spanked hard by her mother.

Glendale police informed CPS workers. The CPS workers removed the girl for a weekend.

That wasn't the only example of neglect and abuse that surfaced, according to police reports:

In October 2005, shortly after her family arrived in the U.S., the girl, who was about 4 at the time, was left unsupervised and was found climbing into cars and trying to start the ignition.

In July 2008, the manager of the apartment complex issued a swimming-pool violation after apartment workers found the girl unsupervised in the pool late at night wearing only her underwear.

Also that month, the girl, unsupervised, was caught taking a steak off a neighbor's grill.

In April 2009, the girl went with a friend to buy candy and got lost for hours. A woman who found the girls took them to a fire station, where firefighters called the police.

On May 28, less than two months before police say the boys assaulted the girl, police found her begging for food. They warned her parents: If you don't do a better job of keeping an eye on your daughter, something bad could happen to her. She could be kidnapped, the police said. Or sexually assaulted.

Not her fault

Hours after neighbors saw the 8-year-old flee the shed in tears, police told her father that a doctor had finished examining the girl. The medical findings, they said, indicated she had been raped.

The father blamed his daughter. If she had listened to him and stayed in the apartment, he told police, this never would have happened. He started yelling at the girl. Your behavior is going to ruin the family's chances of getting citizenship, he said. Refugees in general arrive as legal permanent residents of the U.S. Problems with the law can disqualify them from becoming citizens and even lead to deportation.

While the father was yelling, the girl's mother came up from behind. She grabbed the girl by the ear and tried to drag her into the apartment. Officers ordered her to stop.

A few days later, police came back again. They explained to the parents that what happened was not the girl's fault.

The father turned and looked directly at the girl.

It is her fault, her father yelled.

Your 8-year-old daughter was raped, one officer said. This was not her fault.

Officers decided to take the girl to a foster home. As they left, the mother and father asked when their daughter would come back.

With your attitude, it may not be for a long time, the officers said.

I don't care if she ever returns, officers said they heard the girl's father say.

Months later, with the girl still in foster care, her father sat in his small living room, while two of his children and his grandson, all toddlers, climbed on the sofa around him. A photo of the family - mother, father, six children, including the smiling 8-year-old - hung on a wall next to a picture of Jesus.

He refused to talk about the girl, who has not been home since the day police took her away. Then he leaned back, slapped the back of his hand to his forehead and said something in a low voice.

My heart is not settled.

On Nov. 20, Phoenix police arrested the girl's father, 59, and mother, 47, after a Maricopa County grand jury indicted them on seven counts each of felony child abuse. Police cited the numerous incidents involving the girl going back to 2007, when her principal called authorities. They also said they were concerned about the safety of the young children who had remained in the apartment after the 8-year-old was removed.

'The Liberian way'

After the girl was raped, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia, sent a deputy ambassador to Arizona, where the accusations have rocked the Liberian community in west Phoenix.

Many people in the community are not convinced the boys raped the girl, despite the confessions the boys gave police and a doctor's examination that, police say, showed the girl had been sexually assaulted. They say the kids may have been experimenting sexually but the police have blown the case into something much bigger. They point out the boys talked to police without parents, guardians or lawyers present. Maybe they misunderstood the police, or maybe they gave police confessions out of fear because in Liberia, people are afraid of the police.

They also reject the idea that the boys may have learned about raping during the war. They were too young. The oldest would have been 8 when the war ended. The youngest only 3.

If anything, they say, the boys were influenced by culture in the United States, where sex is prevalent on TV and the Internet. They say Liberian parents struggle to raise children in this environment.

James Nyemah, pastor of Africa Faith Expressions, a church in west Phoenix with a mostly Liberian congregation, summed up the case this way: "Just a terrible indiscretion of youth."

But Beverly Goll-Yekeson disagrees. She runs the Liberian Crisis Center for Abused Women and Children in Hanover, Md. Rape remains a taboo subject in Liberian culture, she said.

Rape was only recently made a crime in Liberia, where sexual violence is still rampant. And no one wants to talk openly about how the widespread use of rape during the war - and even in the refugee camps - physically and psychologically traumatized Liberians. They would rather make excuses or deny that rape continues to be a problem. They try to handle it, as she put it, "in the family, the Liberian way."

It is time, she said, to break the silence.

Behind the story

For this story, reporter Daniel González reviewed hundreds of pages of court documents and police records and attended several juvenile-court hearings. The dialog in the story was adapted from police records and transcripts of interviews conducted by police. He also drew from numerous reports about sexual violence and Liberian refugees as well as from conversations with experts named in those studies. The studies were conducted by:

Amnesty International
Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders
The Center for Victims of Torture
The Center for Applied Linguistics
International Rescue Committee
Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Service and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Migration & Refugee Services
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network
Liberia Crisis Center for Abused Women and Children
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
GlobalSecurity.org
U.S. Department of State
In addition, González interviewed more than a dozen Liberian refugees and immigrants living in the Phoenix area, refugee resettlement workers and rape experts in Phoenix and Liberian consular officials in Chicago. And he talked with residents and managers of the apartment complex where the girl lived.

One in eight adults has been raped yet a majority of assaults are never reported,

2009-12-06T16:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/victims-suffer-in-silence-rather-than-face-grinding-justice-system-1965718.html?service=Print

Victims suffer in silence rather than face grinding justice system
One in eight adults has been raped yet a majority of assaults are never reported, writes Alan Ruddock
By Alan Ruddock
Sunday December 06 2009

The statistics on rape in Ireland tell a bleak story. One in every ten women has been raped and one in every five women has been sexually assaulted. Of the few rapes that are reported to the gardai, only a small proportion result in a conviction.

While the focus, for the moment, is on the horrifying sexual and physical abuse suffered by children in the Dublin diocese, adult rape remains both prevalent and under-reported, an everyday occurrence that is largely unpunished.

Many victims of rape suffer in silence while those that are prepared to pursue their attackers are subjected to a legal system that grinds slowly and unsympathetically. In England and Wales an accused rapist can be brought to trial within three months: in Ireland it can take three years.

Apart from one specialised sexual crimes unit in Dublin, gardai lack training in dealing with sexual crimes, as do judges and prosecutors. Successive governments have promised change, but the promises remain largely unfulfilled and the criminal process remains a harrowing one for rape victims.

Fiona Neary of Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) said: "The criminal justice system is failing in rape cases. Ireland's conviction rate is amongst the lowest in Europe. Survivors in rape crisis centres tell us of their fears about reporting. Those who have reported talk of the lack of dignity and respect in how they are treated; how they feel it is them who are on trial from the moment they report, how they have no voice in the system."

Rape victims can still be cross-examined by their alleged assailants, cannot give evidence by video-link, cumbersome court procedures give rise to frequent delays and sentencing, when a conviction is finally secured, is inconsistent. There is no definition of consent in Irish law while the hastily revised laws on child rape, introduced as an emergency measure by Michael McDowell even though they were deeply flawed, remain in place.

There has been some progress -- the establishment of Cosc, the National Office for the Prevention of Sexual Crime, should lead to a co-ordinated national rape strategy -- but the pace of change is glacial even though the template for an effective system is on view in both Northern Ireland and England.

Tomorrow the RCNI hosts Rape Justice Ireland, in a one-day conference in Dublin, and will present the detailed findings of its study on rape in Ireland. The conference will also be addressed by a number of prominent players in the criminal justice system, including James Hamilton, the Director of Public Prosecutions and Paul Carney, the High Court judge.

As part of its study, which has been compiled into a book on rape and justice in Ireland, 100 women who had been raped gave information about their experiences. Detailed below on this page are first-hand accounts of why women did or did not report a rape.

The details that these women share with us bring to life the information in the RCNI Rape Crisis National Statistics, which tell us that the majority of victims do not report. You can hear their initial shock and disbelief, the way the women brush aside the evidence, their fear of the impact of reporting on others, their fear of the attacker, their fear of not being believed and their dread of the criminal justice system, among other things. Each of these statements is by a woman who was raped in Ireland since 2002.

UN: Rape in Afghanistan a Human Rights Problem of 'Profound Proportions'

2009-11-30T15:43:00.001-08:00

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/30-8

November 30, 2009 by Reuters
UN: Rape in Afghanistan a Human Rights Problem of 'Profound Proportions'
by Yara Bayoumy

KABUL - Rape in Afghanistan is under-reported, concealed and a human rights problem of "profound proportions", the United Nations said on Monday.

An Afghan woman in burqa walks down the street in Kabul November 16, 2009.
(REUTERS/Jerry Lampen)Norah Niland, the United Nations' human rights representative in Afghanistan, said field research conducted late last year and early this year found rape affected all parts of Afghanistan, across all communities and social groups.

"Women and girls are at risk of rape in their homes, in their villages and in detention facilities," Niland said at a news conference in Kabul, as part of a 16-day activism campaign against gender violence.

"It is a human rights problem of profound proportions."

Niland said feelings such as shame exacerbate the problem and are often attached to victims rather than perpetrator.

Rape occurs within the family and beyond and victims are often prosecuted for committing adultery, she said.

During Afghanistan's civil war of the early 1990s, rape and sexual violence towards women was widespread and Islamist Taliban militants gained strength at first because of their tough stance against the crime.

Women's rights in Afghanistan have improved markedly since the 2001 overthrow of the strict Sunni Islamist Taliban government which prohibited women from working, attending school or leaving their homes without a male relative.

However Afghanistan remains a deeply conservative Muslim society, particularly in remote rural areas where cultural and tribal laws often supersede civil laws.

"It's also a problem because there is very little possibility of finding justice, there is no explicit provision in the 1976 Afghan penal code that criminalises rape," Niland said.

The United Nations has recommended that legislation on the elimination of violence against women make "an explicit reference to rape" and hold the government responsible for tackling the crime, she said.

Niland also singled out the growing trend of violence against women in public life, saying it was an indicator that women's roles in decision-making processes are not valued or fully acknowledged in Afghan society.

"Democracy and peace in Afghanistan is dependent on the elimination of violence and the full participation of women, as well as men of course, in decision-making processes that affect their lives and the future of the nation," Niland said.

Forced labour and rape, the new face of slavery in America

2009-11-23T10:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/22/people-trafficking-usa-prostitution-ohio

Forced labour and rape, the new face of slavery in America
In the Midwestern heartland, police are encountering a new social evil: trafficking, often involving women and children who are forced to work as prostitutes or unpaid labour; and the outcomes can be brutal.

Paul Harris in Dayton, Ohio
The Observer
November 2009

Mexicans seeking a new life in America use plastic bags to float down the heavily polluted New River into Calexico, California. Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

Human trafficking has become a major issue in the Midwest heartland of America, causing some campaigners to dub it a modern form of slavery.

Figures from the State Department reveal that 17,500 people are trafficked into the US every year against their will or under false pretences, mainly to be used for sex or forced labour. Experts believe that, when cases of internal trafficking are added, the total number of victims could be up to five times larger. And increasing numbers of trafficked individuals are being transported thousands of miles from America's coasts and into heartland states such as Ohio and Michigan.

"It is not only a crime. It is an abomination," said Professor Mark Ensalaco, a political scientist at the University of Dayton, Ohio, who organised a recent conference on the issue. In Ohio a human trafficking commission has just been set up to study the problem, while in the northern Ohio city of Toledo a special FBI task force is tackling the issue. For many local law enforcement officials, it is a bewildering new world.

In one recent incident a 16-year-old Mexican girl was found to have been trafficked across the US border. Doctors noticed the heavily pregnant girl showed clear signs of physical abuse when she was brought into a hospital in Dayton to give birth. The police were called but the couple who had brought her had already fled. When the girl's story emerged, it became clear she had been kept against her will in the nearby city of Springfield and used for labour and sex. "I thought slavery ended a few centuries ago. But here it is alive and well," said Springfield's sheriff, Gene Kelly.

He emphasised the risks to the girl's baby after it had been born if the doctors had not been so alert: "Like the mother, the baby could have ended up a victim for years to come. Who knows? Future labour? Future person to traffic?"

Ohio anti-trafficking campaigner Phil Cenedella, founder of Combating Trafficking Anywhere, believes that the baby was destined to be sold off by her captors. "They would have put the kid on the black market. It is crazy that this is happening." Human trafficking – defined as forcing someone against their will to work for no reward – has been dubbed modern slavery. At the Dayton conference, it was discussed as a growing social problem, not in some far-off foreign land, but among the cornfields of Ohio.

"The problems are broader than we realised," said Ohio's attorney general, Richard Cordray. "What we want to do is find and disrupt these networks."

One of the country's leading anti-trafficking advocates is Theresa Flores, a former victim. Flores puts a different kind of face on human trafficking in America. She is white, middle-class and blond and looks the epitome of a suburban American woman. She grew up in a wealthy suburb of Detroit in Michigan and did well at school. Yet Flores tells a nightmarish story of two years being drugged, raped and sold for sex.

Flores, whose ordeal was turned into a book called The Sacred Bath: An American Teen's Story of Modern Day Slavery, was attacked and raped when she was 15. Her assailant used the threat of photographs he had taken during her rape to force her into having sex with strangers. She became the effective prisoner of a drugs gang that used her as a prostitute and kept her earnings, or gave her away free to gang members as a "reward". "People don't think that trafficking looks like me or that it can happen to someone who came from a nice neighbourhood. But it does. People need to see outside that box," said Flores.

Flores said that her lowest point came when the gang took her to a seedy motel where she was raped by as many as two dozen men. She woke up alone, abused and with no clothes. "I was told I would die if I told anyone. It happened over and over for two years as I became a sex slave for those men," she said.

Anti-trafficking campaigners point out that cases in the US come in a wide variety of forms involving men, women and children. One major area is that of trafficked labour with people used for domestic work or, more commonly, for back-breaking labour in agricultural industries. But trafficking cases have also occurred in businesses such as restaurants, hair salons and beauty parlours. The overwhelming majority of the rest are sex cases, usually involving young women or children forced into prostitution. The methods used to keep people vary. They include confiscating the passports of those brought in from a foreign country or the threat of extreme violence. Other tactics are to threaten family members if a victim does not comply or, as in Flores's case, to use blackmail.

Trafficking represents a new challenge to law enforcement, especially in regions which have traditionally not thought of it as a major problem. That is especially true where it happens within an immigrant community. Languages are a problem as well as cultural issues and a natural fear that many immigrants – some of them possibly illegal – have of contacting the police.

Kelly believes that is the case in Springfield, a town that is almost the Midwestern archetype. It was once featured in a story in Newsweek magazine entitled "The American Dream". But its 65,000 citizens also face all the problems of a modern America in the grip of a deep recession: an immigration crisis and profoundly changing demographics. The town now hosts several prominent minority communities who make up more than a fifth of its population, including Russians, Chinese, Latinos and Somalis. "There are a lot of people who distrust law enforcement. We need to break down those barriers. Our officers need training, especially in languages," said Kelly. "If you can't speak to people, you can't reach them."

Some commentators and experts have accused victims' advocates and academics of overstating the problem, arguing the problem has been exaggerated and expressing scepticism at the notion that vast organised criminal networks are dealing in human beings for sex or labour. Law enforcement officers also acknowledge that the definitions of trafficking may need refining.

In North Carolina last week the mother of a five-year-old girl was charged with human trafficking after being accused of offering her daughter for sex. The child was later found dead. The crime was horrific, but the distinction between trafficking and simple, sadistic child abuse might not be immediately obvious.

"We have a problem with definition. It is not always straightforward and easy to explain," said Laura Clemmens, a government lawyer in Dayton. "The hard part is bringing it into the light. At the moment these crimes are clouded in secrecy."

Woman awarded $3M in assault claim against KBR

2009-11-20T16:18:00.000-08:00

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jokPPhhCAeuOUqVj6Wdr87L5gGQAD9C2S7C80

Woman awarded $3M in assault claim against KBR
By JUAN A. LOZANO (AP) – 1 day ago

HOUSTON — A woman who claimed she was raped in 2005 while working in Iraq for a former Halliburton Co. subsidiary has been awarded nearly $3 million by an arbitrator to settle her case.

Tracy Barker had sued U.S. contractor KBR Inc., its former parent company Halliburton and several affiliates in May 2007, claiming she was sexually attacked by a State Department employee while working as a civilian contractor in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

A federal judge in Houston had dismissed Barker's lawsuit in January 2008, ruling she had to abide by an employment agreement she signed that said any claims she made against the companies would have to be settled through arbitration and not the courts.

Court records filed this week show Barker was awarded a judgment of $2.93 million to settle her arbitration claim against KBR.

The Associated Press doesn't usually identify those who report they were sexually assaulted, but Barker made her identity public in her lawsuit.

"It took me a long time to get here. I'm happy about the award," Barker, 38, who lives in Yuma, Ariz., told the AP.
In a statement, Houston-based KBR said Thursday it disagreed with the interim ruling from the arbitrator and it has filed a motion to modify the award.

"However, the decision validates what KBR has maintained all along; that the arbitration process is truly neutral and works in the best interest of the parties involved," the statement said.

Barker said she was upset KBR is trying to modify the award.

"They are still dragging it out," she said. "They didn't win and now they want to amend the award. You can't with binding arbitration. How is that fair?"

In her lawsuit, Barker had claimed while working in the companies' procurement department in Baghdad, she was housed in mostly male barracks and consistently subjected to sexually explicit comments and verbal and physical threats of abuse. Barker claimed she and other employees complained to the companies but they did nothing and instead retaliated against her.

Barker was later transferred to Basra, where she claimed that in June 2005, she was raped in her room by the State Department employee, who she also sued. That case was transferred to federal court in Virginia, where it was formally settled last week. Details of the settlement were not made public.

U.S. District Judge Gray Miller, in dismissing the lawsuit against KBR, said that until Congress tells courts that binding contracts to arbitrate do not include sexual harassment claims, Barker's claims had to be arbitrated.

Last month, the Senate approved a measure prohibiting the Defense Department from contracting with companies that require employees to resolve sexual assault allegations and other claims through arbitration.

The amendment was attached to a larger defense spending bill. A vote on the full bill was expected later.

Miller did not dismiss claims by Barker's husband, Galen Barker, that he had experienced loss of consortium — diminished care, companionship or affection — because of what his wife had experienced. The Barkers' attorney asked Miller this week to put those claims back on his docket.

In September, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that a similar lawsuit filed by another ex-contract worker, Jamie Leigh Jones, could go to court in Houston instead of arbitration.

Jones filed a federal lawsuit in 2007 claiming she was raped by Halliburton and KBR firefighters while working at Camp Hope, Baghdad, in 2005.

Jones has also made her identity public in her lawsuit and her face and name have been broadcast in media reports and on her own Web site.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Dangers of internet dating

2009-11-19T14:50:00.001-08:00

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/55726,news-comment,news-politics,dangers-of-internet-dating-revealed-by-rape-report

You’re the one! Dangers of internet dating
This week’s rape report proves the net is a breeding ground for unrealistic sexual fantasies, says The First Post’s psychoanalyst

BY COLINE COVINGTONFIRST POSTED NOVEMBER 9, 2009
A young woman of 23 met 'Derek' several times before inviting him back to her house. They had first 'met' on an internet dating site. On September 30, they arranged to meet on the M2 where he followed her car back to her block of flats in south London.

The woman was with her three-year-old son and while they were having tea together, 'Derek' punched the woman unconscious and then raped her in front of her son. According to yesterday's reports, she and her son later escaped and fled to the police.

Internet dating sites are careful to warn their clients about the need to meet in public places, at least initially, and not to give out personal details, such as last names or addresses before getting to know someone. The snag comes when getting to know someone, particularly a stranger, is not so clear cut.

While there are countless stories of happily married couples who met on the internet, there are even more stories ranging from the ludicrous to the dangerous. What many of these stories demonstrate is that internet dating is a prolific breeding ground for romantic and sexual fantasies that may have little to do with reality.

A middle aged man rushes into a hotel bar where he is meeting 'Dance Ticket'. He is over an hour late and has telephoned 'Dance Ticket' to explain he has been caught in traffic can she just hold on? She waits and wonders how typical this is but his profile and their conversation on the phone the previous week seemed promising.

Then he appears, throws his coat over a chair, orders a glass of wine for himself. 'Dance Ticket' is already on her second and, as his eyes flit to the other people talking in the bar, declares, "You're perfect! I knew it you're the one for me!"

The idee fixe of the perfect partner is fraught with problems and usually indicates someone who has idealised a parental figure and who is blindly and impulsively looking for a similar match. But the idealisation often covers up underlying conflicts that can't be acknowledged, including, at its most extreme, hatred.

We all have templates of our parents in our minds as our first love objects. But these templates tend to become fixed in our fantasies when there have been difficulties and traumas. When this happens the child in the mind of the adult continues to search for a parent whose love may have been mixed with either ill-treatment or with certain expectations of how they wanted their child to be. This way of being loved is then repeated in future relationships what Freud coined the 'repetition compulsion' and inevitably leads to heartache.

For internet entrepreneurs, this is the perfect customer because they can be sure they will return for more.

All internet daters have an agenda of some kind. Some internet daters are only looking for a sexual partner. They either freely admit they have no interest in any other form of relationship or they say they do when they don't. But these daters also have particular fantasies that they are hoping to fulfil even if the fantasies entail being rejected or rejecting others. And sometimes, as in the case of 'Derek', the fantasies are much more violent.

The internet provides the perfect tabula rasa for daters to search for their fantasy partner and to enact the powerful and often damaging relationships of their past. Although romantic illusion does not only exist in cyberspace, the internet feeds people's desire for instant relationships and instant solutions and an instant fix.

The net effect is that there is increasing pressure amongst the dating culture to be able to find 'the one' for you by a few simple trawls through profiles intended to promote various fantasy scenarios.

The real danger in internet dating is that it encourages the ideal of the perfect match and reduces the complex business of building a relationship into a shopping exercise. Dating is the new commodity with trial periods, exchanges and returns offered - but no refunds. Buyer beware!

Don't Go Down Without A Fight

2009-11-19T12:24:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Don-t-Go-Down-Without-A-Fi-by-Ilene-Flannery-Wel-091117-109.html

November 17, 2009
Don't Go Down Without A Fight
By Ilene Flannery Wells

The first thing I remember is seeing a man coming towards me. He had a gun in one hand and the other hand was out, motioning me to stay put and be quiet. I was in my bed. It was 3am on a hot August night over 30 years ago. I had nothing on but my underwear. As he came towards me, he took off his pants.

I didn't have much time to assess the situation before it all happened. It looked like he had just climbed through my second story window; I found out later he had been in the house for a while. I didn't know where my sister and her friends were; I found out later they had gone out to watch the thunderstorms. In the flat lands of Illinois, you could watch the storms cross the farm fields for miles, lighting striking the ground as it goes. It can be quite beautiful.

I had gone to bed early because I had to work the next morning. My waitress uniform was hanging up, ready to go. I was working my way through community college. My sister Grace and my two other roommates were grad students and had teaching assistant positions to subsidize their living expenses. One of Grace's best friends from New York was in town for a visit. I left them downstairs partying with some of our other friends when I went to bed. Our two other roommates had not yet come back from their summer break.

The four of us had just rented a house together. The houses in the neighborhood were run down and the rent was low, which is a draw for college students like us. I got the smallest room at the top of the stairs and was given a break on the rent. We had put some sweat equity into the house; painting and doing some minor repairs before we moved in just days before. We didn't even have our phone hooked up yet.

I think it was more of a crime of opportunity than anything. He saw everyone leave – not knowing I was still in the house – and decided to see what he could get. We later found a camera, a checkbook and some other smaller items on the floor by my window. Maybe this was just a first pass to see what we had and he grabbed items that would be easy to carry. When I woke up, maybe he decided I was an easy target. I don't know. All I know is that when I did wake up, he was coming towards me.

Before I could get myself fully aware of what was happening, he was on top of me. He had my arms pinned above my head, holding my wrists with one hand, and the gun in the other. I was very glad I had my underpants on. He would have to get them off before he could rape me. Perhaps the gun was interfering in his ability to hold me down, but for whatever reason, he put it down – and that is when I made my move.

I really don't know what made me do it. I was always a tomboy. I was on the swim team and was pretty strong. I had a friend in high school who wrote in my yearbook that he always liked me even though I could beat him up. I was also brought up in an age of female empowerment. I was not going to go down without a fight.

Before I could think about the possibility of dying I grabbed for the gun, but he wrestled it from me. He put it to my forehead and pulled the trigger. The gun went off and I was momentarily stunned. I put my hand up to my forehead and instantly realized that I hadn't been shot. Either the gun wasn't loaded or it jammed, or it was a starting pistol like they used in my swim meets. Whatever it was, my forehead was stinging from the burn of the gunpowder.

At first I was relieved to be alive. Then I got angry.

I starting punching and clawing at him, screaming every vile word I could think of. I basically went berserk on they guy. I guess he figured it wasn't worth it so he got up, put his pants back on and left the room. I had won! I got up, turned on the light and put my bathrobe on. Moments later, he came back in the room saying he forgot something. It must have been the stuff he had gathered and put by my window.

I have no idea why, people tell me the adrenalin had worn off and that I was in shock, but I started to help the guy! I had dreams for months afterward that instead, I picked up a swimming trophy from my dresser and hit him over the head with it, sending him tumbling down the stairs, breaking his neck. I also had dreams that I shot an intruder, explaining to him that that I was killing him because of the other guy – sorry. But no, in reality I was helping the guy, but he must have been as flustered as I was because he left without taking anything except the tip money from my dresser.

So there I was, alone in the house with no phone and no idea where my sister and her friends were. I was afraid to go outside to get help, so I turned on every light in the house, got the biggest knife from the kitchen and waited for my sister and her friends to come home. It seemed like hours before anyone got there. When they did, someone rushed out to phone the police and my sister stayed with me. When the police got there, they were pretty impressed with me for fighting him off. I was just thankful to be alive. The possibility that it could have easily gone the other way was already sinking in.

I was taken to the hospital where they performed their usual rape kit screening. Even though I wasn't raped, he had left behind certain evidence on my underpants and perhaps on my body and under my fingernails. The police bagged my sheets and my underwear.

I never set foot in that house again. I stayed with my boyfriend until we found another house to rent. Whoever did this gave us all another very good reason not to come back. When my sister and her friends were out running errands the next day, they found a machete stuck in the middle of the living room coffee table when they got back. The machete had been left in the house when we moved in and my roommate Jon decided to keep it, but he had put it in the very back of his very large closet. This means that whoever did this, found it and made a point of letting us know he found it. We got the message loud and clear. Grace and her friends packed all of my things for me that day and everyone cleared out.

The only physical injury to me was the nasty burn on my forehead which, thanks to vitamin E oil, left no visible scar. The mental injuries left scars that have taken a lifetime to dissipate. I am not even sure they are all gone, even after 30 years. My writing this is proof, I suppose, that those scars run pretty deep. I can only imagine what it is like for the unlucky ones, the ones that didn't fight off and beat up their attackers.

The manager of the restaurant where I worked read about what happened to me in the paper. Instead of sympathy, I got a lecture about leaving my window open in a neighborhood like that. I couldn't believe it. I was in my own bed, in my own house, in the middle of the night and somehow it was my fault. I can only imagine what it is like for women who are date raped. Did the man have no sense of decency? Thankfully, he was the only one that uttered such stupidity, to my face anyway.

A couple of years ago, I was telling my then 19-year old sons how vitamin E helped heal a bad burn on my forehead, backing up a recommendation Greg had made to Roy about using vitamin E oil to help Roy's gums heal from oral surgery. When they asked about how I got the burn I decided to tell them the whole story. They were just a year older than I was when it happened. If I could live through it at their age, they might as well know about it.

When I finished the story, Roy said “Wow, Mom! Can I tell my friends? They already think you're cool. Now they'll think you're really cool!” Of course I said yes. Now that I told them I had no problem with other people hearing about it. Maybe it would be helpful for their friends to hear my story. I've thought about that over the past two years and I think that my story may be empowering to other people.

However, I never told one part of the story to anyone – until now- which is perhaps the real reason that I am “going public”. I had one more opportunity to catch the guy and I let it pass.

When the police were at our house that night, they got a call that a man had approached a taxi driver wanting to cash in a bunch of change and one dollar bills. Could it possibly be the same man that attacked me? They knew he had my tip money. Deep down I knew it was him. I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach. But I hesitated and said I wasn't sure. I froze. I think I was just glad it was all over and that I hadn't been raped. I had beaten the guy off and all he got was some loose change and a bunch of dollar bills. Everything could just go back to the way it was. So, they didn't pick him up and that was that. They never caught my attacker.

Even though this has always nagged at me, it was due to my own personal disappointment and shame that I possibly let him get away. Given the recent news about the Jaycee Lee Duggar kidnapping, and the fact that the perpetrator escaped prosecution of a previous rape because his 14-year old victim refused to testify, I now realize my attacker also may have gone on to hurt other women. He may have even used a loaded gun the next time – if there was a next time. I never thought of that before.

My motto used to be: “Don't go down without a fight”. Now I add, “and finish the job when you have the chance”.

Author's Website: http://mcclucker.blogspot.com/

Author's Bio: Ilene is the 9th of 10 children, a twin-less twin, the mother of twin boys (aren't they supposed to skip a generation?) and a wife of 27 years. Growing up in a large, Irish-Catholic family was an experience, to say the least, made that much more interesting given that she and her siblings were in their teen's and twenties during the 60's and 70's. Ilene is a self-taught writer. Her common phrase is, “I am a technical writer by trade and a creative writer by desire”. Ilene writes on a wide variety of subject matters that include family, politics, women's issues, health care, mental health care and anything that “gets her Irish up”. Ilene describes herself as a “born-again” Atheist. She doesn't have anything against people who believe in God or who follow the teachings of Jesus, Mohammad, Baha'u'llah, Confucius, Buddha, or whatever religious prophet and teachings that people follow. All she asks is that people accept that she can have good morals and values (yes that is very subjective) and not believe in God. Her mother used to say that the world would be a better place if people just followed the last 7 commandments. Ilene was tremendously affected by the long-illness and early death of her twin brother, Paul. Paul was diagnosed with schizophrenia when they were only 16. He spent one year in a private hospital until the maximum lifetime limit was met on their health insurance policy. He was committed to a state mental institution at the tender age of 17 and spent the next 22 years between three different state hospitals. When the final push to release the patients into the community was made in the 1990's, Paul was moved to an "assisted" living apartment complex. When that proved too much for him, he was moved to an adult home. Paul's life during that time was like a nightmarish roller coaster ride from adult home to the local psych wards to the state hospital and back again, only to have the ride start all over again. He finally got off the ride when his emphysema was so bad that he was accepted into a nursing home in 2007. He was diagnosed with lung cancer a few months later and died on May 1, 2008. Currently, Ilene is taking on-line grant writing courses and will be pursuing a career to help deserving non-for-profit organizations receive the funding they need. In the meantime, she is writing a book about her brother and submitting articles to any and all publications like this in the hopes that she gets discovered and someone pays her to write what's on her mind.

Inquiry into 'rape and torture' by UK troops as Iraqis' lawyer claims 32 cases are tip of the iceberg

2009-11-18T13:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1228141/Rape-torture-inquiry-Iraqis-lawyer-claims-32-cases-tip-iceberg.html#ixzz0X5EyaANN

Inquiry into 'rape and torture' by UK troops as Iraqis' lawyer claims 32 cases are tip of the iceberg
MailOnline
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:00 EST
Fresh claims that British soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners are to be investigated by the Ministry of Defence.

They include allegations of rape and torture, some by female British soldiers.

But hundreds more alleged cases could remain buried for ever, the lawyer representing the Iraqi complainants said yesterday.

It came as the U.S. defence secretary-blocked the publication of pictures allegedly showing abuse by American soldiers.

One Iraqi complainant against British soldiers claims they based the abuse they allegedly subjected him to on photographs taken at the notorious U.S. detention centre Abu Ghraib.

Thirty-two cases of alleged abuse form the basis of a new complaint to the MoD last week and at the weekend ministers pledged to begin an investigation.

One Iraqi man alleges two British soldiers raped him, while others say they were striped naked, abused and photographed.

Phil Shiner, the lawyer representing the Iraqi complainants, is asking for a judicial review of the 32 cases.

'I have it on good authority that there are hundreds of cases that are going uninvestigated,' he said.

'But if you are an Iraqi and terrible things have happened to you then how would you know that we have a judicial system in this country to deal with it? My guess is that many of them will remain buried.'

Former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, a member of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said yesterday: 'This is yet another element of the long, toxic legacy of Iraq. Only the fullest investigation will suffice.'

Armed Forces Minister Bill Rammell said formal investigations must be carried out 'without judgments being made prematurely'.

He added: 'Over 120,000 British troops have served in Iraq and the vast, vast majority have conducted themselves to the highest standards of behaviour, displaying integrity and selfless commitment.'

In September 2003, hotel receptionist Baha Mousa died after suffering 93 separate injuries while in UK military custody in Basra. A public inquiry into his death is under way.

The latest claims came as U.S. defence secretary Robert Gates blocked the release of any more abuse pictures from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Pressure groups had sued for the release of 21 photographs of prisoners being abused by Americans, and at least 23 more are known to exist.

Barack Obama has said the release of any more images could incite violence and endanger U.S. troops.

Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys -- The Very Dark Side of the Afghan Occupation

2009-11-15T11:31:00.000-08:00

Buggering boys is a classic crime of the elite and colonial oppressors...It's called POWER RAPE!!!

Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys -- The Very Dark Side of the Afghan Occupation
By Patrick Cockburn, CounterPunch
November 15, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143956/

Just when President Barack Obama looked as if he might be railroaded into sending tens of thousands more US troops to Afghanistan the American envoy to Kabul has warned him not to do so. In a leaked cable to Washington sent last week, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Gen Karl W. Eikenberry, argues that it would be a mistake to send reinforcements until the government of President Hamid Karzai demonstrates that it will act against corruption and mismanagement.

General Eikenberry knows what he is talking about because he has long experience of Afghanistan. A recently retired three star general, he was responsible for training the Afghan security forces from 2002 to 2003 and was top US commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007.

There is a dangerous misunderstanding outside Afghanistan about what 'corruption and mismanagement' mean in an Afghan context and a potentially lethal underestimation of how these impact on American and British forces. For example, the shadow British Defense Secretary Liam Fox argued that though 'corruption and establishing good governance' are not unimportant, 'we need to recognize that Afghan governance is likely to look very different from governance as we knows it in the West.'

Leaving aside the patronizing tone of the statement, this shows that Mr Fox fundamentally misunderstands what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan. Corruption and mismanagement do not just mean that the police are on the take or that no contract is awarded without a bribe. It is much worse than that. For instance, one reason Afghan villagers prefer to deal with the Taliban rather than the government security forces is that the latter have a habit of seizing their sons at checkpoints and sodomizing them.

None of our business, Mr Fox, who may be British Defense Secretary by this time next year, would presumably say. We are not in Afghanistan for the good government of Afghans: 'Our troops are not fighting and dying in Afghanistan for Karzai's government nor should they ever be.' But the fact that male rape is common practice in the Afghan armed forces has, unfortunately, a great deal to do with the fate of British soldiers.

There was a horrified reaction across Britain last week when a 25-year old policeman called Gulbuddin working in a police station in the Nad Ali district of Helmand killed five British soldiers when he opened fire with a machine gun on them. But the reason he did so, according to Christina Lamb in The Sunday Times, citing two Afghans who knew Gulbuddin, was that he had been brutally beaten, sodomised and sexually molested by a senior Afghan officer whom he regarded as being protected by the British.

The slaughter at Nad Ali is a microcosm of what is happening across Afghanistan. It is why Mr Fox is wrong and General Eikenberry is right about the dangers of committing more American or British troops regardless of the way Afghanistan is ruled. Nor are the events which led to the deaths of the young Britoish soldiersout of the ordinary. Western military officials eager to show success in training the Afghan army and police have reportedly suppressed for years accounts from Canadian troops that the newly trained security forces are raping young boys.

Mr Fox's approach only makes sense if we assume that it does not matter what ordinary Afghans think. This is what the Americans and, to a lesser degree the British, thought in Iraq in 2003. They soon learned different. I remember visiting the town of al-Majar al-Kabir in June 2003, soon after six British military policemen had been shot dead in the local police station. The British army had unwisely sent patrols with dogs through one of the most heavily armed towns in the country, famous for its resistance to Saddam Hussein, as if the British were an all-conquering occupation army. The Americans and British eventually learned the unnecessarily costly lesson in Iraq that what Iraqis thought and did would wholly determine if foreign forces were going to be shot at or not. Mr Fox claims the US and Briton will not be in Afghanistan in defense of the Afghan government, but if we are not doing that, then we become an occupation force. A growing belief that this is already the case is enabling Taliban fighters, who used to be unpopular even among the Pashtun, to present themselves as battling for Afghan independence.

General Eikenberry expresses frustration over the lack of US money being allocated for spending on development and reconstruction after Afghanistan's infrastructure has been wrecked by 30 years of war. The ambassador has not even been able to obtain $2.5 billion for non-military spending, this though the cost of the extra 40,000 US troops requested by General Stanley A. McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, is put by army planners at $33 billion and by White House officials at about $50 billion over a year.

This is one of the absurdities of the Afghan war. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. Some 12 million out of 27 million Afghans live below the poverty line on 45 cents a day, according to the UN. "Afghanistan is facing a food crisis which will turn into a human catastrophe if donors do not act promptly," said Karim Khalili, the second vice president, often denounced as a warlord, earlier this summer. Yet the lower estimate for each extra 1,000 US troops is $1 billion a year.

An Afghan policeman earns around $120 a month. In return for this he is forced to do a more dangerous job than Afghan soldiers, some 1,500 policemen being killed between 2007 and 2009, three times the number of deaths suffered by the Afghan army. Compare this money and these dangers with that of a US paid consultant earning $250,000 a year -- and with the cost of his guards, accommodation and translator totalling the same amount again - lurking in his villa in Kabul.

General Eikenberry is rightly sceptical about the dispatch of reinforcements to prop up a regime which is more of a racket than an administration. The troops may kill more Taliban, but they will also be their recruiting sergeants. As for the Afghan government, its ill-paid forces will not be eager to fight harder if they can get the Americans and the British to do their fighting for them.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq' and 'Muqtada! Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia revival and the struggle for Iraq'.

UK Government Lets Rapists Off with a Caution

2009-11-13T09:09:00.000-08:00

Shows what the real priorities are of a patriarchal society...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1226530/100-rapists-let-caution-The-offences-come-court.html

Protecting the Pathological: UK Government Lets Rapists Off with a Caution
Steve Doughty
Mail Online
Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:53 EST

More than 100 rapists have been let off with a police caution, it was revealed yesterday. The 111 cases included 66 incidents of child rape.

The extent to which police forces have handed cautions to rapists, whose crime carries a maximum sentence of life in jail, was made public as Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced a full-scale review of the system of punishing crime with cautions and on-the-spot fines.

Mr Straw acted after a weekend when senior police chiefs and the Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC called for curbs on the use of out-of-court punishments.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson also condemned the 'uncontrollable increase in cautions' and said that on-the-spot fines, now often used to punish offences such as shoplifting, 'in the public's minds equate to a parking ticket.'

The system of fixed-penalty fines and cautions has been introduced over the past six years as a way to deal with minor crime cheaply and effectively.

But the disclosure that cautions have been used repeatedly to deal with rapists is the clearest demonstration that the system is now being used to keep the most serious crimes out of the courts.

The figures released to MPs by the Home Office show numbers of cautions handed to rapists after the 2003 Sexual Offences Act became law in May 2004.

Between that date and the end of 2007 there were 45 cases of rape of adults in which the rapist admitted guilt but was released with a caution.

In a further 66 cases individuals who admitted raping a child under 13 were freed with a caution.

The figures from the Home Office gave no indication of why police chose to use cautions to punish a crime which, in the case of adult rape, typically attracts a prison sentence of five years.

Nor do they say how many rapists have been cautioned rather than tried since 2007.

A high proportion of the 66 child rapes may have involved very young offenders, and the offenders in many of the cases of adult rapes may have been intimate partners of the victims.

However no caution can be given in any case except where the suspect admits guilt. Therefore in all 111 cases prosecutors denied the courts an opportunity to examine the evidence and decide on sentencing.

Tory home affairs spokesman James Brokenshire said: 'It is deeply disturbing to think that the rape of a young child could be dealt with by little more than a telling off. The law should protect the vulnerable, yet Labour's caution culture is increasingly letting them down.'

Decisions to allow crimes as serious as rape to be dealt with by cautions are taken by the Crown Prosecution Service rather than police officers, the Ministry of Justice said yesterday.

Nevertheless the punishment faced by a rapist who is cautioned does not amount to anything more than two years on the sex offenders' register.

Figures also show cautions proliferating for lesser offences.

Last year, according to the BBC's Panorama programme, 39,000 people were cautioned for assault causing actual bodily harm.

There were 739 cautions for the much more serious offence of grievous bodily harm.

More than half a million offenders have been given repeat cautions since 2000 and in eight years between 2000 and 2008 some 2.2million cautions were handed out in all for crimes, including burglary and assault.

Another half million penalty notices for disorder, handed out of drunkenness, shoplifting and similar more minor crimes, were handed out between 2005 and 2007. In half of the cases, the criminal did not pay up.

There are also concerns that the penalty notices are now being used for burglary and robbery.

Mr Straw said yesterday that he and Home Secretary Alan Johnson are concerned at the use of out- of- court punishments. He added that a review would be run by the Office of Criminal Justice Reform.

He denied the Government had encouraged the use of cautions to reduce the prison population.

GOP senator dodges tearful rape victim's questions

2009-11-03T12:35:00.000-08:00

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/rape-victim-confronts-vitter/

GOP senator dodges tearful rape victim's questions
David Edwards and Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:29 EST

Confronted by an impassioned rape survivor at a town hall Saturday night, Sen. David Vitter tried everything from sympathizing to deflecting blame onto the Obama administration for his decision to vote against an anti-rape amendment.

Finally, amid shouts from protesters, the Louisiana Republican simply walked away.

Vitter was one of 30 Republican senators who voted against Sen. Al Franken's amendment, passed in the Senate last month, that would de-fund government contractors who prevent employees from seeking justice when they have been raped.

The inspiration for the amendment was Jamie Leigh Jones, who was allegedly gang-raped by co-workers at Halliburton subsidiary KBR while on assignment in Baghdad, and was then prevented from pursuing the matter in courts.

At the town hall meeting Saturday, a woman identifying herself as a "rape survivor" confronted Vitter and asked him why he voted against the amendment.

"I'm a rape survivor, and it meant everything to me to put [away] the person who attacked me," she told Vitter.

Vitter responded, "I'm absolutely supportive of any case like that, that they are prosecuted criminally to the full extent of the law."

"But there are rape victims that are being silenced," the unnamed woman responded. "How can you support a company that tells a rape victim that she does not have a right to defend herself?"

"Do you realize President Obama was against that amendment, and his administration was against that amendment?" Vitter asked.

"But I'm not asking Obama, I'm asking you, senator," the woman said.

At that point, Vitter walked briskly away from the woman and out of the town hall.

"What if it was your daughter that was raped, would you tell her to be quiet?" the woman shouted as Vitter walked away. "Would you tell your daughter to be silent?"

Vitter's assertion that the Obama administration opposed the amendment is only partly correct. The Pentagon opposed the amendment because it argued it would be virtually impossible to enforce. The White House stated that it supported "the intent of the amendment," but wanted to see it re-worked "to make sure it is enforceable."

Savagery and Silence in the First World

2009-11-02T10:05:00.001-08:00

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195906-Savagery-and-Silence-in-the-First-World

Savagery and Silence in the First World
Sandy LeonVest
Common Dreams
Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:42 EDT

In America -- in my country -- I fear we are losing the battle for our humanity. Some say we have already lost it.

Deep down I think they may be right.

Such is the level of violence, voyeurism and detachment displayed this October in Richmond, California, when at least two dozen students cheered, laughed or simply stood by and watched as a 15-year-old girl was repeatedly raped, beaten and brutalized by an "unknown number of assailants."

This horrific act of terrorism took place in the parking lot of Richmond High School, just yards away from where the school was holding its annual homecoming dance.

One school administrator told a reporter that, "the dance itself was successful."

It seems the perpetrators of the crime had also staged a "successful" event. The assault reportedly went on for between two and three hours. During the entire time, everyone was cool, no one freaked out, no one called 911.

Some of the onlookers took photos with their cell phones. Others were composed enough to text their friends. Still another had the presence of mind to take the victim's wallet before leaving the scene of the crime.

An officer at the scene could barely contain himself as he spoke to reporters. "They treated [the rape] as if it were something to be viewed," he said. "Like an exhibit."

"She was raped, beaten, robbed and dehumanized by several suspects who were obviously OK enough with it to behave that way in each other's presence," another patrol supervisor in the city's Northern Policing District in Richmond said. "What makes it even more disturbing is the presence of others. People came by, saw what was happening, and failed to report it."

We Like to Watch

"Being an American has become a spectator sport," wrote Bob Herbert recently in his column for the New York Times.

Herbert was right.

The savage nature of the rape at Richmond High is horrific enough on its own, yet at least as alarming is the national pandemic of 'violence as spectator sport.'

The passive voyeurism of those who stood by cheering and laughing like an audience at some macabre sideshow while their classmate was being ruthlessly dehumanized is only one of many such incidents making news recently. This phenomenon further demonstrates how complacent Americans have become even in the face of unspeakable crimes and real life inhumanity.

Coincidentally, the cowardly act of terrorism that took place in Richmond, California came virtually on the heels of a less publicized, but equally disgusting display of soullessness. This one however, was perpetrated not by thugs in a Richmond schoolyard but by 30 Republican Senators in the Hallowed Halls of the US Senate when, in early October they opposed an amendment to close a legal loophole denying employees of private defense contractors the right to sue if sexually abused or gang raped while on the job.

The amendment, sponsored by Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.), was inspired by the brutal gang rape of KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones in 2005 by her fellow employees. It passed on October 21 by a vote of 68-30 over the vehement objections of Department of Defense, who lobbied the 'Gang of 30' Republicans relentlessly. In a transparent attempt to justify their unjustifiable position, DOD wrote in a memo to the Senate that, "Enforcement would be problematic."

The Savagery of Silence

American youth have garnered an arguably well-deserved reputation for being lazy, self-absorbed and detached from reality, a phenomenon that may well be (at least in part) the result of too much television and gaming and not enough natural and social contact. To be sure, television marked the beginning of the 'spectator mentality,' and there is little doubt that the high-tech industry, with its relentless hype of texting and tweeting on trendy, over-priced toys has taken this spectatorship to a dangerous new level.

Here in the US, most people understand that (if we have not already reached it) we are approaching critical mass -- not only with respect to our 'spectator mentality' or our detached indifference to violence, but with respect to almost everything. The problem isn't that we don't know what is wrong. The problem is that we fail to act -- or to speak out -- even when we do. This was no more apparent than when the mother of one of the alleged perpetrators in the Richmond attack told police, "My son wouldn't do that. He knows better."

I often read the comments of readers, many of whom express feelings of hopelessness and despair over the degree to which American culture is disintegrating or the state of the world in general. Others have nothing but contempt for anyone with a shred of idealism or who (god-forbid), still believe the American political system -- or Democracy itself -- can be salvaged. Still others seem to be falling into darkness. I recall in particular one reader who asked, "What good are all of your eloquent words? No matter what you or anyone else says, America is hopelessly lost."

Those who make such comments might be interested to know that I actually agree with most of them - - or at least with their basic sentiments. But I've long since accepted that being an activist and a writer, futile though it may be, is who I am. The ship may be going down, but like the orchestra on the Titanic, I keep playing.

To those who content themselves with sitting in the bleachers heckling rather than doing or sneering rather than speaking out, I would submit that the process of de-humanization is a slow and stealthy one. Like the incident at Richmond High School or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or over-consumption waste and greed, de-humanization requires at least some degree of complicity.

One click and it can cross over.

SOTT Comment: "The Savagery of Silence"

The process of ponerization continues, becoming more complete each day. Constant warfare, media glorification of violence, we become desensitized, horror becomes common place, something to watch, fun.

This process isn't accidental. It has a purpose. It steals our humanity, it turns off our conscience, it kills the heart.

But to see these things and say nothing, do nothing. This gives these horrors our sanction, our ok making it common-place to hurt and humiliate.

" This was no more apparent than when the mother of one of the alleged perpetrators in the Richmond attack told police, "My son wouldn't do that. He knows better." "

"He knows better"??!! Is this all she can say about a violent crime?

Girl, 15, gang raped outside school dance while witnesses film horror attack

2009-10-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

And no one tried to stop the rape... Police have to check the internet for evidence... How SICK IS THIS???

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1223366/Girl-15-gang-raped-outside-school-dance-U-S-witnesses-film-horror-attack.html

Girl, 15, gang raped outside school dance while witnesses film horror attack
By Paul Thompson
Last updated at 7:42 PM on 27th October 2009

The brutal gang rape of a teenager, while up to a dozen people watched and filmed the assault on mobile phones, has been described as 'something out of a horror movie' by shocked U.S. police.

The 15-year-old victim was found unconscious after the terrifying assault in the grounds of a school in California.

Police said she had been raped by up to six people in an ordeal lasting two-and-a-half hours before being beaten and left for dead.

But what has shocked police in Richmond, California, is that as many as 12 others watched the attack take place and did nothing to help.

Investigators said several filmed the rape on their mobile phones and they are checking YouTube and Facebook to see if footage of the assault had been posted on the internet.

'This just gets worse and worse the more you dig into it,' said Lt Mark Gagan from Richmond Police.

'It was like a horror movie after looking at the evidence. I can't believe not one person felt compelled to help her.'

The events mirrored the 1988 film The Accused for which Jodie Foster won an Oscar for her portrayal of woman who is raped while others look on and do nothing to help.

The assault took place after the student left a dance at her school and was waiting to be picked up by her father.

Police said she met a former student who took her to a courtyard away from school grounds.

After she was encouraged to drink alcohol the assault began.

As word of the sexual assault spread by text messages as many as 15 people crowded round to watch, with some joining in.

Police received a tip off about a possible assault and found the victim semi-naked under a bench.

She had been severely beaten and was flown by air ambulance to hospital where she is said to be in a stable condition.

'She was raped, beaten, robbed and dehumanised by several suspects who were obviously OK enough with it to behave that way in each other's presence,' Lt. Mark Gagan said.

'What makes it even more disturbing is the presence of others. People came by, saw what was happening and failed to report it.

'I would say we're looking at four to seven active participants of sexual assault and extremely violent felonies.

'We're also suspecting there were up to a dozen people who witnessed what had happened and their involvement is unknown.'

Police arrested Manuel Ortega, 19, at the scene as he attempted to flee. Two other men are being questioned by police.

Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within

2009-10-27T13:56:00.001-07:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Rape-in-the-Ranks-The-Ene-by-Ann-Wright-091027-923.html

October 27, 2009
Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within
By Ann Wright

Journalists Pascale Bourgaux and Mercedes Gallego in their trips to Iraq as war correspondents were stunned to hear from military women in Iraq that they should be very careful working in military units due to sexual assault and rape.

When they left Iraq they decided to investigate the issue of rape in the U.S. military. In 2007, they filmed the stories of four military women who had been raped and made a documentary, “Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within.” The documentary was shown for the first time in the United States on October 26 at the New York Independent Film Festival.

Tina Priest was raped in Iraq and then found dead of a gunshot in her dormitory room. The U.S. Army claims Tina committed suicide 11 days after she was raped. The mother and sister of Tina Priest don't believe Tina committed suicide. The documentary captures remarkable interactions with them and military officers from Fort Hood who arrive at their doorstep. Tina's rapist was never prosecuted.

Jessica Kenyon was raped twice during her one year career in the US Army, once in basic training and once in Korea. She is now a counselor (http://www.militarysexualtrauma.org) for other veterans who have been raped—women and men. Jessica's rapists were never prosecuted.

Suzanne Swift was raped repeatedly by her squad leader while they were in Iraq. She was court-martialed for refusing to go back to Iraq with the unit in which the rapist still served. The rapist was never prosecuted, returned to Iraq as a private security contractor and later fired from a position with a law enforcement agency in the Seattle area. Suzanne is now out of the military and in college.

Stephanie (last name not disclosed), was raped at Fort Lewis, Washington. Like the majority of women who have been raped in the military, she never reported it as she thought no one would believe her as the rapist was a senior officer. Stephanie and her husband both served in Iraq. Her husband committed suicide after his return from Iraq. Stephanie speaks frequently on the issue of military suicides.

The 29 minute documentary “Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within” has been shown in Europe. One day after the screening in the New York Independent Film Festival, onOctober 27, 2009, clips of the documentary were shown on Democracy Now as a part of an interview with director Pascal Bourgaux.

We hope the film production company will make the documentary available by DVD or on their website.

In a related event, Veterans for Peace launched a Military Rape Awareness campaign in early October, 2009 with a press conference at the Armed Forces Recruiting Station in Times Square, New York City. Violence against women activist Eve Ensler and military rape survivor Sandra Lee spoke of their traumas from rape.

Canada-wide hunt for violent sexual deviant

2009-10-26T13:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Canada+wide+hunt+violent+sexual+deviant/2118806/story.html

The Province
Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:04 EDT

A B.C. woman -- the traumatized sexual-assault victim of a violent psychopath -- has sought police protection since learning her attacker is on the loose.

Rapist Dean Robert Zimmerman disappeared from his Calgary home less than two weeks after being released from prison for sexual assaults, and police say he's already wanted for new offences.

Zimmerman, 44, who is described as a psychopath whose violence toward women is escalating to a deadly level, skipped out on a meeting with Calgary police last Wednesday. There are fears he will strike again.

"There is a likelihood you would commit an offence causing serious harm or death," the National Parole Board wrote Oct. 29, 2008. The "degree of violence toward your victims appears to escalating."

Since his release, Calgary police say Zimmerman has faked bank deposits and he is now wanted on a Canada-wide warrant.

One of his three traumatized victims has reached out to RCMP in B.C., fearful for her safety after hearing her untreated attacker is on the run and could be headed her way.

"Their whole lives are changed in how they deal with people. The victims have to keep reliving the offence," said Const. Jason Bobrowich of Calgary police.

Zimmerman was jailed in 2001 after terrorizing his pregnant wife during a violent assault at a secluded campsite in Mission. He forced her to perform sexual acts for 48 hours, broke her nose and threatened to "gut her open and cut the baby out of her" with a large knife, parole board documents say.

Another victim, his friend's 24-year-old girlfriend, was tied up with power cords and shoelaces during a violent nine-hour sex assault Jan. 1, 2005, in Edmonton.

Zimmerman was on statutory release at the time.

Zimmerman, who has admitted "deeply rooted hostility toward women," refused prison therapy and remains an untreated high-risk sexual offender, the parole board says.

Zimmerman has a medium complexion, brown eyes and a shaved head. He is five-foot-eight and weighs 205 pounds.

Rape used as weapon in DR Congo

2009-10-24T18:02:00.000-07:00

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2009/10/2009102282534764573.html

Rape used as weapon in DR Congo
Al Jazeera
Fri, 23 Oct 2009

The Democratic Republic of Congo is grappling with rampant rape, which has become an every day practice and is used as a weapon of war, the UN has said. It said almost 5,400 cases of rape against women were reported in the South Kivu province during the first six months of the year.

Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said South Kivu, near Rwanda, was an increasingly dangerous place for civilians, especially for women.

"Night-time attacks against civilians by unidentified armed elements, and rape against women, remain widespread," Byrs said.

About 90 per cent of the rapes are allegedly committed by armed groups or regular forces.

Nabwemba Natabaro, a woman in South Kivu, told Al Jazeera that she had been held in the bush for two months and repeatedly gang raped, after being abducted from her village.

"My family thought I had been killed and lost all hope of ever seeing me. Then I managed to escape. I was very sick," she said.

Her family brought her to a hospital where she was diagnosed with HIV.

'Tortured by attackers'

Rossette Kavira, a gynaecologist at a hospital in the town of Goma, said: "There isn't a single day that we don't get raped women coming to the hospital. This explains how widespread the problem is. Almost all victims require surgery due to bleeding or wounds inflicted through torture by their attackers."

Due to the huge numbers of rape victims, some women have to wait for months for reconstructive surgery.

Dede Amanor-Wilks, Action Aid's director for West and Central Africa, said many rape cases go unreported.

"Currently the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] is thought to have the highest incident of rape in the world, but statistics that come to surface are only a fraction probably of the rapes that actually occur," she told Al Jazeera.

"Different statistics are coming up in different parts of the eastern DRC all the time. One commonly used statistic is that there are about 400 rapes a day."

Al Jazeera's Mohammed Adow, reporting from Goma, said there were growing fears that the use of rape was turning into a norm in the DR Congo conflict.

"Rape has been used by all armed groups as a weapon that is more readily available than bullets and bombs. In many cases the social stigma associated with rape leaves the survivors shunned by husbands, parents and their communities," he said.

The fighting in the eastern DRC between UN-backed Congolese government forces and Rwandan Hutu rebels have worsened in recent months.

The country hosts one of the biggest UN aid operations. Hundreds of thousands of people in the east of the country have been driven from their homes due to fighting, many of whom need protection from violent attacks.

Does Military Service Turn Young Men into Sexual Predators?

2009-10-22T13:26:00.001-07:00

Does Military Service Turn Young Men into Sexual Predators?
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet
October 22, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142942/

Every day, for four years as a West Point cadet, Tara Krause lived and worked alongside the men who had gang-raped her.

Still, she managed to graduate in 1982. She served as a field artillery officer during the Cold War and was attached to the 518th Military Intelligence Brigade during the Gulf War. In what she calls "an act of incredible self-destruction," she married a three-tour Vietnam vet in 1985 and, for the next eight years, lived "the private hell of his PTSD."

"Suicidal behavior, violence and degradation were common threads of daily life," she told me. She survived only because when he put his gun to her head one day, it finally gave her the courage to flee. "Like Lot's wife," she says, she struggles not to look back.

It's been almost 30 years since the rape, and Krause says she still "dance(s) the crushing daily struggle" of her own PTSD: "The nightmares, panic attacks, flashbacks, cold sweats, suicidal thoughts, zoning out, numbing all emotion and desperately avoiding triggers (reminders) -- I have become a prisoner in my own home."

Krause is rated 70 percent disabled by the Veteran's Administration and has been in treatment at the Long Beach [Calif.] VA for the past six years.

For all the work she has done to heal her own injuries, she still has no answer for the question: "How do you get a group of Southern white teenagers, all of whom were Eagle Scouts, class presidents, scholars and athletes, to be capable of raping a classmate?"

The question deserves an answer, and not a simplistic one. A 2003 survey of female veterans from Vietnam through the Gulf War found that almost 8 in 10 had been sexually harassed during their military service, and 30 percent had been raped.

Yet for decades, in spite of the terrible numbers, the military has managed with astonishing success to get away with responding to grievances like Krause's with silence, or denial, or by blaming "a few bad apples." But when individual soldiers take the blame, the system gets off the hook.

And it can be shown that the patterns of military sex crimes are old and widespread -- for generations, military service has transformed large numbers of American boys into sexual predators.

So it seems reasonable to ask if perhaps there is something about military culture or training or experience that can be identified as causative, and then, perhaps, changed.

The correlation is difficult to dismiss. The majority of veterans behind bars today are there for a very specific type of crime: violence against women and children. That fact has held true since the first Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) surveys of veteran populations in the nation's prisons in 1981, and there is evidence that those surveys only identified a much older problem.

The orgy of demonization, however, that both fueled and justified the disgraceful neglect of veterans in the aftermath of Vietnam makes this an especially fraught issue to take on.

But -- without making any excuses for behaviors that cause irreparable harm to those who are victimized -- there is little hope of change unless the tacit complicity of military institutions and culture is acknowledged. And that complicity most certainly did not begin recently.

World War II is remembered as a crucible and a coming-of-age ritual for the baby-faced boys it turned first into men and then into the "greatest generation."

The butchery, the civilian atrocities, the summary executions, the appalling racism and the breakdown of hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been largely erased from communal memory. And so have the rapes perpetrated by American soldiers on our female enemies and allies alike.

In August and September 1944, when the fighting eased, French women were raped by their American liberators at three times the rate of civilian women in the U.S. And during the final drive through Germany in March and April 1945, more than 900 German women were raped by American soldiers, causing Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to issue a directive to Army commanders expressing his "grave concern" and instructing that speedy and appropriate punishments be administered.

According to Madeline Morris, the Duke University law professor and military historian who uncovered that lurid fragment of history, those numbers are almost certainly on the low side.

"Rape is particularly likely to have been undercounted because it is less serious than murder," Morris explains, "it is reputedly the most underreported violent crime, even in the domestic context, and it was perpetrated in the ETO (European Theater of Operations) almost exclusively against non-Americans."

Those women, especially German women, could not easily have found the courage -- or the opportunity -- to file complaints.

The memories of rape brought home by World War II soldiers surely changed their lives forever.

"What does rape do to the rapist?" is a question Krause has struggled with for 20 years. "Somewhere out there is that Rotarian, happy grandfather, son-done-good, solid citizen. Does he block it out, does he remember, does he feel a shred of guilt? Is it truly done with impunity?"

It is important to note that during World War II, according to Morris' research, patterns of violent crime in the United States' civilian population underwent sharp changes as well.

"While civilian murder and non-negligent manslaughter rates decreased 7.5 percent from prewar rates, aggravated assault rates increased substantially (19.9 percent), and forcible-rape rates increased dramatically (by more than 27 percent) above the prewar average."

Similarly, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, BJS statistics show a 42 percent increase in reported domestic violence and a 25 percent increase in the reported incidence of rape and sexual assault.

Except for simple assault, which increased by 3 percent, the incidence of every other crime surveyed -- including violent crimes overall -- decreased, but once again, mirroring Morris' World War II data, domestic violence, rape and sexual assault showed daunting increases.

The first BJS survey of incarcerated veterans found that two-thirds of those veterans had been convicted of rape or sexual assault. In military prisons as well, the report noted, "sexual assault was the most common offense for which inmates were held … accounting for nearly a full third of all military prisoners."

That chilling aspect of soldiers' criminal behavior held true in subsequent BJS surveys.

In 2000, veterans in state and federal prisons and local jails were twice as likely as non-veterans to be sentenced for a violent sexual crime. In the 2004 survey, 1 in 4 veterans in prison were sex offenders (1 in 3 in military prisons), compared to 1 in 10 incarcerated non-veterans.

Chris Mumola, author of the two most recent BJS reports, points out that "when sex crimes are excluded, the violent-offense incarceration rate of non-veterans is actually greater than the incarceration rate of veterans for all other offenses combined (651 per 100,000 versus 630 per 100,000)."

In fact, when sex crimes are excluded, adult male veterans are over 40 percent less likely to be in prison for a violent crime than their non-veteran counterparts. The same holds true for property crimes, drugs and public disorder -- the rates are much higher rates for adult men without military experience.

"The one notable exception to this pattern," Mumola says, "is sex assaults, including rape."

The Veterans' Health Administration has adopted the term military sexual trauma (MST) to refer to severe or threatening forms of sexual harassment and sexual assault sustained in military service.

Their records for 2007 show that 22.2 percent of female veterans and 1.3 percent of male vets (from all eras) who used the agency's health services screened positive for MST. That represents a daunting increase of about 65 percent for both men and women over the agency's 2003 data.

And the small percentage of men is somewhat misleading; the 2007 percentages translate into 45,564 women and 47,719 men whose injuries forced them to acknowledge their victimization and to seek help from the VA.

Some of that increase can perhaps be attributed to a 2005 congressional directive requiring the VA to improve its rate of screening returning soldiers for MST, but given that almost 90 percent of veterans don't (or can't) use VA health care services, it seems safe to assume that the actual numbers are considerably higher.

Those are just the numbers for veterans.

In 2008, the Pentagon received more than 2,900 sexual assault reports involving active-duty service members. That represents a 9 percent increase from 2007, a 26 percent increase in combat zones. Almost a third of those reports involved rape, and more than half involved aggravated sexual assault.

In a dazzling display of unapologetic spin, the increase was called "encouraging," an indication of more reports rather than more assaults. It offered no evidence to back up that interpretation, save that the department "encourages greater reporting to hold offenders accountable for this crime."

That seems an unlikely incentive given that only 10 percent of the 2008 complaints led to a court-martial (compared to a civilian rate of 40 percent). The rest received minor punishments, almost half were dismissed, and the report acknowledged that 90 percent of sexual assaults in the military aren't reported at all.

Rape occurs almost twice as frequently in the military as it does among civilians, especially in wartime.

When a 2008 House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee subpoenaed Kaye Whitley, director of the DoD's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), to explain what the department was doing to stop the escalating sexual violence in the military, her boss, Michael Dominguez, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, ordered her not to appear.

Only after the department was threatened with a contempt citation was Whitley made available to the committee. She then sought to reassure the members that DoD is conducting a "crusade against sexual assault," and itemized all of the heroic measures the agency was planning to implement in the very near future -- efforts that somehow, despite explicit directives and deadlines from Congress, the agency had not managed to launch at the time.

Tia Christopher, women veterans coordinator at Swords to Plowshares in San Francisco, holds Dominguez, not Whitley, responsible for flouting congressional directives.

"I heard him claim that the reason sexual assaults are so high in the military right now is the hip-hop influence. I don't need to spell out why I found that so offensive. I fault Dominguez for not recognizing that it is a leadership issue."

Christopher loves the military and calls it "a really beautiful machine" when it is working correctly. But she is a rape survivor, and she feels doubly betrayed by her superiors in the Navy. "They can respond to other situations, why not to sexual assault?"

Christopher was 18 when she joined the Navy, training to be a cryptologist. The night she was raped, she had been drinking.

"Underage drinking," she notes, "is a big issue in the military. It gets you an Article 15, and it's 100 percent guaranteed that you will be prosecuted for collateral misconduct. It is far more likely that you will get in trouble for collateral misconduct [from drinking alcohol] than for raping someone. So I destroyed all the evidence. I bleached my sheets and scrubbed myself up and didn't come forward until two weeks later. I wanted to keep my military career, and I thought I could just get through it.

"But I saw him every day. I mustered with him. He would follow me into the chow hall and sit across from me while I ate. I stopped eating, couldn't concentrate, started failing my courses. And I started having flashbacks, hallucinating. I thought I saw him everywhere."

Christopher finally realized she needed help, but the female petty officer she first spoke to got her chief involved and, as the report went up the chain of command, her nightmare just got bigger.

"In my case, there were witnesses. They heard my head hit the wall in the barracks room, but they were drinking [underage], too."

Her commanding officer promised them all immunity if they agreed to testify on her behalf, and then reneged on the deal.

"It ended up that they all got in trouble, and [her rapist] got off." (In 2006, Christopher's attacker was expelled from the military for another rape.)

"The last few months that I was in the service, I was assigned to X Division, mopping the stairs, cleaning the heads, picking hair out of the drains. It was my job to vacuum the different chief's offices, and these sleazeballs would say things like, 'Hey, Christopher, bend over when you're sweeping.' Or, 'Hey Christopher, let me see them titties.' When you come forward about a rape, basically you are just a slut."

Christopher left the military in 2001, and it took her a long time to get her life back together. She still has panic attacks, flashbacks, trouble sleeping. But, with help from a women's psychotherapy group at the Seattle VA, and the rich support from sympathetic colleagues at Swords to Plowshares, she has developed a lot of coping skills.

After seven years, and some good therapy, she feels strong enough to manage her advocacy and policy work.

"I've testified before the California state Legislature, and I was invited to testify before Congress. I speak out about MST as much as I do so other women don't have to. This is not just my job. There is no way I would ever give my clients to the media. I remember what it was like, being fresh out of the service and going through that trauma."

Lisa Pellerin, who has facilitated sex-offender programs for the New York State Department of Corrections for six years, believes that "everyone has the potential to be a sex offender. It depends on how they have been conditioned. When they are in the military, supporting the brotherhood is the most important thing. Soldiers do what they feel they have to do because they don't want to be seen as weak or unable to perform.

"Sexual abuse has always been about power and control. If you are exposed and desensitized to certain sexual behaviors, they become normalized."

One of the most basic conditioning strategies military training uses to destabilize a recruit's inherent disinclination to kill is the inculcation of a dehumanized enemy. Soldiers are taught that "we" are the good guys; "they" are the "others." "They" are easier to kill because they are not us. They are also easier to despise. "Others" -- the nips, the gooks, the hajis -- come and go, but ever reliable and constant is "the girl."

Even in this new 20 percent female military, misogynist marching rhymes (aka jodies) are still used, and drill instructors still shame recruits with taunts of pussy or sissy, faggot or girl. Patty McCann, who signed up with the Illinois National Guard when she was 17 and deployed to Iraq when she was 20, still feels betrayed when she remembers her drill sergeant yelling, "Does your pussy hurt?" and "Do you need a tampon?"

A culture that encourages violence and misogyny, says Helen Benedict, attracts a disproportionate number of sexually violent men: half of male recruits enlist to escape abusive families, a history that is often predictive of an abuser.

But whatever attracts them, and wherever they come from, this is about a system plagued by rot, and not about a few bad apples. American veterans embody the inevitable, predictable blowback from that rotten system.

It is both unjust and disingenuous to focus on what our soldiers have become without talking about what we have become: A society that romanticizes its warriors, demonizes its veterans and devalues its women.

"Did I serve my full enlistment?" Christopher says. "No. But that's because some shitbag sailor who shouldn't have been wearing the uniform came into my life. Why is that my issue?

"This is a leadership issue."

Insurance Company Tells Rape Victim Her Assault Would be a Pre-Existing Condition

2009-10-22T13:25:00.001-07:00

Insurance Company Tells Rape Victim Her Assault Would be a Pre-Existing Condition
By RH Reality Check, RH Reality Check
October 22, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/143429/

This post comes from Jodi Jacobson's blog at RH Reality Check.

There is a serious and deep disconnect on health reform between reality and the debates ongoing in Washington. For one thing, despite continued support by the actual people of the United States for a public option in health reform, some Senators, namely Max Baucus (D-Montana) just want "a bill that can pass." Sounds to me like that's a strong endorsement of giving us the lowest common denominator health bill on one of the most important issues of our time.

Yet another deep, deep disconnect is on the issue of women--the people, their lives, their reproductive needs--being considered either irrelevant a la Senator "Who-Needs-Maternity-Care" Kyl of Arizona (home of the Sheriff who wanted female inmates to pay extra transportation costs to procure abortions) or in the form of Senator "You-Can't-Pay-For-Your-Abortion-With-Your-Private-Insurance-Policy" Hatch (R-Utah), or the insurance companies and the Catholic Bishops for whom women's health is a pre-existing condition or a condition of original sin.

Out of all of this is an increasing string of stories of individual women who've been denied insurance because their wombs, breasts, rapes (pick one) or simply their sex makes them a "pre-existing condition."

Among the most recent examples is a woman who spoke at the launch of NWLC's "Being A Woman Is Not A Pre-Existing Condition" campaign on October 20th, 2009.

Writing at Womenstake.org, Amanda Stone recounts the tale of the speaker, Chris Turner:

"Nope, we won’t take her." This is what insurance companies in Florida said when asked whether they would provide insurance coverage to a hypothetical applicant who had survived rape. Let’s back up a few steps. First, who was asking the question? Second, why was the applicant's history posed as a hypothetical? Third, what can we do to change this dire situation?

Turner is a health insurance agent from Tampa Florida, and a rape survivor who spoke of her survival story. She was the person, in Stone's frame, who was asking the question.

As recounted by Stone:

In November 2002, [Chris Turner] was drugged and raped while on a business trip. She sought medical help from her physician, who put her on preventative anti-HIV medication, since there was no way of knowing whether the person who raped her used a condom. Following her assault, Chris was afraid to leave her house for some time. About a month after the assault, Chris gathered the courage to seek counseling to deal with her fears-counseling which continued for about a year. She took the steps she needed to take care of herself, and the steps she now encourages other rape survivors to take as a volunteer at a Florida organization called SOAR-Speaking Out About Rape. As a volunteer, she warns rape survivors about a harm which she faced-she tells them, "if you lose your insurance, you might not be able to get it back." This is exactly what happened to Chris.

A few months following her rape, Chris needed to find new health insurance on the individual market.

This, writes Stone, "brings us to our second question-why did Chris pose her story to insurance underwriters as the story of a hypothetical applicant?"

As an insurance agent, Chris knows how the system works: "if you're rejected for coverage once it can put a black spot on your insurance record and keep you from getting health insurance in the future." So, why did the insurance companies she consulted refuse to cover a hypothetical rape survivor? Because the hypothetical rape survivor had sought treatment for her rape! Her use of preventative anti-HIV medication and her attendance in much needed counseling -- steps that were necessary to Chris’s health and well-being -- became obstacles to her future health and well-being, as they were cited for reasons why insurance companies refused to insure her hypothetical applicant.

In order to qualify for insurance coverage at all, her hypothetical applicant would have had to have tested negative for HIV for two to three years and have completed counseling for one to two years (depending on the specific insurance company and plan). If Chris, an insurance agent who knows the ins and outs of the insurance market, as unable to obtain health insurance following her assault, what chance do the rest of us have?

And to the third question:

"What," asks Stone, "can we do to fix our flawed insurance market which penalizes us for using the insurance we have (if we are among those lucky enough to have health insurance at all)?"

You contact your state representatives and Demand Health Reform Now by clicking here!

Working together, states Stone, we must make sure that no other woman feels the sentiments that Chris Turner expressed at the launch of the campaign: “I was punished for doing the right thing to take care of myself and my livelihood.”

--Jodi Jacobson

Rape Is a Pre-Existing Condition? The Heartlessness of the Health Insurance Industry Exposed

2009-10-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

Rape Is a Pre-Existing Condition? The Heartlessness of the Health Insurance Industry Exposed
By Danielle Ivory, The Huffington Post Investigative Fund
October 22, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143426/

Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine.

Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.

Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she had been raped. She never developed an HIV infection. But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.

Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions. They told her they might reconsider in three or more years if she could prove that she was still AIDS-free.

Stories of how victims of sexual assault can get tangled in the health insurance system have been one result of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund's citizen journalism project, which is calling on readers to provide information and anecdotes about the inner workings of the insurance industry. The project aims to uncover details and data that can inform the larger debate over how to fix the nation's health care system. As the Investigative Fund reported in September, health insurance companies are not required to make public their records on how often claims are denied and for what reasons.

Some women have contacted the Investigative Fund to say they were deemed ineligible for health insurance because they had a pre-existing condition as a result of a rape, such as post traumatic stress disorder or a sexually transmitted disease. Other patients and therapists wrote in with allegations that insurers are routinely denying long-term mental health care to women who have been sexually assaulted.

Susan Pisano, spokeswoman for the health insurance industry's largest trade group, America's Health Insurance Plans, said insurers do not discriminate against victims of sexual assault and ordinarily would not even know if a patient had been raped.

"These issues you are bringing up, they deserve to be brought up," said Pisano. "People who have experienced rape and sexual assault are victims and we want them to be in a system where everyone is covered."

Turner's story about HIV drugs is not unusual, said Cindy Holtzman, an insurance agent and expert in medical billing at Medical Refund Service, Inc. of Marietta, Ga. Insurers generally categorize HIV-positive people as having a pre-existing condition and deny them coverage. Holtzman said that health insurance companies also consistently decline coverage for anyone who has taken anti-HIV drugs, even if they test negative for the virus. "It's basically an automatic no," she said.

Pisano, of the insurance trade group, said: "If you put down on a form that you are or were taking anti-HIV drugs at any time, they [the insurance companies] are going to understand that you are or were in treatment for HIV, period," she said. "That could be a factor in determining whether you get coverage."

Some doctors and nurses said that the industry's policy is not medically sound. "The chance of a rape victim actually contracting AIDS is very low. It doesn't make any sense to use that as a calculus for determining who get health insurance," said Dr. Alex Schafir, faculty instructor at Providence St. Vincent Hospital in Portland, Ore.

Nurses who deal with sexual assault cases say the industry's policy creates a significant problem for those treating women who have been assaulted. "It's difficult enough to make sure that rape victims take the drugs," said Diana Faugno, a forensic nurse in California and board director of End Violence Against Women International. "What are we supposed to tell women now? Well, I guess you have a choice - you can risk your health insurance or you can risk AIDS. Go ahead and choose."

Turner, now a life and casualty insurance agent, said she went without health coverage for three years after the attack. She second-guesses her decision to take the HIV drugs. "I'm going to be penalized my whole life because of this," she said.

Several women told the Investigative Fund that after being sexually assaulted they had been denied care or ruled ineligible for health insurance because of what were deemed pre-existing conditions stemming from their assaults -- particularly post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

A 38-year-old woman in Ithaca, N.Y., said she was raped last year and then penalized by insurers because in giving her medical history she mentioned an assault she suffered in college 17 years earlier. The woman, Kimberly Fallon, told a nurse about the previous attack and months later, her doctor's office sent her a bill for treatment. She said she was informed by a nurse and, later, the hospital's billing department that her health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, not only had declined payment for the rape exam, but also would not pay for therapy or medication for trauma because she "had been raped before."

Fallon says she now has trouble getting coverage for gynecological exams. To avoid the hassle of fighting with her insurance company, she goes to Planned Parenthood instead and pays out of pocket.

A New Mexico woman told the Investigative Fund she was denied coverage at several health insurance companies because she had suffered from PTSD after being attacked and raped in 2003. She did not want to disclose her name because she feared that she would lose her group health insurance if she went on the record as a rape victim. "I remember just feeling infuriated," she said.

"I think it's important to point out that health plans are not denying coverage based on the fact that someone was raped," said Pisano of the insurance trade group. "But PTSD could be a factor in denied coverage."

"That might not be a discriminatory action, but it certainly would seem to have a discriminatory impact," said Sandra Park, staff attorney at the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "Insurance discrimination against rape victims will only further discourage them from coming forward to law enforcement and seeking medical help."

Even when patients have coverage, there are fundamental disagreements between insurance companies and doctors about what mental health treatment is medically necessary. The Investigative Fund spoke with doctors, psychologists, and licensed clinical social workers around the country who work regularly with victims of sexual assault. They said that their patients have been experiencing an increase in delays and denials, particularly for talk therapy.

"There's a lot of anger about this in the medical community," said Dr. George Shapiro-Weiss, a psychiatrist in Middletown, Conn. "You don't realize what an Alice in Wonderland web this has become."

"A lot of my patients are being told that their treatment isn't medically necessary," said Keri Nola, an Orlando, Fla., psychologist, who said about 75 percent of her patients are victims of sexual violence.

Several therapists cited problems with managed care companies that specialize in mental health. Such firms generally work under contract with health insurers to hold down costs while still authorizing appropriate care.

Some therapists and patients said the managed care companies have cut off necessary treatment for sexual assault victims in the name of cost containment. "The companies are peppering them with questions about their symptoms, and about their histories, and asking, 'Well, are you sure you really need therapy?'" said Jeffrey Axelbank, a New Jersey psychologist. "For someone who has been traumatized, it can feel like another trauma, and it makes the therapy less effective."

Pisano, of the insurance association, said it was not fair to draw a larger pattern from such anecdotal evidence. "These situations are evaluated on a person-by-person basis," she said. "There is nothing routine about this."

Jim Wrich, a Madison, Wis., a consultant who helps employers evaluate the companies that manage their mental health care, said his work has made him wary of the industry. "This is absolutely routine - these denials," Wrich said. "The default position is to reject care."

Magellan Behavioral Health Services, Inc., one of the nation's largest managed-care companies with more than 58 million customers, said that it does not routinely turn down treatment requests from victims of sexual assault or other clients. "We're not denying care. We are exercising our responsibility to make sure that medical necessity is met," said Dr. Lawrence Nardozzi, Magellan's medical director. "I think the process works well."

Asked if cost is a factor in the company's decisions, Magellan spokeswoman Erin Somers said: "If all the safeguards are in place to determine whether treatment is medically necessary and appropriate" then "the cost takes care of itself."

A former care manager for Magellan said in an interview that she felt pressure to deny care for cost reasons. Lois Gorwitz, a psychologist with thirty years of experience who went to work for Magellan in California in 2000, said her superiors would tell her: "We are not denying this person treatment, we are denying them their benefit. If they want the treatment they can still pay out of pocket." But, Gorwitz said, "You know that means that the person is not going to get the treatment because they can't afford to pay out of pocket."

Gorwitz quit after two years. "It's a very uncomfortable feeling of not being able to offer help," she said.

Asked for a response, Magellan's Somers said, "I think you should keep in mind that there have been a lot of changes at Magellan in the last seven years. I think the people who work at Magellan now are not having that experience."

Girl raped by family from age of five

2009-10-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/6350552/Girl-raped-by-family-from-age-of-five.html

Girl raped by family from age of five
Three man were jailed for a total of 47 years after raping a young girl in their family and locking her in a wardrobe when she became pregnant.
16 Oct 2009

The girl was repeatedly raped by her step-father, step-uncle and step-cousin from the age of five and throughout her school years.

A judge said the men treated her like an "unpaid and unwilling prostitute".

Two of the men, aged 55 and 50, were given indeterminate sentences and told they will be deported when they are finally released.

A third man, 27, the girl's step-cousin, was jailed for 12 years.

None of the three men, who are of Indian origin, can be named to protect the identity of their victim, now aged 27.

Cardiff Crown Court heard she was just five when she was first sexually abused by her step uncle.

She became pregnant at 14 - but the court heard she was locked in a wardrobe so visitors would not see her condition.

Prosecutor Marion Lewis told: "The girl was already seven months pregnant when she first saw a doctor about her condition.

"When the baby was born the girl's parents told friends and neighbours it was their own - before flying their daughter to India for an arranged marriage."

The court heard the young woman went to police in 2008 and told them she'd been repeatedly abused since she was a young child.

Miss Lewis said: "She was frightened and also believed her mother knew what was going on.

"When aged 14 and a pupil at school, her stomach was expanding and a scan revealed she was seven months pregnant.

"Her mother beat her all over her body apart from the face with a curtain pole.

"She was hidden, sometimes in a wardrobe and visitors were told she'd gone back to India."

The three men, all from Cardiff, were found guilty of rape and indecency at an earlier hearing.

The step-uncle was jailed indeterminately but told it was a notional sentence of 20 years.

The girl's step-father was also jailed indeterminately - with a notional sentence of 15 years.

Judge Patrick Curran told her step-uncle: "Not content with your own sexual abuse on her, you encouraged the others to treat her like an unpaid and unwilling prostitute."

"You all then involved yourselves in a group rape on her."

The judge added that the continued presence of the two older men in the UK was "detrimental to the public interest."

The Gang Rape and the Republicans

2009-10-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/10/16/notes101609.DTL

October 16, 2009 by the San Francisco Chronicle
The Gang Rape and the Republicans
Behold, 30 U.S. senators who don't give a damn about battered women
by Mark Morford

The world's tallest domestic dog? Adorable. The world's biggest newborn baby? Sad and disturbing.

Waterless urinals in every new building in Los Angeles? A positive step. Canada's disgusting oilsands and Coal Country, a new documentary detailing the environmental atrocities in Appalachia? Heart wrenching and depressing.

Jimmy Page showing Jack White and the Edge how to play "When the Levee Breaks" in It Might Get Loud? All flavors of awesome. Garth Brooks coming out of retirement? Anesthetizing.

See, it's all a matter of perspective. It's all a matter of context and spin, into which bin we toss the delightful refuse of our culture to recycle and re-use it another day.

It is with this wonky filter in mind we turn our gaze to the gaping hellmouth that is the U.S. Senate, that drab cauldron of grumpy old men, defeminized women and tiny handful of rebellious dissenters, all of whom claim to have your best interests at heart but mostly only really give a damn about which lobbyist will help them best make their next boat payment.

Do I sound a little bitter? I cannot imagine why. Let us watch the senate and see if we can figure it out.

Look at them shuffle and sneer, hem and haw! Watch as they willingly eat their own souls with a ice pick and some turpentine, then step up to the media microphones and try to sound ennobled and magnanimous when in fact they only make everyone within earshot feel lost and fatalistic. So cute.

It's the same old spectacle, isn't it? There they go, tossing around the health care reform issue like it didn't affect millions of humans every single day, throwing in massive compromises and snags just so the GOP can fellate its pals in the insurance industry and a gaggle of aggrieved Democrats can get their egos fluffed and you still won't be able to get a decent dental plan for your family.

But now, just for fun, let's take it a step further. Or rather, darker. Let's go ahead and step right onto one of those large, rusty nails sticking up from the senate floor, so painful as to make your stomach turn, a bit of your lunch jump back into your throat.

It's a story from the dark political underbelly that makes you question the entire setup, rethink humanity, and lean out your window and scream: what the hell is wrong with these people? Who are they, really? Why do we give them power?

Here is freshman Minnesota senator Al Franken's first-ever legislative action, a relatively simple, almost laughably surefire bill requiring the Pentagon no longer do business with any contractor -- hi, Halliburton! -- that requires its employees to agree that she cannot sue said contractor if she is, oh let's just say, gang raped by its employees.

You read that right. It's a can't-sue-us-if-you're-raped clause. In a U.S. government contract. Aimed squarely at Halliburton. Thanks, Dick Cheney!

First, you are required get over your initial disgust that such legislation is even necessary, that such clauses even exist and that the Pentagon is already doing business with such contractors (hi, Halliburton/KBR!), and that there has already been a truly horrible case validating it, wherein a 20-year-old female employee was allegedly gang-raped by contractors, locked in a shipping container, abused every way from Sunday, and found out later she was unable to sue.

Let us pause to imagine if, say, Wal-Mart had such a clause. Or maybe Toys 'R' Us. Starbucks. Let us imagine the appalled outcry. But Halliburton? Dick Cheney's vile little spitwad of shameless war profiteering? No problem. Hey, it's Republican-endorsed military contracting. No one said it was ethical.

But that's not most the repellant part. Ready?

The most repellant part is the 30 U.S. senators -- Republicans each and every one -- who just stepped forth to vote against the Franken amendment, essentially saying no, women should have no right to sue if they are sexually abused or gang raped, Halliburton and its ilk must be protected at all costs, and by the way we hereby welcome Satan into our rancid souls forevermore. God bless America.

Let us repeat, for clarity. Franken's amendment passed with a vote of 68-30. Meaning 30 U.S. senators voted against the elimination of the rape/sue clause. Meghan McCain, call your dad. He's one of them.

Here is where you try and do it. Here is where you bring in the filter mentioned above, try to figure out where to slot such wretched information, how to make even the slightest sense of it.

And then you discover a horrible truth: you can't. Turns out, when faced with such vileness, all filters fail. All balance is thrown off. You thought you had some sort of way to process and attain perspective? You are proven wrong.

So perhaps all we can do is ponder how pathetic and sad these various senator's lives must be, how these bitter old men will now go home at night and announce around the dinner table that, yes, today they worked very hard to help improve the welfare of the nation by essentially enabling rape and sexual abuse, tried their darndest to prevent women who've been viciously attacked from having much legal recourse. And lo, Satan will chuckle happily.

Then maybe these senators will try and hug their wives, or their daughters. And maybe, if there's any justice in the universe, their wives and daughters will slap them as hard as humanly possible, lock them in a shipping container, and never let them touch them again.

P.S.; Would you like a complete list of these 30 senators' names? Right here.

Why look, there's grandpa McCain. There's disgraced man-child John Ensign. Hooker-lovin' David Vitter. Saxby Chambliss. Inhofe. It's a veritable welfare-state who's who of Dick Cheney's sanctum of oily fluffers, and many more who would love to be. Shall we write a nice letter to them? Or maybe their wives and daughters?

© 2009 Hearst Communications Inc.

Rape case to force US defence firms into the open

2009-10-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/15/defence-contractors-rape-claim-block

Chris McGreal
Guardian.co.uk
Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:20 EDT

Senate passes measure prompted by case of woman prevented from suing over alleged rape by Halliburton/KBR colleagues

US defence firms are to be barred from lucrative government contracts if they refuse to allow employees access to the courts, after a woman working for a Halliburton subsidiary in Iraq was prevented from taking legal action over an alleged gang rape by fellow workers.

Al Franken, the Senate's newest member, has won an amendment to the defence appropriations bill prompted by the case of Jamie Leigh Jones. She alleges that she was drugged and raped by seven American contractors in Baghdad in 2005.

Jones, who was employed by KBR, which was fighting oil fires, says that a pattern of subsequent behaviour by the firm, including allegedly locking her in a container under armed guard and losing forensic evidence, amounts to a cover-up.

Halliburton/KBR used a clause in her contract requiring disputes to be settled by arbitration to block legal action - a policy which, her lawyer says, has encouraged assaults by creating a climate of impunity.

Franken described it as a denial of justice. "Contractors are using fine print to deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court," he said in a Senate debate.

In legal papers Jones, who was 20 at the time, says she was fed a knockout drug while drinking with KBR firefighters.

"When she awoke the next morning still affected by the drug, she found her body naked and severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants ruptured and her pectoral muscles torn, which would later require reconstructive surgery. Upon walking to the rest room, she passed out again," the papers say.

Jones was treated by a US army doctor who gave forensic evidence to company officials. She says the firm placed her under guard in a shipping container and she was released only after her father asked the US embassy to intervene. When the forensic evidence was handed to investigators two years later, crucial photographs and notes were missing.

Jones says she identified one of the men who attacked her after he confessed, but that Halliburton/KBR prevented her from taking legal action against him or the company by pointing to a clause in her contract requiring disputes to go to arbitration.

She told a Senate committee: "I had no idea that the clause was part of the contract, what the clause actually meant, or that I would eventually end up in this horrible situation."

Her lawyer, Todd Kerry, said that by forcing earlier assault cases to arbitration, Halliburton and other defence firms had created a climate in which some workers came to believe they could get away with sexual assaults and other crimes.

"I've received upwards of 40 calls to my office [about assault cases] in the past two years. A good number had been disposed of under arbitration," he said."Had there been public scrutiny to prevent such things happening and these cases taken to court, they might not have been repeated. Instead one of the men who raped Jamie was so confident that nothing would happen that he was lying in bed next to her the morning after."

Halliburton and KBR divided into separate companies in April. Halliburton declined to comment on the case.

KBR has sought to discredit Jones's account by saying she was seen drinking and flirting with a firefighter before leaving the gathering with him, and that the man claims to have had consensual sex with her. The firm denies that Jones was held prisoner, but not that her injuries indicated serious sexual assault.

But KBR defended arbitration as a "fair process", saying: "Most large companies have a dispute resolution programme which is mandatory and is designed to address employee complaints quickly and efficiently. Under KBR's dispute resolution programme 95% of all employee complaints are resolved quickly to the employees' satisfaction without a mediation or an arbitration."

Franken and Kerry challenge the claim that arbitration is usually settled to the satisfaction of complainants. Other women have come forward to accuse the firms of not taking assault allegations seriously.

Mary Beth Kineston, who drove lorries in Iraq and survived a bloody ambush, has alleged that she was sacked after complaining of sexual assaults by several fellow workers.

"At least if you got in trouble on a convoy, you could radio the army and they would come and help you out. But when I complained to KBR, they didn't do anything. I still have nightmares. They changed my life forever, and they got away with it," she told the New York Times last year.

Linda Lindsey, who worked for KBR in Iraq for three years, has said that male supervisors regularly offered promotions and other benefits in exchange for sex. Lindsey said she filed complaints but they that were never acted on.Last month Jones won a court ruling against Halliburton and KBR that the arbitration clause in her contract did not prevent them from being sued. But the legal battle to get the case even heard is far from over. "Four years to fight to get in court is not a day in court," she said.

The legislation to end the bar on legal action passed the Senate with a clear majority but 30 Republican members voted against it, including the former presidential candidate John McCain. Among the objections were claims that the government had no business interfering in a private contract between a company and its workers.

Halliburton's controversial history

Halliburton and KBR, its former subsidiary, were the largest defence department contractors in Iraq. Critics allege that huge contracts were won in part because of ties to George Bush's government, particularly to his vice-president, Dick Cheney, a former Halliburton chief executive who left the company during the 2000 presidential campaign with a $36m pay-off.

The Texas-based firm has a controversial history. In the early 1990s it was fined $3.8m for breaking trade embargoes on Iraq and Libya. Last year, a former KBR president, Albert "Jack" Stanley, pleaded guilty to overseeing the payment of $182m in bribes to win engineering contracts in Nigeria.

Critics allege that Halliburton/KBR won a contract to plan oil-well firefighting in the Iraq invasion because no other firm was permitted to bid.

The Pentagon's auditor found Halliburton/KBR was linked to "the vast majority" of fraud cases investigated by the defence department in Iraq. Furthermore, a civil servant who oversaw contracts accused Halliburton of unlawfully receiving preferential treatment over contracts for work in Iraq, Kuwait and the Balkans. The firm reportedly severely overcharged the Pentagon for fuel deliveries to Iraq. Halliburton is headquartered in Houston, Texas but has recently opened a new joint head office in Dubai.

30 GOP Senators Vote to Defend Gang Rape

2009-10-11T14:50:00.000-07:00

Senate passes Franken amendment aimed at defense contractors: 30 GOP Senators Vote to Defend Gang Rape

Charles Lemos
AlterNet
Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:43 EDT
It is stunning that 30 Republican members of the United States Senate would vote to protect a corporation, in this case

Halliburton/KBR, over a woman who was gang raped. The details from Think Progress:
In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and "warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job." (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.

Offering Ms. Jones legal relief was Senator Al Franken of Minnesota who offered an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR "if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court."

Seems simple enough. And yet, to GOP Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions of Alabama allowing victims of sexual assault a day in court is tantamount to a "political attack" at Halliburton. That 29 others, all men, chose to join him in opposing the Franken amendment is simply mind-boggling.

Here are those who vote to protect a corporation over a victim of rape:

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

In the debate, Senator Sessions maintained that Franken's amendment overreached into the private sector and suggested that it violated the due process clause of the Constitution.

To which, Senator Franken fired back quoting the Constitution. "Article 1 Section 8 of our Constitution gives Congress the right to spend money for the welfare of our citizens. Because of this, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, 'Congress may attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds and has repeatedly employed that power to further broad policy objectives,'" Franken said. "That is why Congress could pass laws cutting off highway funds to states that didn't raise their drinking age to 21. That's why this whole bill [the Defense Appropriations bill] is full of limitations on contractors -- what bonuses they can give and what kind of health care they can offer. The spending power is a broad power and my amendment is well within it."

God I love it when Senator Franken quotes the Constitution. Not every Republican was so clueless. Ten voted for the Franken amendment including the GOP's female contingent of Senators (Snowe, Collins, Hutchinson and Murkowski).

"We need to put assurances into the law that those kind of instances [the Jamie Leigh Jones case] are not capable of being repeated," said Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who voted in favor of Franken's amendment. "I want to make sure that a woman, any individual who is a victim of a terrible act, knows that they have got protections."

Murkowski said that she considered the arguments that Sessions made about the amendment being too expansive before she decided to vote for the legislation.

"I looked at it," said Murkowski. "And, I tell you, you look at some of the things we do and you have to say, 'OK, you have a specific instance we're trying to address and does this go above and beyond?' But when you have to err on the side of protecting an individual, I erred on the side of greater generosity, I guess."

Republican Sen. George LeMieux of Florida echoed some of Murkowski's sentiments.

"I can't see in any circumstance that a woman who was a victim of sexual assault shouldn't have her right to go to court," LeMieux said. "So, that is why I voted for it."

Although Franken chatted up LeMieux on the Senate floor before the vote, LeMieux said that he had already made his decision. But, LeMieux added, Franken's talk didn't hurt.

"I had decided to vote for it before I came here, but I was happy to hear his argument for it," LeMieux said. "He did what a senator should do, which was he was working it. He was working for his amendment." I'll add, Al Franken is everything a United States Senator should be.

As for Jamie Leigh Jones, she was nothing but elated and thankful. "It means the world to me," Jones said of the amendment's passage. "It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it."

And for the GOP, it is a new low

More from the Minn Post

Elizabeth Smart says she was raped daily

2009-10-02T06:06:00.000-07:00

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20091001/US.Elizabeth.Smart/

Elizabeth Smart says she was raped daily
Jennifer Dobner
Associated Press
Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:08 EDT

Salt Lake City - Taking the stand for the first time since she was snatched from her girlhood bedroom seven years ago, Elizabeth Smart testified Thursday that her captor raped her three or four times a day, kept her tied up with a cable around her leg, and threatened to kill her if she tried to escape.

Asked by a prosecutor to describe Brian David Mitchell, the self-described prophet accused of holding her captive for nine months, Smart replied: "Evil, wicked, manipulative, stinky, slimy, greedy, selfish, not spiritual, not religious, not close to God."

Smart, now a 21-year-old college student, gave her horrifying account in federal court as part of a proceeding over whether Mitchell is mentally competent to stand trial.

The 55-year-old one-time street preacher has been behind bars since 2003 - mostly in a state mental hospital - but has yet to stand trial. Twice he has been ruled mentally incompetent in state court, and he has often demonstrated bizarre behavior, including incessantly singing hymns in the courtroom and once yelling at a judge to repent.

Smart testified that within hours of her 2002 kidnapping at knifepoint, she was led away to a secluded mountain campsite and in a quickie ceremony became the polygamous "wife" of the older man.

"After that he proceeded to rape me," Smart said, sharing for the first time publicly her account of the ordeal.

She said Mitchell showed her pornography and plied her with alcohol and drugs to lower her resistance to his sexual advances. Once, Smart said, she tried to fight Mitchell off by biting him.

On the stand for nearly two hours, Smart was poised, her voice never wavering. She did not come face-to-face with her alleged tormenter. Mitchell was removed from the courtroom for disruptive behavior - singing hymns - before Smart arrived, and watched the proceedings from a holding cell.

A federal judge ruled earlier this week that Smart's testimony is relevant to the question of Mitchell's competency. Mitchell's competency hearing is not set to begin until Nov. 30, but Smart testified early because she is going on a religious mission for the Mormon church in Paris.

Smart was 14 when she was abducted from her bedroom in the middle of the night. In a surprising turn that transfixed the country, she was rescued in March 2003 after a motorist spotted her walking the streets of a Salt Lake City suburb with Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Eileen Barzee.

Smart testified that in the days immediately following the kidnapping, Mitchell held her captive with the help of a 10-foot cable bolted to her leg and tethered to a line stretched between two trees. She said Mitchell threatened to kill her if she yelled or tried to get away.

Smart said Mitchell would rape her three to four times a day. There was some respite - usually when Barzee became upset over Mitchell's relationship with Smart - but it never lasted, Smart said.

Mitchell is charged in state court with kidnapping and sexual assault. Last year, he was indicted on federal charges of kidnapping and transporting a minor across state lines. In both the state and federal cases, experts have split over Mitchell's competency.

Mitchell's lawyers maintain he is incompetent and suggested that evidence of his delusions can be found in his religious rambling and writings, including a 27-page manifesto he called "The Book of Emmanuel David Isaiah."

Smart said he read from the book repeatedly during her captivity, often sang hymns and laced his conversations with religious language. Throughout her captivity, Smart was forced to wear a white, ankle-length robe, a head scarf and two veils across her face.

"He told me he was a prophet," Smart said under cross-examination by Mitchell's lawyer. "He said he was the voice of God on Earth and that he would reign over God's children until Jesus came."

But she also said his religious revelations seemed to come only when he wanted something, or when he was trying to calm Barzee. Smart said she believed Mitchell always knew that he could be punished for her kidnapping and understood how the court system worked.

She said he gave her an alias - Augustine Marshall - and told her what to say to police if they were ever questioned. He also bragged about skirting previous accusations of sexual abuse and fooling others, Smart said.

Never in nine months did Mitchell appear confused or out of control, Smart testified: "He was a very capable, intelligent human being."

It's Still Rape: A Much Needed Dose Of Sanity On Roman Polanski

2009-09-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

It's Still Rape: A Much Needed Dose Of Sanity On Roman Polanski
By Little Light, Feministe
September 29, 2009
http://www.feministe.us/blog//142939/

Dear newsmedia, Facebook page, friends, and assorted coworkers:

I have a little quiz for you! I know you like quizzes. But first!

A trigger warning for discussion of rape.

Let's say a 44-year-old man invites a 13-year-old girl over to his house. First it's so that he can take pictures of her -- "modeling." Then, even though she says she's uncomfortable and he made her feel unsafe, he convinces her mother to send her over for a second session, where he plies her with champagne and, allegedly, drugs her with Quaadludes and, over her protests and begging, performs multiple sex acts on her.

Do we agree that this is rape?

Let's say he’s charged with that rape, among other charges, but to avoid standing trial he jumps bail and flees the country.

Still unconvinced?

Let's say right after he gets to another country, he begins a public and supposedly-consensual relationship with a different fifteen-year-old girl, one who had stated before that she was feeling exploited in the industry in which both of them worked.

This is looking pretty solid, right? But what if there are mitigating circumstances?

What if it's been thirty years since the crime, and the now-grown woman who made the original accusation has asked that charges be dropped, because she knows her perpetrator will never face consequences or stand trial and she can't take another round of the trauma of being known the world over as that 13-year-old the famous guy raped, especially now that she has a husband and kids? Still rape?

Let's say he said he thought the 13-year-old was 18. Still rape?

Let's say he said she asked for it. Are you convinced?

Let's say he’s rich and influential and popular and has a lot of wealthy, influential friends, and shortly after he flees the country, the 13-year-old changes her story and asks that he be left alone. Still rape?

What if he had a really, really hard life -- war, loss, murdered loved ones. Still rape?

What if he's a genius, a virtuoso artist with many fans -- still rape?

What if he's really sorry? He's been punished a great deal already, after all. In the thirty years since fleeing the U.S., the guy has been forced to stay out of the country and live in comfort in his country of birth instead, where he is ostracized and blacklisted by the film industry in which he works -- and so is everyone who dares to work with him, including pilloried, hard-up, blacklisted actors like Jack Nicholson, Harrison Ford, Johnny Depp, Ewan McGregor, and Adrien Brody? In fact -- let's throw this in -- he was so dishonored and shunned by his colleagues he had to have a friend collect his Academy Award for him.

Still rape?

So are you upset that this man has been arrested and may finally stand trial?

Then why are you upset when that man is Roman Polanski?

But, I've heard from plenty of places, isn't there a statute of limitations for this kind of thing? Well, if there were, he wouldn't have been arrested. Alternate answer: if she were you -- or, if you can't go there, your little sister -- what are your feelings on that statute of limitations? At what point do we just say, hey, it was just child rape, can't we drop it?

But, can’t we just drop a mere statutory rape charge after thirty years? You mean because the other charges were dropped on a plea-bargain, drugging a girl and having sex with her stops counting as a flat-out rape no matter what her age?

But, she's grown-up now, can’t we just drop it? She wasn't then. And if she were, it would still be rape.

Isn't this just stuffy Americans judging a brilliant man on sexual peccadilloes like they always do, because Americans can't handle sex as a culture? Yes. Absolutely. The rest of the world thinks raping kids is a-okay, whoops, our bad, we're just too uptight about drugging people and forcing sex on them. You know us Americans. We're always up in arms about sexual assault this, consent that.

But he's an old man now. Yes, and due to the Oldness Exception Act of 1967, old people are no longer accountable for felonies and shouldn't face consequences for doing things that are wrong.

But he’s really talented, and I really like his movies. That's. Nice.

But we don't know all the facts!

That's what a trial is for.

If you believe arresting people and making them stand trial is worth anything, why the objection? Why the international outcry and circulation of petitions and raging French government officials?

Because seriously, the message I'm hearing is, if you have enough money and celebrity friends, if you're talented enough, if you're charming enough, everyone thinks that you should just be left alone to rape underage girls and how dare anyone call you on it or even suggest that you have to stand trial like anyone else. And the same news media that pruriently reports the horrible details of similar crimes done by non-famous people will back you up on it.

This, my friends, is what a rape culture looks like.

Afghan Women Hiding for Their Lives

2009-09-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

Some backwards patriarchal societies never change...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Afghan-Women-Hiding-for-Th-by-By-Atia-Abawi-CNN-090924-860.html

September 28, 2009
Afghan Women Hiding for Their Lives
By By Atia Abawi, CNN

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Shameen's brown eyes seem lost as she thinks about the one day she wants to forget, but it is all she can think about.

Still traumatized, she recounts the events that led her to a safe house in Kabul.

She was raped and nearly stabbed to death by her husband just seven days before we met her.

Her lips are quivering and her eyes full of fear.

"He forced himself on me," she said. "All I could do was scream."

She was married off 15 years ago when she was a teenager.

Throughout those years she was tortured and abused, suffering daily beatings with an electrical wire or the metal end of a hammer.

This was her normal life.

"He chased after me with a hammer. He said if I made any noise he would put holes through me," Shameen said.

Shameen and her husband could not conceive a child. And in Afghan society, it seems, the blame always falls on the woman.

After one severe beating, she ran from her home and to the police station. Her husband promised the police he would not attack her anymore, so she gave in and agreed to go back home with him.

Days later, Shameen's husband took her on a trip to visit her sister's grave -- a 15-year-old sister who was burned to death for displeasing her husband.

Shameen says her younger sister was 11 years old when she was forced to marry an older man. He would beat and abuse her until one day he killed her.

As Shameen walked along the graveyard with her husband he took her near a shrine where he forced her to the ground, lifted her burqa and raped her. He then threatened her with a knife and asked her who was going to help her now. She was screaming as he slashed her throat and body.

A passerby saved her.

Now, she has no one to turn to -- not even her own parents. In their eyes, she has brought them shame, an offense punishable by death.

In Afghanistan, a woman is blamed for the injustices she must live through. Shameen says when her sister was killed, her parents turned a blind eye.

She misses her parents and siblings but knows she can never see them again.

"They'll kill me," she said without flinching.

She now hides in a safe house, isolated and alone. Like most Afghan women, she has lost all hope.

Afghanistan is a country where for centuries women have been considered property -- not equals, like the constitution states. They are often beaten, raped and even sold to the highest bidder. There are very few places women can turn to.

Authorities brought Shameen to a shelter run by Women for Afghan Women (WAW). The organization started in New York to provide humanitarian assistance to women who do not know they have rights. Watch Abawi's report from the shelter

In this safe house, WAW is currently providing care, security and an education for 54 women and children.

Nearly 90 percent of Afghan women suffer from domestic abuse, according to the United Nations Development Fund for Women.

Despite that, there are less than a dozen shelters like this one in Afghanistan, usually run by non-governmental organizations.

Abusers are rarely prosecuted or convicted, and most women are afraid to say anything.

"Their mothers are beaten by their fathers. They're beaten by their fathers, by their brothers. It's a way of life," said Manizha Naderi, director of WAW.

Naderi is an Afghan-American who grew up in New York and has returned to Afghanistan to work with other women in hopes of bringing a change, although she said it will take generations.

"They see their mothers being beaten, they see their sisters their aunts, everybody," Naderi said. "So that's what they expect."

It is not just women who suffer.

Hosnia is a smiling eight year old who likes to play with her toys and other young girls at the shelter. She rocks her body on the mat where she sits, the rocking swaying her green plastic earrings as she talks with a muffled sweet voice.

"I have a difficulty," she said, when asked what she is doing at the shelter.

Her smile fades as she remembers the circumstances that brought her here.

Just three years ago when Hosnia was five, she was raped and left for dead outside her home in northern Afghanistan.

Her father found her bloody body floating in a creek. She spent a month in the hospital as her little body recovered from that brutal assault.

Out of love and fear for his daughter's life, Hosnia's dad brought her to this safe house.

According to WAW, her rapist was a young man from an affluent family and quickly released from jail because of bribes and family connections. The organization forced the authorities back on the case and he was then sentenced to six years in a Kabul juvenile prison.

He has three years left in his sentence, and Hosnia's parents fear for their daughter's life.

So the shelter is her home now and the women and children here, her family.

"We will take care of her through adulthood," Naderi said.

Hosnia's father, a poor farmer, knows the only chance for his girl to have a future in a country where rape victims are punished, is if she grows up here.

This shelter has dozens of heart-wrenching stories; it also houses dozens of women and girls who have the courage to live in a country where one of the biggest dangers is to be a woman.

Recession traps women in abusive relationships

2009-09-19T14:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=16125

Recession traps women in abusive relationships

Joanne McCarthy
IrishHealth.com
Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:05 UTC

The recession is trapping women in abusive relationships, according to Women's Aid, which announced details of calls to its domestic violence helpline and its support services in 2008 today.

Many callers disclosed that they are trapped in abusive relationships and are more vulnerable to abuse due to the recession, the domestic violence organisation said. Callers to the helpline revealed over 15,000 incidents of physical, emotional, sexual and financial abuse in 2008.

Many women reported they were experiencing domestic violence before the recession, but said the economic downturn was leading to more frequent abuse and more dangerous abuse. Women also said that abusive men were using the recession to excuse their behaviour.

Margaret Martin, director of Women's Aid, said that domestic violence is a huge problem within Irish society.

"This year we are particularly concerned about the impact of the recession on women experiencing domestic violence from their boyfriends, husbands and partners," she said.

"We know that economic difficulty does not cause domestic violence. It is a feature of Irish life during boom times and times of recession. But we hear from women living in abusive situations that their ability to escape domestic violence is being hampered by the recession," Ms Martin continued.

According to Women's Aid, women fear increased impoverishment, losing their home and the effect of poverty on their children. This barrier to leaving is exacerbated by the use of financial abuse by a controlling boyfriend, husband or partner, it said.

Some 1,900 incidents of financial abuse were disclosed to Women's Aid in 2008. Such abuse included denying the woman access to the family finances; arranging all social welfare in the abuser's name; arranging all debt in the woman's name; denying the woman money for food for herself and children and money to pay household bills; forging the woman's signature on cheques and forcing the woman to put the abuser's name on the deeds of the house. In situations where women have been able to leave abusive partners, non-payment of maintenance was said to be a major issue.

Woman's Aid said one woman who called the helpline revealed that her husband "not only controls all the finances and expects an itemised bill for everything spent, he also checks the mileage on the car if she goes grocery shopping, checks the telephone to see who she calls, checks how much heating has been used and refuses to give her money for any outings with the children".

The 2008 figures also indicated that some trends remain consistent year to year.

Women's Aid said it is deeply concerned about the abuse of women during pregnancy and in the post-natal period.

"We hear from women who are beaten and raped while they are pregnant, often resulting in miscarriage. We hear from women who are forbidden to breastfeed their child, who are raped following childbirth, and women who are beaten while holding their baby," Ms Martin said.

As well as this, the organisation expressed its concern about the physical, emotional and sexual abuse of children living in domestic violence situations.

In 2009, Women's Aid experienced cutbacks in funding, and according to Ms Martin, 2010 "looks even bleaker". The organisation is deeply worried about the impact of the economy on its helpline and other support services.

The Women's Aid helpline is open from 10am to 10pm, seven days a week, on 1800 341 900.

RAPE - Suggestions for Self Protection

2009-09-19T07:24:00.001-07:00

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=97649

RAPE - Suggestions for Self Protection
Rape Is Not A Selective Crime
It happens on streets, in cars, in schools, in parks, in alleys. The rapist has no regard for age, race or social status.

What is being done?

Across the state, police departments, hospitals and prosecutors' offices have revised and updated their policies and procedures. Legislators have amended laws to provide protection and encouragement for the victims of rape. Citizen groups have organized rape crisis centers to provide support and counseling to victims and their families.

Personal safety, however, must begin with the individual. Help protect yourself by taking the steps to protect yourself from sexual assaults.

Safety Tips For Rape Prevention

Be aware of the possibility of being raped....it could happen to YOU.

Safety at Home

Replace or re-key locks when you move into a new home or apartment. Install a door viewer and a 1 inch deadbolt lock and use them. Look before opening your door to anyone.

Keep doors locked at all times and instruct children never open your door to anyone.

Require all strangers to show identification. If you haven't called for a repairman, don't let one inside. Leave him waiting outside and call his place of business to verify his reason for being in your area.

Rape is the fastest rising violent crime in America. What can we do to prevent this crime from happening to you? Listed below are safety tips for you to follow that can reduce your risk of assault and/or rape.

S-ecure you car and home. Keep a large flashlight, two quarters, a map of the city you are in and five to ten dollars in your car. The flashlight can be used as a light or weapon; the quarters are for the use of a pay phone; and the five dollars is for car emergencies only (eg., new windshield wipers or gas). Always keep your doors and windows locked and evaluate the effectiveness of the locks. Never open your door to a stranger and never tell them you are alone.

A-void unsafe situations and strangers. If you are being followed, go to the nearest police or fire department, or any place where several people will be (convenience stores, gas station, etc.) Walk in groups at night.

F-lee if you are in a potentially dangerous situation. Yell or scream to attract attention. Carry a whistle that will make a loud noise.

E-ngage in passive or active resistance. Passive resistance is to think and talk your way out of a situation. Active resistance is to react immediately to startle your attacker. Use any available item (HAIRSPRAY, KEYS, PURSE) as a weapon.

T-hink! Keep using your mind to think of alternative actions for escape.

Y-ou are responsible for your own safety. Call your local police department or rape crisis center and set up a schedule for a Law Enforcement Officer to speak to your employees or neighbors.

Don't let a stranger inside your home to use the phone; make the call for him.

Never admit that you or a neighbor are home alone.

Women living alone should use only initials on mailboxes and in telephone listings.

Leave outside lights on at night, and keep lights on in more than one room.

If you receive an obscene phone call-hang up-don't react.

Safety Tips While Walking

When possible, avoid walking alone. Walk with someone, or walk in areas where other people are near.
Stay in well-lighted areas, away from alleys, bushes and entry ways.
Avoid shortcuts through parks, vacant lots and other deserted places.
Don't hitchhike or accept rides form strangers.
If a driver stops to ask you directions, avoid getting near the car.
If you are being followed, go to the nearest business or residence for help.
If you are harassed by the occupants of a car, simply turn and walk the other direction. The driver will have to turn around to follow you.
Hold your purse close, not dangling, and avoid carrying extra money or valuables on your person.
When you return home, have your door key ready so that you can enter without delay.
ABOVE ALL, BE AWARE OF THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU. BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS AND THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT.

Safety Tips While Driving

Never pick up hitchhikers.
Keep car doors locked at all times. While walking to your car, look under car.
Before entering your car, look into the back seat and on floor board.
Always have your keys ready to unlock the car door and enter without delay. Never walk across the parking lot digging in your purse for your keys; have them in your hand before leaving the building.
Make certain that you have enough gas to get where you are going and always keep your vehicle in good running condition.
If possible, travel on well lighted, busy streets and avoid isolated back roads and short cuts.
If your are being followed, drive to the nearest open business for help, or drive to the Police or Fire Station.
Never leave your house keys with your car keys at a service station or parking lot.
Women driving alone should never stop to aid a stranger in a stalled vehicle. Proceed to an open business, and report the stalled vehicle to the police.
If you have trouble, raise the hood, and stay in your vehicle. When someone offers assistance, roll the window down just enough to talk to them. Ask them to stop at the first phone to call a relative, friend, garage or the police for you. Never get into a stranger's car.
Safety Tips For Youth

Children should be made aware of the dangers of accepting rides from or talking to strangers.
Children should be encouraged to talk with their parents if they ever have a problem, not only with a stranger but also with a friend or relative.
Children should know a safe, well-traveled route to take to and from school. Isolated areas should be avoided.
Teenage baby-sitters should not accept jobs with people they do not know, or who have not been referred by people they know.
Baby-sitters should call the police immediately if anything suspicious happens at the house. They should never open the door for strangers.
The sitter's parents should be called at the end of the evening to inform them that the sitter will be home shortly.
You may follow the advise and safety tips recommended and still find yourself confronted by an attacker. If it happens, you will have only seconds to decide your method of defense, so you must prepare mentally for the possibility of rape happening to you.
Reporting A Rape

The Sheriff's Department can only arrest a criminal if they are made aware of the offense. If you are raped, call 911 or the Police or Sheriff's Department IMMEDIATELY.

DON'T CHANGE CLOTHES OR TAKE A BATH OR SHOWER and do NOT EAT or SMOKE or CHEW GUM. All physical evidence, including seminal fluids, hair, blood types, and scrapings of flesh form the victim's nails are used in court. Avoid using the bathroom prior to the exam if possible.

Information Most Needed By Police:

Car license, make or model and color
Race of assailant
Approximate age, weight and height
Hair color and length of hair
Color of eyes
Clothing
Any unusual marks, scars, tattoos, rings, etc.
Any facial hair or odors
Practice being observant so that, if you are raped or attacked, you will be able to remember and identify the assailant.

For further information consider our book "Traveler Beware, An Undercover Cop's Guide To Avoiding Pickpockets, Luggage Theft, and Travel Scams" ISBN No. 0967130204, which can be ordered from our products page. You may also visit our web site which contains over 130 pages of travel safety information.

Sexual abuse of models is fashion's dirty secret

2009-09-10T06:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/09/hadley-freeman-sexual-abuse-models

Sexual abuse of models is fashion's dirty secret
Instead of getting worked up over a little tummy fat the industry should tackle the issue of rape

Hadley Freeman
9 September 2009

As chance would have it, New York Fashion Week starts tomorrow and for a moment last week, it did look as if something might bring about a healthy change to an industry that has proven remarkably resistant to previous efforts. But this has nothing to do with a model showing some tummy fat.

That particular photo, posed for in an American fashion magazine, has been exhaustively discussed everywhere, from the Guardian to GMTV. According to one hyperbolic newspaper headline, it might even "blow fashion apart" and, according to another, "start a catwalk revolution."

Dear readers, I can exclusively reveal to you that this will not happen – not this week, not ever. I don't care how many times the same two models get wheeled out to say that Jean-Paul Gaultier loves their bounteous cleavage (well, he let them appear in a show, once, possibly just after the transvestite model), the fashion industry is not interested in making women feel better about themselves. Fashion is about making people want something they are unlikely to get, whether it be a flat stomach or a £5,000 Fendi coat, and any satisfaction achieved is fleeting and faintly disappointing. 'Tis not for naught that the fashion world's usual drug of choice is cocaine.

Yes, fashion's obsession with thinness is sick. But I'd like to talk about something else.

Last week, just as Lorraine Kelly was cooing over the "pioneering" photo, a fashion designer in Los Angeles was notching up a different kind of first.

Anand Jon Alexander, known professionally as Anand Jon, has achieved a certain kind of success since moving to America from India: his clothes have been worn by Paris Hilton, he has appeared on America's Next Top Model.

Then, last week, he was sentenced to 59 years in prison, having been found guilty of 16 counts, including sexual battery and performing lewd acts on a child. In other words, Alexander, 35, had for many, many years been raping models who worked for him, some of whom were only 14 at the time. These 16 counts only relate to charges in California – he is still awaiting similar charges in Texas and New York.

Yet this was barely reported in the UK, and even the US coverage was pretty limited, certainly compared to that of the PR stunt of the model showing her tummy.

Even more than eating disorders, the fashion industry's real dirty secret is the sexual abuse of models, male and female, and last week when I spoke to models and editors about the Alexander case, the only surprise they expressed was not at what he had done, but that the models had come forward at all. This rare conviction going almost unnoticed is a missed opportunity of literally criminal proportions. One picture of a normal-sized model is commendable, but it will not effect any real change. Widespread coverage of the Alexander case, however, could have forced the industry to at least acknowledge this issue. Instead, it has been brushed aside.

It is impossible to say how common assaults on models by people in the business are because so few are reported, partly for the usual reason assaults often go unreported (a sense of shame on the woman's part), but also because of some factors specific to the fashion industry: models are often very young; they fear they won't work again if they "cause a fuss". Model Cohen describes it as "a reality in the industry".

"I know a model who, when she was 16, went to Paris on a photoshoot with a very famous photographer and he sexually assaulted her. She was stunned but didn't say anything," says Sara Ziff, a model in New York. When Ziff herself was 15, she had to explain to a photographer that she wasn't interested, "and I was lucky in that he was fine about it." Also, she points out, fashion is a very small industry in that "all the important people know each other, and look out for each other." Or, in other words, cover for each other.

Katie W, a model, testified that Alexander had contacted her via a website ("I was really excited when I got the email," she told the court) and, after personally assuring her mother that he would look after her, invited her to meet him. "He said, 'If you're going to be a fashion model in runway shows, you know, they get naked backstage. You gotta be comfortable being naked.' It made sense at the time." And then he raped her.

There have been efforts to change this. Ziff recently made a film, Picture Me, about this problem in the industry. In this country, Victoria Keon-Cohen and her fellow model Dunja Knezevic, have established the first union for models, protecting its members against these kinds of abuses. Erin O'Connor has been similarly proactive helping younger colleagues. The fact that all these efforts have come from models as opposed to the outside media (which gets too distracted with painting models as evil fem-bots and harbingers of eating disorders to see them as underpaid homesick teenagers), suggests maybe people find the idea of models making them feel fat more upsetting than the very real fact of models being raped.

This is not to diminish the weirdness of fashion's fetishisation of thinness – just a suggestion there are other problems worthy of attention, too.

Fashion is often accused, rightly, of being obsessed with surfaces. But last week it was everyone else who was too busy ogling a model's tummy to look beneath the depths and beyond the PR stunts. Just because you can see a model's fat roll, doesn't mean the image hasn't been airbrushed.

Amazon selling rape simulation game

2009-09-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

Gary Fennelly
Belfast Telegraph
Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:11 UTC

© Illusion

Rapelay: The shocking 3D rape game being sold on Amazon.com

A game that involves the player stalking victims and then raping them in a virtual world is being offered for sale by online retailer Amazon.com, the Belfast Telegraph's website can reveal.

The shocking 'rape simulator', Rapelay, is set in Japan and carries a sickening game description on the Amazon website. An MP said last night that he plans to raise the issue in Parliament.

Reviews by gaming websites have expressed horror at the basis for the game. One website review describes "tears glistening in the young girl's eyes" as she is attacked in graphic detail.

Players begin the game by stalking a mother on a subway station before violently raping her. They then move on to attack her two daughters described as virgin schoolgirls. Players are also allowed to enter 'freeform mode' where they can rape any woman and get other male game characters to join the attacks.

Pregnancy and abortion are listed as 'key features'. One review said: "If she does become pregnant you're supposed to force her to get an abortion, otherwise she gets more and more visibly pregnant each time you have sex. If you allow the child to be born then the woman will throw you in front of a train!"

Most of the descriptions and screenshots of the game are too graphic for publication here.

The game's producer, Illusion is a company from Japan famous for making similar 3D Hentai games.

The online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, says: "Due to Illusion's policy, its games are not intended to be sold or used outside of Japan, and official support is only given in Japanese and for use in Japan."

Despite this policy consumers, including those in the UK and Ireland, are now able to buy the game through the Amazon website.

Last night Labour MP Keith Vaz said he was shocked that Amazon are allowing people to purchase such a game and plans to raise the issue in Parliament after being contacted by the Belfast Telegraph website.

Mr Vaz said: "It is intolerable that anyone would purchase a game that simulates the criminal offence of rape. To know that this widely available through a major online retailer is utterly shocking, I do not see how this can be allowed.

"I will be raising this matter in Parliament and hope that action is taken to prevent the game from being sold."

Last year the MP for Leicester East was criticised for claiming such games exist.

Mr Vaz was speaking in support of of Conservative MP Julian Brazier's Private Member's Bill - which sought to introduce an official governmental body that can challenge rulings by the British Board of Film Classifications (BBFC).

Vaz stated: "People who are watching a film at the cinema cannot participate in what is happening on the screen, or if they do they are removed from the cinema. However...when people play these things, they can interact. They can shoot people; they can kill people. As the honourable Gentleman said, they can rape women."

Vaz's claims were questioned by Tory MP for Wantage Edward Vaizey.

He told Parliament: "...the right honourable Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Home Affairs Committee, mentioned that some video games allow the participant to engage in a rape act...

"I checked the point with the BBFC and found it to be completely unaware of any such video game.

"Is the honourable Gentleman aware of any video game that has as its intention the carrying out of rape or that allows the game player to carry out such an act? The BBFC and I are unaware of any such game."

At the time hundreds of gaming blogs slated Vaz for his comments. One blog poster said: "This guy has no idea what he's talking about he's more likey to of never even played a game in his life just plain stupid if you ask me."

Only one comment appears on the Amazon website. The user says: "1.0 out of 5 stars. The fact that this exists as a game makes me sad. I am saddened and appalled by the mere idea of this game. is this for real?"

Last year the Belfast Telegraph revealed that Amazon had listed a Barack Obama mask as terrorist costume. The online retailer said the offensive category was put there by someone using its "tag" feature and had removed it immediately.

Update

After being contacted by the Belfast Telegraph Amazon today removed the webpage (still viewable here from Google's cache). A screenshot is also available at this location. The company would not comment on the item or say why it had been offered for sale through their website.

The Amazon page

Rapelay Japanese PC game

by Illusion

Game description on Amazon

Rapelay is an offshoot of the Illusion series, Interact Play. You, like in previous installments, play as a public nuisance that gets away from captivity and starts scouting for new targets. This time around you find a family of a single mother and her two daughters. You quickly begin your hunt and capture each woman one by one. The gameplay involves an amusing training/disposition system with which to break each respective target to your liking....

An expert's opinion: Peter Hepper

Could games like this encourage people to commit illegal acts in the real world?

There have been high profile instances of individuals copying from TV and games. However I think these are the exception rather than the rule. If one looked at the overall proportion of people who copy such things then it is likely to be very small. However to a potential victim even if one person does - that is one too many.

I don't think that it would make someone not so inclined to commit an illegal act more inclined or likely to commit a specific act.

However if people are already inclined to view the world this way it may reinforce their views and make it more likely they would undertake an illegal act. I suspect the will to do this would need to be there in the first place.

Professor Peter Hepper, heads the School of Psychology at Queen's University Belfast

1 in 3 teenage girls tell of sexual abuse by their boyfriends

2009-09-03T06:14:00.000-07:00

Sexual abuse of teenage girls is as bad as it ever was! That's because it is embedded in the psychopathic patriarchal culture we live in!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/sep/01/teenage-sexual-abuse-nspcc-report/print

1 in 3 teenage girls tell of sexual abuse by their boyfriends

• Sexual exploitation rife in relationships, says NSPCC
• Quarter of young women are beaten up, poll shows

Helen Carter
The Guardian, 1 September 2009

One in three teenage girls has suffered sexual abuse from a boyfriend and one in four has experienced violence in a relationship, according to an in-depth study published today.

The survey, by the NSPCC and Bristol University, found that of the 1,353 teenage girls and boys questioned across the UK, nearly 90% of girls aged 13 to 17 had been in an intimate relationship. A similar number of boys had been in relationships.

A quarter of girls had suffered physical violence, including being slapped, punched or beaten by their boyfriends, according to the study.

As part of the research, 91 young people were questioned at length. Of the girls, one in six said that they had been pressured into having sex and one in 16 claimed to have been raped.

Others who took part in the study said that they had been pressured or forced to kiss or intimately touch their boyfriends.

A small minority of the boys – one in 17 – reported being pressured or forced into sexual activity and almost one in five suffered physical violence in a relationship.

Many of the girls said they felt they had to put up with the abuse because they felt scared or guilty, or feared they would lose their boyfriend.

The NSPCC said that having an older boyfriend placed young girls at a higher risk of abuse, with three-quarters of them saying they had been victims.

Young women from a family where an adult had been violent towards them were also at greater risk.

For boys, having a violent group of friends actually made it more likely that they would become a victim, or be a perpetrator of violence, in a relationship.

One of the authors of the report, Professor David Berridge, of Bristol University, said: "The high rate and harmful impact of violence in teenagers' intimate relationships, especially for girls, is appalling.

"It was shocking to find that exploitation and violence in relationships starts so young. This is a serious issue that must be given higher priority by policymakers and professionals."

Sian, one of the girls who was interviewed for the research, said: "I only went out with him for a week. And then, because I didn't want to have sex, he just started picking on me and hitting me."

Another girl, Tanisha, said about her boyfriend: "He bit me on the face. It was horrible, really disgusting. When I am trying to show my point of view, he doesn't appreciate it."

The report, which was part-funded by the Big Lottery Fund (the largest single distributor of National Lottery money to good causes), reminds schools of the need to raise awareness of relationships where there is harmful, controlling and abusive behaviour.

It recommends that anti-bullying groups at school should tackle violent relationships and that child protection professionals should consider teenagers who are in intimate relationships, especially girls with older boyfriends.

Samantha, who was 14 when she started going out with her boyfriend, who was a year older, said things were fine with the couple to start with but that he began to become possessive and would not leave her alone. "Whenever I went out with my friends or even by myself, I would get bombarded with phone calls and texts demanding to know where I was, what I was doing and who I was with.

"It just became too much. I felt like he was right with me all the time. I couldn't get away from him."

She said that her boyfriend phoned the house so many times, her mother realised something was wrong and was very supportive.

"Finally there was a confrontation one day at school and he hit me in the face. It started a big fight because some of my friends were with me but fortunately staff managed to break it up. After that I didn't see him for a while and eventually things quietened down."

Diane Sutton, head of policy and public affairs at the NSPCC, said: "It is shocking to find so many young people view violence or abuse in relationships as normal.

"Boys and girls are under immense peer pressure to behave in certain ways and this can lead to disrespectful and violent relationships, with girls often bearing the brunt. Young people need to learn to respect each other."

She added that parents and schools could perform a vital role in teaching children about loving and safe relationships and what to do if they are suffering from violence or abuse.

Infanticide, Child Rape and War in Early States

2009-09-03T06:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.psychohistory.com/index.html

Chapter 8, The Origins of War in Child Abuse by Lloyd deMause

Infanticide, Child Rape and War in Early States

The progress accomplished when moving from tribes to early states based upon more complex non-kinship political systems—splendidly documented by Eli Sagan in his book At the Dawn of Tyranny: The Origins of Individualism, Political Oppression, and the State1—was the result of improvements in childrearing that moved beyond the tribal abandoning childrearing mode described in the previous chapter to the more maternal domination-centered childrearing mode of antiquity. Mothers in early states became more trapped into limited areas in their homes with other females (the gynarchy) and fathers had little to do with their families. As historians have concluded: “In antiquity, women lived shut away. They rarely showed themselves in public [but] stayed in apartments men did not enter; they rarely ate with their husbands….They never spent their days together.”2 Xenophon reports that the women and children were “separated from the men’s quarters by a bolted door,”3 where the men “dined and entertained male guests,” especially the young boys they used in sexual intercourse in preference to their wives. Thus Herodotus could admit that “a boy is not seen by his father before he is five years old, but lives with the women.”4 It was mainly the women of the gynarchy in every early state who determined the child’s personality through infanticide, incest, torture and domination, so early families are termed by historians as matrifamilies: “The family in Egypt was matriarchal. The most important person in the family was not the father, but the mother. The Egyptian wife was called the ‘Ruler of the House.’”5 Right up to the Reformation it was common that “a boy until seventeen should sleep in the same bed as his mother,”6 so that maternal incest was common.

The result of this new family arrangement was that mothers, grandmothers and aunts became all-powerful in the family, taking out their own enormous frustrations and abandonments by their husbands and their huge responsibilities for feeding and clothing their families by routinely killing their newborn, dominating them and calling them “sinful, greedy beasts” for needing them,7 tying them up in tight swaddling bands, battering and torturing them, handing them over to cruel nurses and adoptive parents for daily care, and giving them to neighboring men and teachers to rape. It is therefore not surprising to discover that after living millions of years under tribal kinships these earliest states could only begin to organize their political systems by repeating their dominating, sadistic childrearing practices, whereby sovereigns were all-powerful delegates of Killer Goddesses, often practicing ritual human sacrifice of children, as of the infants sacrificed to goddesses in megalithic temples. The “wandering spirits” of tribal inner voice alters became organized into the sadistic gods of sacrificial states, and people owed their allegiance beyond kinship ties to rulers and priests in central cities where the Killer Mother goddess ritually slaughtered and ate people to energize Herself.8 The result was an early state that devoted most of its energies to sacrificial wars whose purpose is not just to kill others but also to destroy one’s own warriors and resources in endless suicidal battles. Borrowing from James Masterson’s list of borderline personalities,9 I have described the psychoclass of antiquity as “a narcissistic personality, warding off their sense of an empty self by fusing with the harsh attacking parent inner alter and forming a grandiose self that is exploitative, distrustful, ruthless and lacking in empathy, preoccupied with fantasies of power needed to defend against their weak sense of self.”10

ROUTINE INFANTICIDE AND CHILD SACRIFICE IN EARLY STATES
Clinical studies of violent mothers show the reason mothers are sadistic toward their children is that they have internalized their own mothers, and fear that the very act of having a child is “the most forbidden act of self-realization, the ultimate and least pardonable offense,” bringing with it inevitable fears of maternal retribution.11 Infanticidal mothers fear punishment by their own mothers for daring to have a baby, so “to save herself she must disown motherhood by destroying the child.”12 Mothers in antiquity continuously hallucinated female demons (Lamia, Gorgo, Striga, Empusa) who were inner maternal alters that were “so jealous of their having babies that they sucked out their blood… So fearful were they of these inner Killer Mothers that they would wear amulets to protect them from Lilith, the child killer, and would write on the wall of the birth room: ‘Out Lilith!’”13 Often first-born babies were routinely sacrificed to the avenging goddess. Hippocrates said that Greeks often experienced “convulsions, fears, terrors and delusions” and physicians were expected to treat the possessions and hallucinations of their dissociated personalities.14 People in antiquity regularly talked to their inner alternate personalities, which were given names like psyche, thumos, menos, kardia, fradie, etor, noos, ate, and so on. Medea says she did not kill her children, her thumos forced her to kill them.15 Dragon Mothers are worshipped by all early states—from Lilith, Nin-Tu, Hecate and Ishtar to Moira, Shiva, Gorgon and Erinyes. They were called “Terrible Mothers” by their worshippers, and were seen as cruel, jealous and unjust: “her glance brings death, her will is supreme.”16 Even early Hebrews worshipped a mother goddess, Asherah, who, along with Lilith, “roamed the world in search of children to eat, rape, and kill.”17 Statues of bloodthirsty goddesses were set up in ziggurats and temples all over the world, fed, talked to and heard to speak their sacrificial demands. Often women would become so possessed by their Killer Mother alters that, as Euripides describes them during Dionysian rituals, “Breasts swollen with milk, new mothers clawed calves to pieces with bare hands, snatched children from their homes” and killed them.18

Girls were killed in far greater numbers than boys in early states, carrying out the instructions of Hilarion to his wife: “If it is a boy let it live; if it is a girl, cast it out.”19 The result is that males often outnumbered females by over four to one in census figures from Greece and Rome to India and China; of the 600 families on Delphic inscriptions, just one percent reared two daughters.20 The cause is not economic. As Poseidippos stated, “Even a rich man always exposes a daughter.” As one visitor to Hawaii reported, “there probably wasn’t a single mother who didn’t throw at least one of her children to the sharks, and wealthy royal families killed more than anyone.”21 If early societies wanted to reduce the number of children for economic reasons they would not have routinely forced girls to get married at age 12 and have lots of children. Early prophylactic devices made of various materials were actually available, but little used.22 What was lacking in early states wasn’t contraception devices, but parental love.

Most children in antiquity would therefore have watched their mothers drown, suffocate and stab their siblings to death.23 Mothers often simply gave birth to their babies in the privy, smashed their heads in and treated the birth as an evacuation. Romans reported watching hundreds of mothers throwing their newborn into the Tiber every morning. So many infants were killed that even though mothers had eight or more babies the populations of antiquity regularly decreased. It is not surprising that the children who survived implanted terrifying Killer Mother alters in their amygdalan fear centers and then acted them out as adults in human sacrifice and war. Children playing in dung heaps, rivers and cess trenches would find hundreds of dead babies, “a prey for birds, food for wild beasts to rend” (Euripides).24 Those few exposed children who were rescued were raised as slaves or prostitutes. Physicians wrote works like Soranus’s “How to Recognize the Newborn that is Worth Rearing.”25 So many children were killed by their parents in early Greece and Rome that people were afraid their populations were declining, and passed laws limiting the infanticide of children of citizens, which, however, were rarely enforced. As Tertullian told Romans, “Although you are forbidden by the laws to slay new-born infants, it so happens that no laws are evaded with more impunity.”26

Parents in early ancient states proudly sacrificed their children to avenging deities. As I have documented in detail: “Child sacrifice was the foundation of all great religions.”27 Maccoby’s book, The Sacred Executioner, portrays the entire history of religion as based upon a vengeful, bloodthirsty executioner with a child figure, from Isaac to Christ, being killed for the sins of others.28 Mass burials of thousands of sacrificed infants have been discovered in early states from Germany and France to Carthage, where archaeologists found one cemetery filled with over 20,000 urns containing bones of children sacrificed by their parents, who would kill them if the gods would grant the parents a favor—like if their shipment of goods were to arrive safely.29 As Quintilian said, “To put one’s own children to death is at times the noblest of deeds.”30 Suetonius said the Roman Senate “decreed that no male born that year should be reared” in order to appease the gods.31 As Poseipippus wrote, “girls are always exposed, even by the well-off.”32

Infant skulls split by an ax have been found at religious sites from Stonehenge to Jericho, early Arabians sacrificed their infants to “the Mothers,” Aztecs ripped out the hearts of their children and ate them, in India children were sacrificed in quantity to goddesses well into the nineteenth century, and Mayans still sometimes sacrifice their children in the mountains to give them good luck in cocaine trade.33 The skin of the sacrificed children was considered so holy that in societies like the Maya and Aztecs the sacrificers flayed the skin and wore it to increase their strength.34 Sacrificial rituals always contain elements of the abusive childhood practice that engendered them. Aztec mothers would regularly pierce their children’s genitals and pull knotted cords through the wounds to cleanse them of sin; during sacrificial rituals, therefore, the genitals of the victim would be pierced during the sacrifice and the blood spread over the idol of the goddess.35 Sacrifices are always necessary whenever independence and success is achieved and the avenging Killer Mother goddess must be placated. Even when people built new buildings or bridges, little children were usually sealed in them alive as “foundation sacrifices” to ward off the avenging maternal spirits who resent the hubris of building the structure.36 Not even ancient Greeks could dispense with human sacrifices; early reports of burning and eating of children in human sacrifices were followed in classical Athens by the practice of keeping victims called Pharmakoi who were ritually stoned to death as scapegoats for the sins of others.37

CHILD RAPE AND GENITAL MUTILATION IN ANTIQUITY
Historians usually characterize the routine rape of children in early states as “love,” whether in their books they entitle Loving Boys,38 by calling the rape “pedophilia” (which translates as “love of children”), or by picturing the rape as an approved instance of “gay rights,” ignoring the fact that the boys are minors, not consenting adults. That children are not harmed by sexual relations with adults is the claim made by dozens of scholarly authors, forming a long tradition of “blaming children for their abuse, accusing children of fabricating stories of abuse” and “inspired by the admiration and gratitude of the victims” toward the abuser.39 Boys are depicted by scholars as being “lonely” and needing sex, “seductive,” and as “routinely fellating older men [but] not abused despite ingesting their elders’ semen but ritually initiated into manhood.”40 In antiquity, since “women were an alien and inferior species,”41 sex with wives was a rare duty engaged in mainly to provide offspring, and men were addicted to raping young children, both boys and girls, in order to prove their virility and dominance. Their rapes were almost always agreed to by their parents, who often pimped their children and slaves for a price, rented them out to neighbors as servants to be raped, sold their virgin daughters for marriage for fifty pieces of silver, gave their children to pedagogues for sexual use, made their children serve at their banquets so they could be raped after dinner, went to war in order to rape the children of enemies, and handed over their children to the brothels, bath-houses and temples that could be found in any city of antiquity.42 Physicians advocated the rape of children as a way to overcome depression and as a cure for venereal disease.43 Most political leaders kept children to rape, like Nero, who roamed about daily, raping boys who he found in the streets and in brothels.44 Some even used babies for fellatio, like Tiberius, who “taught children of the most tender years, whom he called his little fishes, to play between his legs while he was in his bath. Those which had not yet been weaned…he set at fellatio.”45 Wealthy Romans kept large harems of both sexes to rape, saying with Martialis: “How pitiful, to be the owner of thirty girls and thirty boys and have only one cock.”46 As in most societies today, the rape began when the children were about seven years old;47 although the ideal age was 12–14, many of the images show them younger. Petronius depicts men raping a seven-year-old girl, with women happily clapping in a long line around the bed.48 Being raped was simply part of growing up. The word pais could mean any of the following: “child,” “sexual partner,” “son,” “daughter,” or “slave.”49 In early Egypt, where brothers were forced to marry and rape their sisters,50 in Babylon, where daughters were sold in rape auctions, in Germanic states, where boys were sometimes forced to marry older men, in Greece, Rome, and other European states and in India, China, and Japan where incestuous sex was common, all early states assumed boys and girls could be used as sexual partners.51 Rent-a-boy brothels were rife throughout antiquity.52 Parents taught their children that “the teacher’s thrusting his penis between his thighs or in his anus is the fee which the pupil pays for good teaching.”53 In Sparta and Crete, husbands sometimes didn’t move in with their wives when they got married; they slept in barracks and had sex with boys.54 Wives often complained that their husbands had too little sex with them because of the boys they normally raped. Martial describes a wife yelling: “Bumming a boy again! Don’t I have a rump as well?”55

Fig. 8-1 Zeus Carries Off Ganymede to Rape

Since girls in antiquity married at around age 12 to men twice their age, and since their partners were chosen by their parents, it is obvious that “marriage” itself was really child rape. “It was not uncommon, since Greek girls married very early, for them to play with their dolls up to the time of their marriage.”56 As the Mahabharata says, “Let the man of thirty years wed a ten-year-old wife, or let the man of twenty-one get one seven years old.”57 That using children for sex was routine in the past should hardly be surprising, since the most accurate statistics we have for the United States today still indicate over half of girls and over a third of boys have been sexually molested as children.58 All kinds of rationalizations were given early marriage, as when Indian mothers married off their daughters at age seven because otherwise “the men of the family” might rape her “if she was left home alone for an hour.”59 Boys as well as girls were regularly masturbated and raped by mothers, fathers, older brothers, uncles and cousins, described by one as “I rotated every night between my various uncles and my grandmother,” so that, as one Indian proverb has it, “For a girl to be a virgin at ten years old, she must have neither brothers nor cousins nor father.”60 According to psychoanalysts who treat child rapists, children are assaulted as an attack of revenge against the mother, to show that they are in total control, to overcome a profound sense of emptiness and abandonment—as one boy rapist put it: “I want to hold him in my arms, control him, dominate him, show him I’m all-powerful.”61 The hairless boy who is raped represents the smooth maternal breast and the circumcised penis glans the nipple. Plutarch said boys should be taught about being raped to “put up with it; not as a pleasure, but as a duty.”62 In many early states, boys as young as six would be dressed up by their mothers as girls to make a living out of prostitution or to be raped by priests during religious rituals.63 Men could pick up boys to be raped at any barbershop, in any boy brothel, at the exit of any of the Roman games. Men regularly went into streets with “scissors to make a hole in the trousers of the boy and a small pillow to put in the boy’s mouth if he should scream.”64 Physicians were expected to provide lubricants for anal penetration of boys, and to repair the rectal tears that came from being raped.65 Rape laws in early societies were only concerned with “protection of bloodlines.”66 All other rape was legal, facilitated by the parents. Plutarch and others wrote essays on what was the best kind of person a father should give his son over for raping. Mothers, too, masturbated and had sex with their children, who shared their beds nightly, in order “to put them to sleep, “thus providing the basis for the worship of goddesses who were usually depicted as having incest with their sons.67 Extensive studies show in Japan, for instance, mothers today not only still commonly masturbate their children but also often have sex with their sons while the father is out having sex with other women, the mothers promising them they can have intercourse with them in return for good grades.68 Both mothers and nurses in early states were shown as routinely masturbating their children, “the boy ‘to make him manly’ [and] the girl ‘to make her sleep well.’”69

Since raped children are blamed for “being too sexual,” they had to be punished for being assaulted, since she was considered culpable, “too sexual.” Raped women in Babylon were bound and thrown into the river; raped women in Hebrew cultures were stoned to death at the city gates.70 Vives says: “I know many fathers have cut the throats of their daughters” if raped, and fathers of raped girls often put her up for sale.71 Both boys and girls were blamed for wanting to be raped, and both were genitally mutilated as punishment for their sinfulness, boys by having their foreskins perforated or cut off or by castration, girls by having their hymens, clitorises and labia chopped off. The mutilation of girls’ genitals was universally practiced in pre-modern states, from Egypt, Israel, Greece and Rome to Africa, Middle America and China.72 Physicians from antiquity to early modern times have often reported they were unable to discover a hymen on any of the little girls they examined.73 Genital mutilation of both boys and girls began in pre-dynastic times—even mummies have been found missing their clitorises and labia—and recent surveys of Egyptian girls show 97 percent of uneducated families and 66 percent of educated families still practicing clitoridectomy.74 It is estimated that there still are still over 74 million sexually mutilated females today in nations where documentation exists.75 The rationalization for the mutilation is that girls were so sexual it was necessary “to release them from their bondage to sex,” that their clitorises were “male parts” might grow to be several feet long, and that it would “stop them from masturbating.” In Sudan, it is believed that “the clitoris could grow to the length of a goose’s neck until it dangles between the legs, in rivalry with the male’s penis, if it is not cut.”76 Circumcision of boys was also said to be needed for reducing masturbation. In Athens, where circumcision was avoided, infibulation was practiced, drilling two holes in the foreskin and closing it up with a ring.77 The mutilation of both girls and boys was performed around age six by the women of the family and was excruciatingly painful—the girls sometimes dying of complications, especially shock, since no anesthetic is used.78 The girls’ vaginal areas were usually sewn up after being mutilated, leaving only a small hole for urination, so that grooms had to cut open the vagina on their wedding night to have intercourse.79

The worst genital mutilation for boys was, of course, castration, which was practiced East and West both as a sacrificial rite to early goddesses (“Piles of freshly severed genitals lay beneath the altars in Egyptian temples”) and in order to prepare the boys for later rape by men. Eunuchs were popular for sexual use from Byzantium to Italy to China, with many areas famous as “eunuch factories,” and infants were often castrated “in the cradle” to be used in brothels. Parents who sent their boys to other households as servants, who were usually used sexually by them, often cut off their genitals and kept them in a jar.80 In the early Roman Empire “the castration of boys was a big business” used for raping by the aristocracy and by priests.81 The genital mutilation of boys is still so pervasive that some psychologists claim that little boys want their genitals cut—“because of an inborn vagina envy” (Bruno Bettleheim)—or because they are supposed to need to “feel grown up.”82 The wholesale mutilation of both boys’ and girls’ genitals is not considered as sadistic by historians, and its universality is never cited as a cause of the religions and state systems that have been founded upon it.83 Like infanticide and other widespread severe tortures of children in early states, both universal child rape and genital mutilation are assumed to have had no effect on the formation of the adult psyche, and are even described as “loving” since it reduces sexual desire and shows the child, as one historian put it, that “we love you, but we must rid you of your infantilisms.”84

LACK OF LOVE AND EMPATHY IN EARLY STATE FAMILIES
Given the universal rape and beating of females in antiquity, mothers were regularly postpartum depressed, and therefore lasting love and empathy in the gynarchy was not found. As Plutarch wrote: “Genuine love has no connections whatsoever with the women’s quarters.”85 Dozens of studies on marriage in early states conclude that “the model for true love was not the relationship between husband and wife”86 and “conjugal love between husband and wife was considered ridiculous and impossible.”87 Homer’s word for “wife” damar, means “broken into submission.” In addition, fathers can nowhere be documented as feeling empathy for their children. Alan Valentine, examining 600 years of letters from fathers to sons without finding a single instance of evidence of warmth or empathy, concluded that fathers probably have written loving letters to their sons but that for some reason, he thinks, “happy fathers must have left no history.”88 Roman fathers often condemned their children to death if they did not approve of them.89 In fact, I have searched for five decades without success for any trace of lasting intimate family love between parent and child or between husband and wife in the family letters and diaries of early history.

The family historian Edward Shorter agrees with me: “Men regarded their wives as baby-machines and treated them as one would treat any machine: mechanically and without affection.”90 Love poems written by men could display sexual feelings for boys and girls, but, as Ovid wrote in his Art of Love: “Love is a kind of war,” and in his repetitive affairs he proved it.91 “Ovid’s love object is a demanding, even a devouring, female, her suitor a temporarily infatuated fool.”92 Antony may have felt sexual attraction for Cleopatra, but his passion, like Caesar’s, was really “a calculated, even ruthless, political intrigue.”93 Plus, after Cleopatra slept with her lovers, she killed them.94 Marriage was as temporary as an affair. As Coontz’s book on ancient marriage puts it, “Switching marital partners sometimes took place with as little emotional turmoil as we might feel in switching phone companies.”95 The closest to married love antiquity portrayed were in a handful of novels wherein “marriage came to be perceived or at least imagined in the novel as a matter of private attachment rather than a function of civic identity,”96 with the emphasis on “imagined.” Sexual attractions were short-lived, since, as Hipponax put it, “There are only two happy days in man’s life with a woman: The day he marries her and the day he buries her.”97 Lasting, intimate love had no place in the decision to marry, since fathers decided who their fourteen-year-old daughters would marry, and kinship wealth was the main motivation.98 Lasting affection in “companionate marriage” was not found in Europe until the 17th century.99 From Egypt to China, multiple marriages were common in early states. Men say they split their relationship with women into three parts: “We keep prostitutes for pleasure, slave concubines for the daily care of our bodies, and wives for the bearing of legitimate children.”100 As Protogenes put it: “I deny that it is love you have felt for women and girls…there is only one genuine love, the love of boys [i.e., rape].”101 The men lived in separate sections of the home with their prostitutes, rarely visiting their wives, whom they feared as representatives of their own cruel, dominating mothers. Husbands spent their lives outside the family rooms, mainly raping boys and girls. Solon passed a law decreeing that “a man should consort with his wife not less than three times a month—not for pleasure surely, but as cities renew their agreements from time to time.102 Plutarch reports that “if a woman left the house in daylight she had to be chaperoned” to avoid rape.103 In Athens, “the given names of women were rarely or never used…a husband normally addressed his wife as ‘woman.’”104 A Roman was expelled from the Senate “because he had kissed his wife in front of his daughter—Plutarch admitted “everyone knew that it was disgraceful to kiss one’s wife in front of others.”105 Women rarely learned to read, since “He who teaches letters to his wife is giving poison to a snake.”106 Juvenal’s plays portray the fears of all men in early states, concluding that “A wife is a tyrant…Cruelty is natural to women: they torment their husbands, whip the housekeeper, and enjoy having slaves flogged almost to death…their sexual lusts are disgusting.”107

ABANDONING, TYING UP, STARVING, BEATING AND TORTURING CHILDREN
Mothers since antiquity who could afford to do so handed over their newborn to negligent, abusive wetnurses. Sometimes these were slaves—as Tacitus said, “At birth our children are handed over to some silly little Greek serving girl—but more often they were sent out and not seen for years.”108 The wetnurses were described as “vicious, slothful [and] indolent, guilty of leaving babies…unattended when helping with the harvest…falling into the fire and being attacked by animals, especially pigs…hung from a nail like a bundle of old clothes…rarely washed and living in their own feces and urine.”109 The wetnurse was usually required to kill her own baby in order to nurse the stranger—termed “a life for a life”—which was considered fair since “by the sacrifice of the infant of the poor woman the offspring of the wealthy will be preserved.”110 Doctors reported newborn babies should only be fed two to three times a day so as not to grow up “a tyrant.” When babies cried a lot because they were starving, they were given beer, wine, liquor or even opium to quiet them; as one Egyptian papyrus tells parents about opium for infants: “It acts at once!”111 When fathers were in the room with infants, they were totally lacking in empathy, telling their wives “those breasts are mine” and threatening to go on a hunger strike if the mothers nursed their baby while they were around.

Fig. 8-2 Greek Infant Tied Up in Tight Bandages

The newborn was tied up tightly in endless length of bandages, because if it were left free it was so full of the mother’s violent projections that it would “scratch its eyes out, tear its ears off , break its legs, and crawl about on all fours like an animal.”112 The infant would be tied to a board with a rag stuffed into its mouth to stop its screaming, and often sharp objects like knives, needles, forks or nails were stuck between the bands “to protect against incubi.”113 Infants “strewed in their own excrement for days at a time,” the mothers often leaving them hung from a nail on the wall behind the hot oven while they worked, so while they were tied up (Plato said for their first two years) they were covered with excrement, their skin inflamed and covered with filthy ulcerations, almost to gangrene, so that if they were touched they would let out piercing cries.”114 In many areas of the world, beginning in early Egypt and continuing to modern European nations, the head was painfully molded to reshape it by putting another board on the forehead so as to squash the head into the angle formed by the boards.115

Children in antiquity began being beaten in the womb, since pregnant mothers in the past were usually beaten by their husbands. Children could be stoned to death by their parents “if they were uncontrollable.” The Old Testament said if children curse their parents they “shall surely be put to death”116 and Philo wrote: “It is right that parents should rebuke their children, beat them, disgrace them and imprison them…If they still rebel, the law permits that they even be punished with death.”117 Seneca described the public floggings of children in Sparta, where it was considered patriotic to beat children to death in public squares. All children were believed to have devils in them, and a panoply of beating instruments were available for beating the devil out of them, from cat-o/-nine tails and whips to shovels, canes, iron rods, bundles of sticks, and the discipline, a whip made of chains. Diaries are filled with mentions of “the dog-whip over the door,” “the razor-strap hanging on a nail” and “the carpet-beater in the corner” that were used for child beating. Assaults were inflicted “every morning, whether I deserved it or not, every day of my life” and there were even professional flagellants who could be hired to come in and whip the children “once a week, naughty or not.”118 To relieve the parents’ guilt, the child would be forced to ask to be beaten and sometimes made to kiss the beating instrument. Mothers are usually described by witnesses as being furious, out of control, “fierce and eager upon the child, striking, flinging, kicking it, as the usual manner is.”119 Most children in antiquity would have agreed with Xinophon who said he would “rather bear a wild beast’s brutality than that of his mother.”120 Mothers would dress up as monster dummies and terrorize their children, saying they were ghosts/Lamias who would eat them up.121 Ovid describes how children were often terrorized by saying they would at night be eaten by witches, strigae.122 When children went to school, parental beatings continued with increased ferocity, since beatings were considered by teachers as the basis for learning, and “fear is good for putting the child in the mood to hear and to understand. A child cannot quickly forget what he has learned in fear.”123 Scholars today continue to claim in their textbooks on childhood history that children who were battered in the past “grasped that practices that appear abusive today, such as repeated whippings, were motivated by love and a concern for their interests.”124

Fig. 8-3 Roman Children Being Beaten at School

Other methods of assaulting children were universally used. Pouring scalding hot water (called “iron water”) over children, burning them on the neck with a hot iron, dropping burning candle wax upon them (called moxa in Japan), making them drink their own urine and pushing them into hot ovens are just some of the punishments that were widely used in all parts of the world to save children from the demons inside them.125 Hardening practices began in infancy, including washing them into cold water and snow and making them sleep without blankets in cold bedrooms and putting them to bed wrapped in wet cold towels were widespread.126 Often the tortures are inflicted for religious group-fantasies, as when children were “baptized by being plunged into a large hole which had been made in the ice on the river….When the priest happened to let one of the children slip through his hands into the ice water, the father and mother were in an ecstasy of joy. The babe had been carried straight to heaven.”127 And sometimes the torture was inflicted for openly sexual reasons, as with the foot binding of Chinese girls that breaks her foot bones so that the foot becomes a vagina-substitute that men used for intercourse because they were afraid of female vaginas.128 Historical children from birth to adolescence were, as I have termed them, “poison containers” for adults, receptacles into which the adults can project disowned “Bad Self” alters for them to punish.

RELIGION, POLITICS AND WARS IN SACRIFICIAL EARLY STATES
The infanticides, tortures and worship of Killer Mothers in early states become repeated, as we have documented in Chapter 1, in the worship of warrior goddesses of antiquity. Mother goddesses all had son-lovers—from Inna and Tammuz to Isis and Osiris and Aphrodite and Adonis—who needed their sons simply for their phallus, castrating them to make herself fruitful.”129 Worshippers of the Magna Mater cult used to castrate themselves for the goddess, “wishing to be like child, the better to serve her…running through the city with severed organs and throwing them into any house.”130 Early civilizations worshipped what Jungians term “Dragon Mothers,” who were acknowledged by worshippers to be cruel and unjust: “her glance brings death, her will is supreme.”131 Even when male gods replaced goddesses in later antiquity, the goddesses were represented by the throne, from which the king derives his power: “the throne makes the king.”132 Early religions often betrayed the group-fantasy that the gods were less powerful than the goddesses,133 and goddesses continued to appear in such literary representations as Amazons who “threaten manhood and need to be subjugated and killed to prevent them from dominating us…In Athens, over 800 portrayals have survived of Greek heroes stabbing and clubbing Amazons to death.”134 The political structures of early states repeated the childhood maternal domination, with an authoritarian monarch ruling a bureaucracy of aristocratic courtiers, governors, priests and jailers and for the first time producing a “government full of rich and poor, oppressors and oppressed, tyrannical politics and a vast priestly organization.”135 These early civilizations went beyond kinship to complex societies, whose loyalty to extremely violent monarchs is well documented by historians. But the degree to which these early societies are actually organized to achieve self-destructive aims is nowhere admitted. Goddesses need wars to “drink the blood of the victims who were formerly her children…Anat is filled with joy as she plunges her knees in the blood of heroes.”136 Individuals in antiquity can be pictured as massively suicidal—Egyptians regularly talked about suicide to their “doubles,” their Ba, their self-destructive alters, making “suicide so common that the crocodiles in the Nile could no longer cope with the corpses”137—but the principle that all early states were organized for suicidal aims has, I believe, nowhere been acknowledged. When Homer depicts Ajax as saying “the thumos in my chest is zealous to fight” and has warriors constantly talking to the voices of their thumos, historians do not conclude that he was actually talking to a violent alternate personality embedded during early child abuse.138 When historians report that “when an Aztec captured an enemy, he called him ‘my beloved son’ and the captive answered, ‘my beloved father,’ then killed him,”139 there is no suspicion that actual early family relationships are being repeated. Nor are historians reminded of real mothers when they report that goddesses are said to “drink the blood of the victims who were formerly her children” and to be “filled with joy as she plunges her knees in the blood of heroes” during wars.140

Besides having enormous homicide and suicide rates, early states were mainly organized to dominate and kill their own people as well as neighbors, and the wars they engaged in were not in fact for more resources they could use to enrich their lives but for “tribute” like gold and other useless metals that would be kept in central cities by their elites “as signs of submission.” Azar Gat’s comprehensive book on War in Human Civilization makes clear that all early states transformed advanced tribes into genocidal warrior societies whose purpose was not to enrich themselves but to wipe out neighbors.141 These civilizations—“all with standing armies, all expansionist, all engaged in chronic interstate warfare”142—began with religious human sacrifice, found in the remains of Egypt, Greece and Rome and in early states like the Aztec. Carrasco’s excellent book on the Aztec empire is entitled “City of Sacrifice,” and convincingly describes how the entire Aztec civilization is run in order to carry out continuous sacrifices of children and adults and of tributes given to the Killer Goddess in the ceremonial center of Mexico City—which he calls “a performance space,” dedicated solely to the meaningless destruction of people and goods.143 The conquest of vast areas of nearby states was, he says, accomplished solely to feed the “Queen of the Central City,” who must constantly drink the blood of victims or die, and he concludes all her temples were nothing but “simple religious images of total destruction.”144 No slaves were taken in Aztec wars; all were sacrificed.145 The huge skull racks of victims were called “the mainstay of the city,” and the sacrificial rituals began with acting out the reason for the goddess being so murderous—her children were said to be furious with her for being pregnant, so they decided that “we must kill our mother” by becoming warriors, first killing a young girl who represented the goddess, flaying her skin and then donning it to get her power so as to be able to kill others.146 Every element of the masochistic sacrificial rituals repeated the violence inflicted upon Aztec children, beginning with the piercing their ears, tongues and genitals in cradles and continuing to their brutal torture as young children.147 The tribute captured was not goods that could be used by the people but consisted of items like precious metals, stones and feathers which might adorn the maternal goddess. As Anderson sums up Aztec culture: “The trinity of war, sacrifice and cannibalism made up a combined religious service…the Aztec state existed solely to produce sacrificial victims.”148

Although historians admit that slashing open the throats of infants and beheading young women had little economic value to the conquering nations, they nonetheless are reluctant to admit that the personal violence and all-consuming wars of early nations were clinically paranoid and were self-destructive in motivation. Few historians have concluded that the costs of conquering new territories exceeded the rewards they bothered to gain from them.149 Warriors who kill and are killed in constant battles with neighbors only end up murdering and raping them, for glory, not for profit, with the ubiquitous raping during wars being a repetition of the routine rape they experienced as children. Similarly, when Herodotus tells how during wars soldiers “no sooner got possession of a town than they chose out all the best favored boys and made them eunuchs,” this simply repeated the regular castration and then anal raping of little boys in their own societies.150 Spartans were not the only warriors who carried young boys into battles with them for sexual use. In addition, the widespread practice during antiquity of collecting thousands of penises as trophies during battles was derived from memories of childhood raping and castration.151

Most early wars were fought solely for the grandiosity of the state leader and for provoking further wars. As Maccoby puts it: “Men elect an all-powerful leader in their battle against the power of the women; the more they subordinate themselves to this leader, the more powerful they are in the battle.”152 When Rome fought the Punic Wars with Carthage they lost over a third of their population and gained nothing of value, utterly exterminating the Carthaginians.153 Aztec armies would even fight “Flower Wars” where they would split into smaller groups and kill their own fellow soldiers in order to feed the goddess.154 Mothers of the time regularly admitted they were looking forward to their sons being killed in battle. As Plutarch noted, Spartan mothers had a saying, “I accept gladly the death of my sons. [Admitting as she buried her son] I bore him that he may die for Sparta.”155 Mothers in ancient states often accompanied their sons into battle, publicly deriding those who had not yet killed anyone.156 Soldiers who panicked were often beaten to death by their comrades.157 Even when there was no enemy to fight, leaders would send out raiding expeditions “to keep the men sharp.”158 Sacrifice of life, not victory, ruled in battle—generals would even “offer their lives to the gods of the Underworld by charging the enemy and throwing himself onto their weapons,” a sacrificial ritual called devotio.159 As Schumpeter summarized the paranoia of the Roman Empire: “There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger…When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest—why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted….Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors.”160

Leaders often engaged in suicidal wars they admitted they knew they would lose, as when Pericles warned the victorious Athenians “not to make any new conquests” against Sparta, but they attacked anyway, provoking them into an alliance with Persia, defeating Athens.161 Caesar spent all the economic surplus of Rome on endless, useless wars with the millions of citizens of Germania and Gaul, moved solely by schizoid grandiosity. Caesar started the suicidal butchery of the Roman Civil Wars solely to save his “honor.” Warriors sometimes fought bare-chested162 or even fully naked,163 as though they were little children again—a purely suicidal practice. Those who impulsively engaged in duels for personal glory without authorization were often ordered to be killed by their commanders.164 When soldiers returned from battles with trophies (spolia), they displayed them on the walls of their home, adding to their grandiosity but otherwise quite useless to their families.165 Even when enemies were captured and returned to the central city as slaves, they ended up producing far less goods than if the city had traded economically with them. Indeed, the entire slave system of antiquity was economically self-destructive—slave owners spent most of their time seeing to it that their slaves didn’t rape their daughters or steal their goods or run away166—so productive innovations in farming and other professions were few, resulting in very low economic output in antiquity, where “improvement in land use were marginal and methods of tillage remained unchanged” for centuries because land owners didn’t care about reducing the work load of their slaves.167 They couldn’t even invent the stirrup until the 4th century A.D., and improvements in ploughs had to wait until even later. That “growth panic” triumphed over progress and individuation in ancient societies is obvious to anyone admitting their dismal lack of economic innovation, their impoverishing of both enemies and friends, and their grandiose devotion to endless slaughter.168

Footnotes:

1 Eli Sagan, At the Dawn of Tyranny: The Origins of Individualism, Political Oppression, and the State. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.

2 Madelyn Gutwirth, The Twilight of the Goddesses: Women and Representation in the French Revolutionary Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992, p. 125.

3 Sarah B. Pomeroy, Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 30.

4 Herodotus, The Persian Wars. Books I-II. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926, p. 177.

5 Evelyn Reed, Woman’s Evolution: From Matriarchal Clan to Patriarchal Family. New York: Pathfinder, 1974, p. 438.

6 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500-1800. London: Penguin Books, 1979, p. 106.

7 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations. New York: Karnac, 2002, p. 285.

8 David Carrasco, City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.

9 James F. Masterson, Psychotherapy of the Borderline Adult. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1976, p. 87.

10 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 403.

11 Joseph C. Rheingold, The Fear of Being a Woman: A Theory of Maternal Destructiveness. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977, p. 227.

12 Ibid., p. 143.

13 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 297.

14 Ibid., p. 404.

15 A. W. H. Adkins, From the Many to the One. London: Constable, 1970, p. 15.

16 B. C. Dietrich, Death, Fate and the Gods. London: Athlone Press, 1965, p. 77.

17 Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess. New York: Ktav Publishing, 1967, p. 34.

18 Ross S. Kraemer, “Ecstasy and Possession: The Attraction of Women to the Cult of Dionysus.” Harvard Theological Review 71(1978): 59.

19 Robert Rousselle, “‘If it is a Girl, Cast it Out’: Infanticide/Exposure in Ancient Greece.” The Journal of Psychohistory 28(2001): 303.

20 Lloyd deMause, Foundations of Psychohistory. New York: Creative Roots, 1982, p. 119; Lloyd deMause, “The History of Child Assault.” The Journal of Psychohistory 18(1990): 2; Sander J. Breiner, Slaughter of the Innocents: Child Abuse through the Ages and Today. New York: Plenum Press, 1990, p. 181; D. E. Mungello, Drowning Girls in China: Female Infanticide in China Since 1650. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008.

21 Sander J. Breiner, Slaughter of the Innocents, p. 3.

22 “Condom.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condom

23 William V. Harris, “The Theoretical Possibility of Extensive Infanticide in the Graeco-Roman World.” The Classical Quarterly, 32(1982): 114-116.

24 Lloyd deMause, Foundations of Psychohistory, p. 27.

25 Soranus, Gynecology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991, p. 79.

26 Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Family. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, pp. 40, 122.

27 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 298.

28 Hyam Maccoby, The Sacred Executioner: Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Guilt. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1982.

29 Larry Stephen Milner, Hardness of Heart; Hardness of Life. The Stain of Human Infanticide. Kearney: Morris Publications, 1998, p. 15; Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage.” Biblical Archeological Review, January 1984, pp. 31-46.

30 Larry Milner, Hardness of Heart, p. 549.

31 Lloyd deMause, Foundations of Psychohistory, p. 29.

32 Eva C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, p. 146.

33 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 299.

34 Michael Newton, “Written in Blood: A History of Human Sacrifice.” The Journal of Psychohistory 24(1996): 112.

35 David Carrasco, City of Sacrifice, p. 184.

36 H. S. Darlington, “Ceremonial Behaviorism: Sacrifices for the Foundation of Houses.” The Psychoanalytic Review 18(1931): 309-327.

37 Nigel Davies, Human Sacrifice in History and Today. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1981, p. 55.

38 Edward Brongersma, Loving Boys: A Multidisciplinary Study of Sexual Relations Between Adult and Minor Males. Elmhurst: Global Academic Publishers, 1986.

39 Lloyd deMause, “The Universality of Incest.” The Journal of Psychohistory, 19(1991): 123-145; Pamela Paradis Tice and Doris Georgiou, “Historicocultural Arguments Supporting Adult-Child Sexual Relations.” The Journal of Psychohistory 30(2002): 2-9; K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978, p. 53.

40 George Rousseau, Ed., Children and Sexuality: From the Greeks to the Great War. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 16.

41 Tice and Georgiou, p. 8.

42 Edward Brongersma, Loving Boys, p. 79-82; Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality: Ideologies of Masculinity in Classical Antiquity. New York: Oxford, University Press, 1999; Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975, p. 19.

43 Lloyd deMause, “The History of Child Abuse.” The Journal of Psychohistory 25(1998): 224.

44 Sander J. Breiner, Slaughter of the Innocents, p. 122.

45 Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Joseph Gavorse, ed. New York, Heritage Press, 1965, p. 148;

46 Edward Brongersma, Loving Boys, p. 48.

47 Lloyd deMause, “The Universality of Incest,” p. 138.

48 Petronius, The Satyricon and The Fragments. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1965, p. 43.

49 Edward Brongersma, Loving Boys, p. 16.

50 Keith Hopkins, “Brother-Sister Marriage in Roman Egypt.” Comparative Studies In Society and History 22(1980): 303-354.

51 Ibid., pp. 79-86; Larry S. Milner, Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life, p. 402.

52 K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, pp. 447-450.

53 Ibid., p. 91.

54 Ibid., pp. 319, 327, 492.

55 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 373.

56 Philip E. Slater, The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and the Greek Family. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968, p. 24.

57 Johann Jakob Meyer, Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture. Vol. I. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1930, p. 58.

58 Lloyd deMause, “The Universality of Incest,” p. 136, 142-5.

59 Ibid., p. 145.

60 Ibid., p. 144.

61 Charles Socarides, The Preoedipal Origin and Psychoanalytic Therapy of Sexual Perversions. Madison, Ct: International Universities Press, 1988, p. 463.

62 Evan Cantarella, Bisexuality in the Ancient World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002, p. 213.

63 Colin Spencer, Homosexuality: A History. London: Fourth Estate, 1996, p. 142.

64 Richie J. McMullen, Male Rape: Breaking the Silence on the Last Taboo. London: GMP Publications, 1990, p. 42; Maarten Schild, “The Irresistible Beauty of Boys.” In Joseph Geraci, Ed., Dares To Speak: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Boy-Love. Norfolk: The Gay Men’s Press, 1997, p. 87.

65 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 373.

66 Daniel Ogden, “Rape, Adultery and Protection of Bloodlines in Classical Athens.” In Susan Deacy and Karen F. Pierce, Eds. Rape in Antiquity. London: The Classical Press of Wales, 1997, p. 27.

67 Erich Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991, p. 207.

68 Kenneth Alan Adams, “The Sexual Abuse of Children in Contemporary Japanese Families.” The Journal of Psychohistory 34(2007): 178-195; Lloyd deMause, “The Universality of Incest,” p. 154-157.

69 Ibid., p. 142.

70 Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will, pp. 19-20.

71 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 364.

72 Efua Dorkenoo, Cutting the Rose: Female Genital Mutilation: The Practice and Its Prevention. London: Minority Rights Publications, 1994; Fran P. Hosken, Female Sexual Mutilations: The Facts and Proposals for Action. Lexington: Women’s International Network News, 1980; Lloyd deMause, “The Universality of Incest.” The Journal of Psychohistory 19(1991):160.

73 Giulia Sissa, Greek Virginity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990, pp. 113, 176.

74 Nawal El Saadawi, The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1980, p. 34.

75 Fran P. Hosken, Female Sexual Mutilations, p. 6; George C. Denniston and Marilyn Fayre Milos, Eds., Sexual Mutilations: A Human Tragedy. New York: Plenu Press, 1997.

76 Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, “Prisoners of Ritual: Some Contemporary Developments in the History of Female Genital Mutilation.” Paper presented at the Second International Symposium on Circumcision in San Francisco, April 30, 1991: http://www.fgmnet
work.org/articles/prisonersofritual.htm

77 Eric John Dingwall, Male Infibulation. London: John Bale, 1925, pp. 54, 78.

78 Cathy Joseph, “Compassionate Accountability: An Embodied Consideration of Female Genital Mutilation.” The Journal of Psychohistory 24(1996): 2-17.

79 Lloyd deMause, “The Universality of Incest,” p. 161.

80 Taisuke Mitamura, Chinese Eunuchs: The Structure of Intimate Politics. Rutland: Charles Tuttle, 1970, p. 36.

81 Robert Rousselle, “The Slaughter of Innocents.” The Journal of Psychohistory 36(2009): 228.

82 Bruno Bettleheim, Symbolic Wounds: Puberty Rites and the Envious Male. Glencoe: The Free Press, 1954, p. 84.

83 Lloyd deMause, “The Universality of Incest,” p. 163.

84 Theodor Reik, Ritual: Psycho-analytic Studies. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1975, p. 120; Lloyd deMause, “The Universality of Incest,” pp. 131-132; Pamela Paradis Tice and Doris Georgiou, “Historicocultural Arguments Supporting Adult-Child Sexual Relations,” pp. 2-28.

85 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 290.

86 Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Viking, 2005, p. 77.

87 Charles Lindholm, “Love as an Experience of Transcendence.” In William Jankowiak, Ed., Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience? New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, p. 63.

88 Alan Valentine, Fathers to Sons; Advice Without Consent. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.

89 Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of Love. New York: Random House, 1994, p. 36.

90 Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family. New York: Basic Books, 1977, p. 76.

91 Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of Love, p. 40.

92 Thomas Cahill, Mysteries of the Middle Ages. New York: Anchor Books, 2006, p. 119.

93 Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History, p. 62.

94 Wolfgang Lederer, The Fear of Women. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968, p. 100.

95 Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History, p. 65.

96 David Konstan, Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 226.

97 Eva C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus, p. 129.

98 Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995, p. 120.

99 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage In England 1500–1800, pp. 102, 217.

100 Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece, p. 268.

101 Louis Crompton, Homosexuality & Civilization. Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2003, p. 133.

102 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 289.

103 Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of Love, p. 23.

104 Ibid., p. 90.

105 Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History, p. 17.

106 Jack Holland, Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2006, p. 21.

107 Morton M. Hunt, The Natural History of Love. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1959, p. 83.

108 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 320.

109 Ibid., p. 322.

110 Ibid., p. 321.

111 Ibid., p. 317.

112 Lloyd deMause, Foundations of Psychohistory, p. 41.

113 Christian Augustus Struve, A Familiar Treatise on the Physical Education of Children. London: J. Murray, 1901, p. 382.

114 Elisabeth Badinter, Mother Love: Myth and Reality, New York: Macmillan, 1981, p. 96.

115 E. J. Dingwall, Artificial Cranial Deformation. London: J. Bale & Sons, 1931; Armando R. Favazza, Bodies Under Siege. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996, p. 62.

116 Deut. 21:21.

117 Graeme Newman, The Punishment Response. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1978, p. 61.

118 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 331.

119 Ibid., p. 334.

120 Robert Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life. London: Routledge, 1989, p. 21.

121 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 342.

122 Wolfgang Lederer, The Fear of Women. New York: Harcourt, 1970, p. 194.

123 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 335.

124 Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001, p. 117

125 Ibid., p. 314

126 Ibid., p. 341.

127 Ibid., p. 340.

128 Howard S. Levy, Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom. London: Neville Spearmen, n.d., pp. 70-88.

129 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 408.

130 Ibid, p. 408.

131 Ibid., p. 405.

132 Erich Neumann, The Great Mother, p. 99; Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image. London: Penguin Books, 1993, p. 251.

133 Ibid., p. 411.

134 Eva C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus, p. 4.

135 Eli Sagan, At the Dawn of Tyranny, p. 14.

136 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 409.

137 Barbara Hannah, Encounters With the Soul. Santa Monica: Sigo Press, 1981, p. 85.

138 A. W. H. Adkins, From the Many to the One, p. 21.

139 Nigel Davies, Human Sacrifice, p. 43.

140 Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of An Image. London: Penguin Books, 1991, p. 169; Cynthia Eller, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000, p. 104.

141 Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

142 Dyne Dawson, The Origins of Western Warfare: Militarism and Morality in the Ancient World. New York: Westview Press, 1996, p.38.

143 David Carrasco, City of Sacrifice, p. 8.

144 Ibid., p. 25.

145 Burr Cartwright Brundage, The Fifth Sun: Aztec Gods, Aztec World. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979, p. 195.

146 Ibid., p. 61.

147 Ibid., p. 97, 185.

148 Ibid., pp. 196, 205.

149 Joseph A. Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

150 Peter Tompkins, The Eunuch and the Virgin. New York: Bramhall House, 1962, p. 15.

151 Ibid., p. 14.

152 Hyam Maccoby, The Sacred Executionery, p. 85.

153 Zar Gat, War in Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 131.

154 Burr Cartwright Brundage, The Fifth Sun, p. 205.

155 V. Spike Peterson, Gendered States: Feminist (Re)visions of International Relations Theory. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992, pp. 7, 8.

156 Burr Cartwright Brundage, The Fifth Sun, p. 201.

157 Ross Cowan, For the Glory of Rome: A History of Warriors and Warfare. London: Greenhill Books, 2007, p. 134.

158 Ibid., p. 38.

159 Ibid., p. 61.

160 Morris Berman, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006, p. 110.

161 Hans Delbruck, Warfare in Antiqity. History of the Art of War, Vol. I. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990, p. 137.

162 Ibid., p. 128.

163 Colin Spencer, Homosexuality: A History. New York: Harcourt, 1996, p. 95.

164 Ibid., pp. 16, 151-177.

165 Ibid., p. 129.

166 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 281.

167 Ibid.

168 Frank Chalk & Kur Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. New Haven: Yale University Press,1990, pp. 58-156.