HOPE Center

Domestic Sex Slavery

2008-10-27T11:13:00.001-05:00

Teen recounts horror of abduction into sex slavery:
Many young victims of human traffickers treated as criminals themselves
By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 10:52 a.m. CT, Thurs., Oct. 9, 2008
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/27098993/

HONOR KILLINGS PERSIST IN 'MAN'S WORLD'

2008-09-12T12:14:00.001-05:00

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/09/12/1382073.aspx

Posted: Friday, September 12, 2008 8:37 AMFiled Under: Islamabad, Pakistan
By NBC News’ Shahid Qazi and Carol Grisanti
BABAKOT, Pakistan – In a tangle of bushes and trees outside a remote village in southwest Pakistan, six close male relatives of three teenage girls dug a 4-foot wide by 6-foot deep ditch, on a sweltering night in mid-July, and allegedly buried the girls alive.
The girls' crime: they dared to defy the will of their fathers and the customs of their tribe and choose their own husbands. The mother of one of the girls and the aunt of another were shot and killed while begging for the girls’ lives, according to local media reports.

Evolution...

2008-09-08T15:53:00.003-05:00

Each day we are faced with so many ideals of who we should be, how we should look, walk, talk, dress, even smell. Each day we are bombarded with 3,000 ads of these ideals.

Here is an interesting Dove commerical that gives us a sense of how unrealistic some of these images are to try to aspire to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U

How would things be different if we knew the difference between reality and fantasy in advertising?

The Girl Effect...

2008-09-08T15:40:00.002-05:00

Here is a great website about the impact of investing in girls, and what it means when we provide resources, safety and opportunity for young girls, to learn and thrive:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIvmE4_KMNw

Some of the facts:
http://www.girleffect.org/downloads/TheGirlEffect_FactSheet.pdf

And the website:
www.girleffect.org

It leads me to ponder, what would happen if we invested our resources in different ways?

Global Violence Against Women

2008-09-04T09:48:00.001-05:00

http://www.tides.org/index.php?id=947

Momentum 08
Video from Tides

07.21.2008 21:46 minutes
Plenary:
Synopsis:A forceful and moving indictment of violence against women. Former U.N. Ambassador Stephen Lewis delivers a rallying cry to stop the systemic use of rape and abuse against girls and women across the globe.
Bio: Stephen Lewis is a U.S. based Co-Director of AIDS-Free World, an advocacy organization that works to promote more urgent and more effective responses to HIV/AIDS... More

The Trivialization of Sexism

2008-09-03T09:51:00.000-05:00

Most police don't want rape by partner to be reported
By Jen Kelly
July 15, 2008 07:48am
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Police discourage women from reporting partner rape
The crime is difficult to prove and often trivialised
Many husbands do not consider the crime rape

ONLY one in five police officers believe a woman should report being raped by her husband, according to a study showing the crime is often trivialised. Nuns, ministers, doctors and police often knew a woman had been raped by her partner but did nothing, the Victorian study found. Each of the 21 victims interviewed for the study said her partner would not consider it rape, despite some suffering drugging and near-suffocation. Only six of the 30 police interviewed said they would recommend a woman report partner rape, despite 28 calling it a serious crime. They cited as reasons "the disrespectful and damaging treatment of women in court", difficulty in proving it, and long waits before cases got to court. Health workers told researchers some police discouraged women from reporting rape. "There were several accounts of police trying to dissuade women who had gone to them for help from taking action ... and suggesting the complaint was trivial," the report said.
The researchers from Women's Health Goulburn North East and Upper Murray Centre Against Sexual Assault interviewed 21 partner rape victims from the Goulburn Valley and northeast Victoria, and scores of police and health professionals. The study, to be released today, found the men believed it was their right to do what they liked with their partner and that society often trivialised partner rape, despite it being a crime since 1985. "One of the women went to her minister in her church, and he said, 'Go home and pray about it'," study co-author Debra Parkinson said. "There was domestic violence as well and she said, 'What if he kills me?' And the minister said, 'Well, at least you'll go to heaven'." The husband of one victim shook their marriage certificate in her face and said, "I own you with this".

Sexism Defines Sexual Assault

2008-09-03T09:46:00.001-05:00

Helen Mirren Shocker: I 'Loved Coke' & Was Date Raped
By Chris Jefferies
Originally posted Tuesday September 02, 2008 09:00 AM EDT
Helen Mirren Photo by: Hal Horowitz / WireImage
tiiQuigoWriteAd(757767, 1348106, 180, 240, -1);
People Magazine

Helen Mirren makes some startling revelations – she was date raped more than once and has tried several illegal drugs – in a revealing new interview with the British edition of GQ. "I was, yes. A couple of times," the Oscar-winning Queen actress says in the October issue, recalling her experiences being raped as a youth in London. "Not with excessive violence, or being hit, but rather being locked in a room and made to have sex against my will." And while Mirren defended a woman's right to say "no" at any point, she's not always in favor of reporting such attacks. "I don't think [a woman] can have that man into court under those circumstances," she continued, "It's such a tricky area, isn't it? Especially if there is no violence. I mean, look at Mike Tyson. I don't think he was a rapist."

Sexism in the Criminal Justice System

2008-09-03T09:40:00.001-05:00

Cops ‘labelled’ cell gang-rape victim a tomboy
29 August 2008Zinhle Mapumulo
Related Content
4 suspects rape teenager in police cell

The young woman who was allegedly raped by four male detainees in police cells had been accused of being a tomboy. Police allegedly placed her in the same holding cells with the four men as punishment for “acting like a boy”. The Independent Complaints Directorate yesterday confirmed having received a complaint from the woman. ICD spokesman Dan Morema said they had an affidavit from the 19-year-old stating that police had accused her of being a tomboy. “As a result, they placed her with what they referred to as people of her kind,” he said.
The incident happened at the Transvaal Road police station in Kimberley, Northern Cape. The woman had been arrested for being drunk. The men allegedly took turns in raping her between 3am and 6am last Saturday . A case of rape was opened against the four male detainees, police spokesman Captain Tshepo Mofokeng confirmed. “The four men are between the ages of 20 and 35 years. They appeared in the Kimberley magistrate’s court on Tuesday, and the case was postponed for further investigation and also to allow time for DNA results to be finalised,” said Mofokeng.
Morema said the ICD would want to establish if the SAPS’ standing orders were contravened or adhered to in terms of the cell visits. The visits are supposed to take place every hour, or every 30 minutes if a person is detained for being drunk.

Sexism Impacts Safety

2008-09-03T09:27:00.002-05:00

Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Afghan Recovery Report

Rape Surrounded by Impunity and Silence
The few victims brave enough to go public face an uphill battle to secure justice, despite a one-off intervention by the president.
By Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in northern Afghanistan (ARR No. 299, 27-Aug-08)
The old man is disabled and unable to speak, but he cries and gesticulates as he tries to demand justice for his young daughter, who was raped by five armed men.The case of 12-year-old Anisa has electrified her home province of Sar-e-Pul in northern Afghanistan.Her family has chosen to come forward, a courageous move in a society where sexual taboos make it almost impossible to report rape, and where the victim is often punished by her family for bringing shame upon them.Anisa’s family invited journalists to hear her story, and demanded that the perpetrators be brought to justice.“It was a very brutal assault,” Anisa told reporters in the city of Sar-e-Pul. She was raped in front of her family in early June by armed men who broke into her house, in her home district of Baghawi, about ten kilometres from the provincial capital. “Nobody paid us any attention,” said Anisa’s mother, crying as she recounted the family’s odyssey through the criminal justice system. “We went everywhere for over a month, but it did not help. The perpetrators are walking around free in the bazaar, and the [former] provincial police chief supports them. Nobody cares about us.”Ali Khan, Anisa’s uncle, said, “We complained to the police chief, but he threatened me and cursed me and told me not to make a big deal out of it.” Provincial police chief Abdul Khaleq Samimi, who has since been dismissed, denied that he was covering for criminals, and insisted he had been pursuing the case. He hinted that a tribal feud may have lain behind the attack.When the family finally decided to go public, the resulting media coverage forced the government to act.
President Hamed Karzai condemned the rape and called for severe punishment for the offenders.He assigned the interior minister and the deputy chief of the National Security Directorate to pursue the case. As a result of their investigation, police chief Samimi and four other officials were removed from their posts in mid-July and are facing charges of criminal negligence.One of the accused rapists has been arrested, while the other four have fled.“We are searching for them, but they seem to have escaped,” said Mohammad Bilal Niram, the new police chief in Sar-e-Pul.With four of her assailants still at large, Anisa’s victory is far from complete.
Still, the government’s energetic reaction to her case marks a radical departure from the usual official response to rape cases.“Karzai’s action in this case has given us some hope,” said Abdul Latif, a resident of Sar-e-Pul. Still, he cautioned, the government needed to apply the law equally to all.“As the proverb says, ‘you cannot have two different kinds of weather over one roof’,” he said. “If this happens, people will start distrusting the government again.”Another Sar-e-Pul resident, Haji Besmillah, was more critical.“It was just a symbolic action. There are hundreds of such cases in Afghanistan where the government is silent,” he said.All too often, the government refuses to get involved in cases of sexual assault. Even when an accused rapist is apprehended, he is often freed after paying bribes, say those involved in rape cases.
In May of this year, two men convicted of a brutal gang rape in 2006 were freed after serving only two years of an 11-year sentence, reportedly by apresidential pardon. Presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told the BBC that it was “impossible that President Karzai could knowingly have signed a pardon for rapists”. Whatever the facts behind their release, the convicted men now walk free. The victim, Sara, is demanding that they be re-incarcerated.
Cases where the victim and her family demand punishment for the offenders are all too rare. The conspiracy of silence leads to a culture of impunity, with the result that the incidence of rape is becoming increasingly frequent, especially in the north.“We have received ten cases of rape so far this year,” said Qazi Sayed Mohammad Sameh, regional head of the Afghan independent human rights commission in northern Afghanistan. “This represents a major increase over previous years.”The cases include girls from five to 15 years of age, he said, and most likely represent just a small fraction of the actual number.“Most victims’ families are not ready to let us know,” he said.Part of the reason for the increase is the growing power of armed militias in the north, he said. “Armed men carry out sexual assaults using their power,” he told IWPR.Another reason is the high cost of weddings, which make marriage a distant dream for many young men, he added.“A lot of people cannot afford to get married, so they quench their sexual urges by abusing children, who make easy targets,” he said.
In the vast majority of cases, victims are too intimidated to complain. They can face retribution by powerful local militias, or even from their own families. Many rape victims are killed by their relatives because of the perceived “shame” attached to the crime. Those who survive are isolated by their families and communities, and have little chance of marrying and pursuing a normal life.Afghans are growing increasingly impatient with the lack of government action on sexual assault.“When has a rapist been executed in public?” asked Esa Khan, a resident of Sar-e-Pul. “If people see that there is no punishment for this crime, then they too can go out and commit similar actions.”He cited the case of a 16-year-old who was raped in Sar-e-Pul in February, allegedly by the son of a member of parliament. The young man accused in the case confessed, but although he appears to be over 20, he was treated as a juvenile and sent to a detention centre.The young man’s father is said to be a former warlord. Local residents say the power he wields protected his son, and they expect the rapist to be freed soon.The victim took refuge with the human rights office, fearing that she might be killed by her own family, say people close to the case. The family finally relented and supported her in her fight to have the rapist prosecuted; they are now demanding that the case be transferred to the judicial system in Kabul.“We do not believe in provincial courts because [the accused man’s relatives] are very powerful there and they rule over everybody,” said one of the girl’s relatives. “Nobody can punish the son in that province because his father owns the law there.”
Analysts argue that one-off presidential decrees like the one issued in the most recent Sar-e-Pul case are not the solution – the law must be implemented equally, “The president's decree regarding the punishment of the rapists shows the weakness of the law in Afghanistan,” said Surosh Kazimi, who heads a network of civil society and human rights organisations in the north.Rather than dealing with cases by decree, he said, the president should insist that existing laws be implemented.“This is not an exceptional matter to be resolved by an exceptional decree from the president,” he said. “It is a social problem which can be solved with the rule of law. “Sexual assaults take place almost every day in Afghanistan. Is the president going to issue a decree every day? That just isn’t possible.”
Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter in Mazar-e-Sharif.