Recently in Sexual Assault Category

In the latest issue of Essence magazine, Queen Latifah speaks candidly about her experience with sexual abuse as a child.

For a short period of time when she was a child, Latifah was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a teenager charged with her care. "He violated me," she says of the abuser. "I never told anybody; I just buried it as deeply as I could and kept people at an arm's distance. I never really let a person get too close to me. I could have been married years ago, but I had a commitment issue." Eventually, she opened up to her parents, who separated when she was young.

...She points out that one in four girls is sexually abused in some way. "That's 25 percent of all girls. This is a real problem," she says. Not unlike many victims of abuse, she wondered if she had played a role in what happened. Her talks with a therapist helped her find the unequivocal answer. "He said, 'Imagine yourself as an adult and think about what a child can do to you. Can they beat you? Can they defeat you? No. Now, imagine yourself as that child.' That really helped put things in perspective. I was a kid, and I had no power or control over the situation."

I have been a fan of Queen Latifah for...well, forever. And I think it's wonderful that she's talking about her experience in a way that recognizes just how common sexual abuse is. The US Department of Health and Human Services reports that 15-33% of females and 13-16% of males were sexually abused as children.

Via Racialicious.

A new study by the Medical Research Council on rape in South Africa reveals that one in four men in South Africa may have raped someone--with most of those attacking more than one victim. Before the critics come out of the woodwork arguing that this is hyperbolic research, be clear, the methodologies were sound; the MRC spoke to 1,738 men in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape provinces.

There are so many disturbing data points as part of this research, but I think rather than talking about how completely horrifying the facts are, it's important to focus on WHY this is happening. It's easy to read these kinds of statistics and throw up our hands as if there is nothing we can do in the face of such atrocity. Instead, we need to support the feminists in South Africa who are obviously well-aware of this issue and doing everything they can to change the culture of violence.

It's clear that many of the men who admitted to raping women had done so multiple times. This makes it even more critical that focus be put, not only on prevention and cultural shifts, but on prosecution. The legal system in South Africa must support women to come forward about their sexual assault experiences so they can help prevent other women from facing the same fate.

Professor Rachel Jewkes of the MRC, who carried out the research, told the BBC's World Today:

The absolute imperative is we have to change the underlying social attitudes that in a way have created a norm that coercing women into sex is on some level acceptable. And it's partly rooted in our incredibly disturbed past and the way that South African men over the centuries have been socialised into forms of masculinity that are predicated on the idea of being strong and tough and the use of force to assert dominance and control over women, as well as other men.

Related Posts:
"Corrective rape" increasing in South Africa.
Child's play includes sexual assault in South Africa
South Africa will only be free when women are...
Women's Day in South Africa

Thanks to all the readers and community poster Lorenc who brought this to our attention.

Speechless:

A plea deal that sent an ex-convict accused of raping a 4-year-old girl to jail for only a year has prompted outrage across Oklahoma, where lawmakers are calling for the removal of the judge who approved the deal and the attorney general is investigating a new set of abuse allegations.

Under the deal, David Harold Earls, 64, of the southeastern Oklahoma town of McAlester, pleaded no contest last month to first-degree rape and forcible sodomy. Normally, the rape charge carries a sentence of between five years to life in prison, but the deal he struck with prosecutors called for 19 years of his 20-year sentence to be suspended.

While many involved are saying this happened because the outcome of the case rested on the testimony of the now 5-year-old girl, whom made "contradictory statements" in pretrial hearings, Earls admitted to the crime and medical evidence showed she was sexually assaulted. Can someone in law please explain how and why this sentence was reduced so significantly, because I just can't fathom it.

*Potentially triggering*

This story is intense. An 11 year old was brutally raped. Members of her community beat up the man they think committed the crime. The neighbors will not be charged for the beating. Here's why,

Before making his decision, Ramsey said, he monitored Carrasquillo's condition and reviewed surveillance video of the assault. As soon as officers arrived at the scene, he said, the group stopped the beating.

"These people saw him, he attempted to run and they caught up with him," Ramsey said. "If the injuries had been severe, maybe we'd have to rethink it."

The Philadelphia chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police had offered a $10,000 reward in the rape case.

Carrasquillo has not been charged in the rape, but Ramsey said investigators have very strong forensic evidence and witness identification placing him at the scene.

Marc Lamont Hill makes the point that because of the erasure of the experiences of women of color and specifically black women with sexual violence in the justice system and the news media, there is an understanding within the community that no one is going to do anything about this injustice. So while we may fall on the side of never resorting to violence, many people do not have this privilege.

*Possible trigger warning*

While we haven't been the biggest fans of Amazon as of late and their history of selling a rape simulation game (which they did end up banning), it looks like another game involving violence against women seems to have"slipped" past their radar. "Stockholm: An Exploration of True Love" is a game that allows the user to experience,

"...a terrifyingly vivid exploration of Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological condition in which a captive falls in love with her kidnapper. And you play the part of the kidnapper. With a limited number of options, you must figure out how to make her fall in love with you."

This includes using poison gas on the victim, sexually assaulting her and using psychological abuse against her in efforts to make her "love" you. Unbelievable.

Contact Amazon and let them know that profiting off of sexual and psychological abuse is completely unacceptable.

h/t to Jennifer for the heads up.

Check out Jonathan Torgovnik's amazing collection of photographs of the children of rape victims in the Congo. I became aware of his work because of a devastating photo essay in this month's Mother Jones Magazine, which you should all check out if you get a chance (it's not available online).

I had the total honor of attending a Congressional meeting yesterday called "The Growing Needs of Women Veterans: Is the VA Ready?" It was hosted by the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and widely attended by a variety of women veterans' groups who each had a chance to testify about what they see as the growing and unique needs for women veterans (who are currently about 15% of our military).

I plan on writing extensively about some of the issues that were brought up (including childcare, VA climate, cultural shifts, and of course, sexual assault), but what I really wanted to emphasize here at feministing was how inspired I was by the presence of young, fearless women activists yesterday. The stand outs were Anuradha K. Bhagwati, Executive Director of the Service Women's Action Network (which I've written about before), Kayla Williams, author of Love My Rifle More Than You, and Dawn Halfaker (pictured here), of Wounded Warriors.

They each spoke with such passion, clarity, and authenticity at the hearing. As the various leaders and ED's of organizations made their remarks, I was thrilled to hear these young women's voices, which truly stood out as professional, but also unequivocally real. They didn't let the official nature of the meeting or the onslaught of statistics overshadow the fact that women are suffering unimaginable pain because of sexual harassment and assault experiences, inadequate access to reproductive and mental health care at the VA centers through out the nation, and a sense of invisibility in a country that still assumes women don't see combat or get PTSD. Though the day was overwhelming, and the sense of glacial movement in our legislative branch palpable, I left with this rock solid confidence that this generation of women vet activists are going to make things right. They're too strong and bold and eloquent and convicted not to.

P.S. SWAN's site went live today, so be sure to go over and check it out.

*Trigger Warning*

If you know anything about femicide in Mexico, then you already know it is an epidemic of gross proportions. The mutilation, rape and murder of women along the US/Mexico border has become an annual statistic, with little mainstream media coverage and even less national outcry. And the worse part of it is that many of these disappearances are not even investigated, they literally disappear, vanish and are wiped from legibility.

From a piece written in 2004 in Off Our Backs Corie Osborn writes,

For the past decade, a sexual genocide has raged virtually unnoticed in Juarez, the largest city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Approximately 370 women have been found murdered in the State of Chihuahua over the past decade, according to an Amnesty International report published last August. At least 137 women were sexually assaulted prior to their death.

The majority of these murders occurred in and around Ciudad Jurez; however, in the past three years incidences of murder and disappearances have risen in the nearby state capital Ciudad Chihuahua.

Many of the violent murders that have taken place in Juarez follow a similar pattern. Authorities believe that 93 of the victims fit the same rape-murder pattern, which indicates that they are all the work of a serial killer or killers.

Why has a killer who has murdered more than twice the number of people as the Boston Strangler, Jack the Ripper and Ted Bundy combined, been able to continue terrorizing Ciudad Juarez for ten years with only vague interest from the international community or even from the Mexican federal government? And who is responsible for the killings of the other hundreds of women found dead in Juarez over the past decade?

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are veiled by the power of a dominant machismo culture and what appears to be a police conspiracy preventing a thorough investigation of the murders.

Two years ago the documentary On the Edge: Femicide in Cuidad Juarez took on the horrific examples and sheer numbers of women disappearing in Juarez. The whole thing is up on youtube (in ten parts) and I strongly recommend watching it.

Here is the first part.

I bring this up today is because it was released yesterday that this epidemic hasn't stopped and that the disappearance of women in the Baja peninsula outnumber those disappeared in Chihuahua.

In Mexicali and other parts of Baja California, women's murders tend to get "buried" in the avalanche of news about violent crime, which includes hundreds of slayings, numerous kidnappings and street-side shoot outs since last year alone. While femicides in Ciudad Juarez and the state of Chihuahua garnered international headlines in recent years, little international attention was paid to women's murders in Baja California.

A report issued earlier this year by the femicide commission of the lower house of the Mexican Congress, found 105 women were murdered in Baja California during 2006-2007. Using official numbers, more women were murdered in Baja California than in Chihuahua (84 female murder victims) during the same comparable period.

In 2006-07 Baja California ranked eighth place nationally for women's homicides, falling slightly behind Mexican states with much larger populations including Jalisco, Veracruz and Puebla, according to the Mexican Congressional report.

This epidemic shows us that women's bodies are considered expendable and between patterns of globalization and a corrupt government the bodies of young women are not important and not worth investigating.

Last night, the LA City Council approved a budget that will fund the testing of the huge backlog of untested rape kits in Los Angeles.

According to Hollywood NOW President Lindsey Horvath (who was also recently appointed to the West Hollywood City Council - congrats!), "Over the next two years, we will eradicate the backlog of untested rape kit evidence as long as the Council continues to work with LAPD on a system that holds everyone accountable."

From Human Rights Watch:

As part of the city's budget for the upcoming fiscal year, the council approved money for an additional 26 employees for the city's crime lab DNA section and for using private crime laboratories for outsourcing. The budget now goes to the mayor for signature or veto within 10 days of approval by the City Council. The city has a backlog of more than 5,000 "rape kits," as the collected evidence is called, which have not been tested to try to identify a suspect through matching DNA.

Wonderful news, but HRW points out that this funding only affects the testing of rape kits under the Los Angeles Police Department's jurisdiction." There are still 7,000 more untested rape kits in the 47 other cities in Los Angeles County and stored by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Related: Why Do Rape Kits Sit Around Untested?
Nearly 13,000 Rape Kits Go Untested in LA County

Trigger warning.

The University of Tennessee has extended a scholarship offer to Daniel Hood, "Mr. Football" at Knoxville Catholic High School.

Hood certainly has all the athletic credentials: he led Knoxville Catholic to a 15-0 record and a class 3A state title. For his prowess, he got himself 27 scholarship offers from schools across the country. Indeed, Hood's football highlight film on Rivals.com has been watched 17,594 times.

But then schools caught wind of the horrifying details of his 2003 conviction (something they began to refer to as his "character issue"). Hood and an older friend, 17-year-old Robert Sanrico, who is currently serving 10 years in prison, raped and kidnapped a 14-year-old girl (Hood's cousin no less). Excerpts of the court transcript are here, but I warn you that they are highly disturbing.

All 27 of those scholarships disappeared once schools learned of Hood's legal record. But it appears that UT has managed to look past it. "We didn't go about this lightly," UT coach Lane Kiffin said in a statement Tuesday. "We spent a lot of time researching the issue and talking to a lot of people who are well-respected in the community. Everyone spoke very highly of Daniel. He's a very bright young man who wants to move past this incident and be a good representative for the team, the university and the community."

According to UT athletic department director of public relations, Tiffany Carpenter, the victim wrote a letter on Hood's behalf urging the university to admit him.

This is incredibly difficult for me to process. I won't judge Tiffany Carpenter's choice to forgive and even encourage her cousin to move on. I recognize that every person who experiences sexual assault has to heal in her own way. It does make me wonder what kind of support she's gotten through this whole process (this is the only time she's mentioned in the coverage).

But even more, it underscores the ways in which we still don't take sexual assault seriously in this country. I'm not a fan of criminalizing minors, but this incident is so violent and the punishment so lax (Hood went to a rehab center for a short period of time) that I can't help but feel like this kid's football talent has overshadowed any actual rehabilitation and reflection that he sorely needed and still needs to do. No one mentions if he actually got ongoing therapy, if he has gotten involved in sexual assault prevention efforts, or come to any kind of conclusions about why he committed such a dehumanizing crime against his own relative.

Were he not a football player, he would probably be stuck in a dead end job with no respect, no college scholarships, and no opportunities. (Not optimum, by the way. Just truth.) If he were a young man of color, well, we all know that his punishment would have looked far different. Instead, he's a white guy with a natural talent for throwing a pig skin, and as a result, he'll get a free college education and, quite possibly, could make millions in the NFL. All that money and glory will make the heinous sexual assault of his youth seem like a bad dream. I hate that athletic talent is valued more in this society than women's bodily integrity, therapeutic healing from violent crimes for both the perpetrator and the victim, or sexual assault prevention.

Fuck football.

Email Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek at chancellor@utk.edu if you want to express your opinion about this issue.

Thanks to Christina for the heads up.

Correction: It appears that Tiffany Carpenter is the PR rep for UT Athletics, not the victim. This was misreported in one of the pieces I read. Thanks to Regann for the info.