Archive for the ‘Rape’ Category
Amnesty International: Violence Against Women “Most Pervasive Human Rights Challenge”
In November, Amnesty International marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women by arguing that violence against women is the “most pervasive human rights challenge” facing the world today. Unfortunately, Amnesty International appears to be relying on inflated activist figures for some of its claims.
Here’s a couple paragraphs from the BBC, for example, on Amnesty International’s take on women and human rights,
‘Violence against women and girls is the most pervasive human rights challenge of our times,” said Amnesty International.
According to the organization, 120 million women around the world are subjected to brutal female circumcision every year and in the United States alone 700,000 women are raped annually.
Huh? According to the National Crime Victimization Survey — which relies on interviews to estimate crime rates, including those that are never reported to police — in 2000 there were roughly 100,000 rapes in the United States. Even if you add in the crimes labeled as sexual assaults by the NCVS, you still end up with a number that’s more than 2/3rds lower than the Amnesty International figure.
If Amnesty International is willing to rely on such specious figures for its estimates of violent crime against women in the United States, how can its estimates for crime in other parts of the world be trusted?
Source:
Attacks on women ‘biggest issue’. The BBC, November 26, 2003.
Tags: Amnesty International
Wendy McElroy on Prosecutorial Grandstanding in Rape Cases
Wendy McElroy wrote an excellent article about a disturbing dichotomy in accusations of rape — while the name of the alleged victim rarely appears, prosecutors face no compunction about grandstanding to humiliate the alleged assailant even before the completion of an investigation.
The focus of McElroy’s piece is the outrageous behavior of Paradise Valley, Arizona, police in announcing the day before the Fiesta Bowl that a woman had filed a complaint of rape against Kansas State quarterback Ell Roberson. As McElroy writes,
No charge had been filed: no arrest made, then or now. Roberson denied the accusation leveled against him mere hours before, early THursday morning. The Paradise Valley police simply “outed” an accused rapist before completing an investigation. The process of how police departments deal with sexual assault accusations should be overhauled.
The police seemed to knowingly inflict damage on Roberson with little evidence to do so. Lt. Ron Warner reportedly told journalists that there was “no supporting evidence, no witnesses, no physical injuries” surrounding the alleged rape. “We have two opposing descriptions of what happened,” he concluded. Paradise Valley Police Chief John Wintersteen subsequently explained, “the investigation is not done.” Medical tests on the accuser had not returned when Roberson’s name hit TV< nor were they expected until early next week.
In fact, the Paradise Valley police later concluded that the rape accusation was unfounded and declined to press charges against Roberson. That announcement, of course, did not receive nearly the same coverage or speculation that the original announcement.
McElroy notes this seems to be the rule lately with celebrity prosecutions. Someone in the Colorado District Attorney’s office produced inflammatory T-shirts related to the Kobe Bryant prosecution, while Santa Barbara County District Attorney Thomas W. Sneddon seems to think he’s doing an off-Broadway one-man review every time he talks about the Michael Jackson case. As McElroy concludes her piece,
As it stands, those who prosecute rape allegations are losing credibility. A legal system that mongers gossip to the media before concluding investigations, that prints humorous T-shirts about defendants and uses press conferences for comic relief does not engender trust in justice. It is a threat to justice in-and-of itself.
Source:
Prosecutor grandstanding undermines justice. Wendy McElroy, IFeminists.Net, January 6, 2004.
Scotland Rejects Proposal to Preserve Anonymity of Men Accused of Rape
The BBC reports that a committee of Scotland’s parliament unanimously rejected a proposal to grant anonymity to men accused of rape until their guilt is proven in court.
The proposal was submitted by the UK Men’s Movement which argues that men accused of rape need anonymity to avoid the stigma that even false allegations of rape can have on innocent men. UK Men’s Movement spokesman George McAulay said in September of a similar proposal introduced by his group,
We are alarmed by the proliferation of false rape allegations, and the seeming indifference with which the authorities treat this offence, often not prosecuting even when there was a prima facie case of false allegation to answer, and even when the accuser admitted it was a complete fabrication.
False rape claims may be made for a number of reasons, the most common being revenge, attention-seeking, malice, fiscal reward via the Criminal Injuries Board or civil suit, and advantage in marital disputes now that prosecutions are made for rape in marriage.
According to the BBC, the committee that voted to reject the idea argued that “the move would discourage women from coming forward.”
McAulay responded that the Scottish Parliament’s doesn’t seriously its own goal of ensuring sexual equality,
This parliament and this executive make much noise about their commitment to equality, but I have seen little of it with regard to men. We ask that an accused who may be innocent is given the same anonymity as their accuser, who may be malicious.
Unlike in the United States, it is generally illegal in the UK to publish the name of accusers in rape cases. In the United States, the Supreme Court has upheld the right the media to publish the name of rape accusers, but by custom most do not.
In general, the ideal would be equal treatment — if an outlet is not going to name the accuser, then don’t name the accused. If they’re going to name the accused, they should also name the accuser (except where minors are involved on either side).
Sources:
Rape case protection bid rejected The BBC, January 7, 2004.
Minister to hear rape plea. The BBC, September 26, 2000.
Tags: George McAulay, Scotland, UK Men's Movement
Efforts to Criminalize Male Rape in Scotland
In Scotland police are investigating a number of sexual assaults on men perpetrated by what is believe to be a small gang. But under Scottish law, raping a man is not recognized as a crime.
Under Scotland’s definition of rape — which goes back to 1844 — rape is a crime which involves only a man sexually assaulting a woman. The perpetrators of this and other sexual assaults against men could be charged with assault, sodomy or possibly robbery if they stole from their victims, but not rape. And apparently, the maximum sentence for a first offense sodomy conviction is a mere three months.
The English legal system formally incorporated a gender-free definition of rape in 1996, but Scotland has yet to make that change, despite estimates that at least 400 men are victims of sexual assaults annually. That figure is likely higher since Scotland doesn’t keep statistics on the gender of sexual assault victims.
Keith Cowan, a spokesman for gay rights group Outright Scotland, has been trying to have the law changed. He told The Sunday Herald,
Rape is considered by the justice system to be much more serious than indecent assault or sodomy. The crime of sodomy confuses the very serious offence of male rape with the minor offence of consensual sex between men, which did not happen in a private place.
A crime as serious as male rape should carry an unambiguous and recognized rape charge so that it is clear from the charge, and from the record of any conviction, how serious the offence is. It must also be included in sexual assault statistics.
Such a change would seem to be a pretty straightforward, sensible thing to do. Why the law hasn’t already been changed is a bit mystifying.
Sources:
Law failing victims of male rape. By Neil Mackay and Liam McDougall, Sunday Herald (Scotland), October 5, 2003.
Call for new laws after male sex attacks. Stephen Khan, The Observer, October 12, 2003.
Tags: Scotland
Debate in Slate Over Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003
There was some spirited debate in Slate recently over whether the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 is a real move forward or simply a cosmetic band aid that will have no real effect on prison rape.
Writing in Slate, Robert Weisberg and David Mills argued that Americans have come to accept brutal prison rapes as part and parcel of the prison experience, and that the only way to address the problem is by eliminating the underlying problems in prisons such as overcrowding. Weisberg and Mills write,
Despite promises (or threats) in the new law to take prison officials or state governments to task for failure to stop rape and assault, the real cause probably lies in a more mundane and intractable reality: Inmates will attack inmates if enough of them live in sufficient proximity, with insufficient internal security, for long enough periods of time. That means that while Congress funds lots of studies, we already know that the key variables are really the sheer rates of incarceration in the United States, the density of prison housing, the number and quality of staff, and the abandonment of any meaningful attempts at rehabilitation. If it is honest, the new DOJ commission created by the law will suggest what we already know is necessary: that we lower incarceration rates, reduce the prisoner-to-space ratio, train huge numbers of new guards to protect prisoners, and abandon the purely retributive and incapacitative function of prisons. But there is no political will for such changes, which is perhaps why we fund studies of the obvious in the first place.
The truth is that the United States has essentially accepted violence?and particularly brutal sexual violence?as an inevitable consequence of incarcerating criminals. Indeed, prison assault has become a cliché within mainstream culture.
The two then mention the prevalence of prison rape in pop culture contexts, such as on HBO’s prison drama Oz. One example of the prevalence of this view that they don’t mention was California Attorney General Bill Lockyer expressing his desire to imprison former Enron CEO Ken Lay,
I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, ‘Hi my name is Spike, honey.’
As Weisberg and Mills sum it up, “So accepted is assault as part of prison life that an outsider might conclude that on some basic, if unarticulated level, we think it an appropriate element of the punishment regimen.”
Meanwhile, Lara Stemple of Stop Prisoner Rape took issue with Weisberg and Mill’s conclusion that the bill was a “superficial gesture of little substance.” According to Stemple,
While it’s true that the PREA is not the only thing needed in the fight against this enormous problem, the law is groundbreaking and the political will behind it was strong enough to see it passed by unanimous consent in the House and Senate. The authors inaccurately dismiss the law as requiring little more than a study. First of all, good data is crucial, and secondly, the PREA calls for much more: the unprecedented development of national standards to address prisoner rape, a review panel with subpoena power to call before it officials responsible for the worst rape rates, and the allocation of up to $40 million in funds for new state programs to address the problem. If knowledgeable reformers are appointed to the PREA’s commission and if the law is implemented conscientiously, it will signify attention at the highest levels of government to a problem that has been denied, ignored and trivialized for decades.
. . .
From a sufficiently contrarian perspective, any victory can be viewed as a defeat. The reality, however, is that when it is comes to rape behind bars, laws and policies are changing and public attitudes are evolving. People are beginning to grapple with an issue once so taboo that it could only be ignored or turned into a joke. And contrary to the bleak characterizations of Weisberg and Mills, we are on the cusp of an important social movement.
I suspect that Weisberg and Mills are correct — I don’t see any sort of major social movement making it into the mainstream talking about prison rape. As Lockyer’s comments illustrated, prison rape is considered part of the punishment regimen.
One need only look at the debate over treating some violent juvenile defendants as adults in order to see how far away we are from Stemple’s “important social movement.” Part of that debate breaks down between those, on the one hand, who argue that placing violent juveniles in adult prisons merely hardens them and eliminates any possibility of rehabilitation because they will be exposed to things like prison rape because of their age. On the other side are those who argue that such offenders are so dangerous to society that this is an acceptable risk. There is hardly ever anyone with sufficient authority or respect who steps forward to suggest that maybe the state should do more to reduce the rate of prison rape — it’s simply a given in that debate that prison rape was, is and will continue to be endemic.
Source:
Violence silence. Robert Weisberg and David Mills, October 1, 2003.
Wisconsin Man Released After 17 Years in Jail for Rape He Didn’t Commit
Steven Avery, 41, was released from a Wisconsin jail in September after serving more than 17 years for a rape he did not commit.
Avery became a suspect in the rape of a jogger after a Sheriff’s officer thought the woman’s description of the suspect sounded like Avery who had a couple of previous burglary convictions. Despite numerous witnesses who testified seeing Avery elsewhere at the time of the rape, he was convicted based on the strength of the victim’s testimony.
Avery was exonerated after DNA testing of 13 hairs found at the scene did not match Avery’s DNA. Instead, they matched the DNA of convicted rapist Gregory Allen who is currently serving a 60-year sentence for a later sexual assault.
How could the victim have been so sure about her identification of Avery and been so wrong? ONe of the problems with suspect identification is how police procedures can reinforce false identifications. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
The victim later identified Avery as her attacker in a photo lineup and in a live lineup of suspects — but only Avery was included in both lineups. . .
Interestingly, the victim sent a letter of apology to Avery for misidentifying him. She noted that although both Avery and Allen fit the general description she gave, police never showed her Allen’s picture despite the fact that he had previous convictions for exposing himself and trying to grab a woman in the area where the rape occurred.
Although he served more than 17 years in jail for a crime he did not commit, under Wisconsin law Avery can only recover a maximum of $25,000 in compensation from the state for his wrongful conviction.
Sources:
Avery entitled to only $25,000 for mistake. Gina Barton, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, September 13, 2003.
Wrongly convicted man freed. Tom Kertscher, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, September 11, 2003.
Steven Avery picking up where he left off Robert Imrie, Associated Press, October 5, 2003.
Victim sends apology to Steven Avery. Associated Press, September 22, 2003.
Debate Over Kenyan Rape Allegations
There has been much controversy in recent weeks over a planned lawsuit on behalf of 650 Kenyan women who claim to have been raped by British soldiers. The crux of the debate is whether or not the rape charges are genuine or are being invented out of thin air in order to pursue the potentially lucrative lawsuit.
Much of the controversy centers around the Indigenous Movement for Peace Advancement and Conflict (IMPACT) — a Kenyan group that has been working with British lawyers in preparing the lawsuit.
One of the major pieces of evidence buttressing the rape charges were mixed-race children born to Kenyan women who claimed they had been born as the result of rape by British soldiers. First, however, it turned out most of these children were born to prostitutes. Then, Kenyan prostitutes began stepping forward claiming they were told by IMPACT that they could receive thousands of dollars if they accused British soldiers of raping them.
The Daily Telegraph reported on one of these prostitutes,
Angela Muguri, 24, claims three IMPACT activists sought her out and promised to make her a millionaire. All she had to do was pretend that British soldiers raped her — and then give them a cut of any forthcoming compensation.
Miss Muguri held her two-year-old daughter, Britanny, who, like scores of children in Nanyuki, is mixed race. “They told me that if I said I was raped by British soldiers and showed them my baby then I would get three million shillings [30,000 pounds],” Miss Muguri said. “I would take two million and they would take one.”
According to Miss Muguri, Britanny’s father is a British soldier, but she insisted that the child was the product of a six-week consensual relationships, not of rape.
“I know it was a lie but they told me if I told the truth I would get nothing,” she said. “This British soldier no longer sends me ay money, or communicates with me. I am very poor. How could I say no?”
Those sort of revelations followed on the heels of Royal Military Police investigators concluding that police records documenting the alleged rapes were in fact fakes created specifically for the purposes of pursuing the IMPACT lawsuit.
According to the Daily Telegraph,
A spokesman at the British High Commission in Nairobi confirmed that the 37 reports expected to form the backbone of the case, the only ones filed at the time of the alleged attacks, had proved to be fakes. The reports had encouraged hundreds more women to come forward.
“I am therefore unaware of any genuine entries concerning rapes by British servicemen in police records,” the spokesman said.
Unfortunately the Royal Military Police have not yet explained how they were so certain the reports were not genuine. British newspaper The Guardian, however, examined hospital records related to the rapes and said that the records appeared to have been doctored after-the-fact to include rape-related materials. For example, there tended to be large numbers of patients allegedly raped by British soldiers added to the end of daily hospital logs, suggesting they were added at a later date.
Writing about the controversy, Wendy McElroy noted that it’s often difficult to sort out whether such allegations are accurate or not because of what McElroy terms the “compensation culture” that is currently prevalent in developing countries that plays on Western feelings of guilt over colonial-era injustices,
A “compensation culture” seems to be spreading through poor nations. This “soak the rich” attitude toward the West draws upon Western guilt over its own prosperity and over historical wrongs, like slavery. This collective guilt is especially undeserved when placed on the blameless shoulders of children born today. It is also likely to harm the credibility of true victims who seek compensation.
It also has the effect of infantilizing the governments of developing nations who often seem to spend more time blaming Western nations than actually trying to solve problems their countries face.
Sources:
Rape claims are forged, says Army. Adrian Blomfield, Daily Telegraph, September 27, 2003.
New doubt thrown on Kenyan mass-rape claim against UK. James Astill, The Guardian, October 2, 2003.
Prostitutes ‘told to fake rape claims’. Daily Telegraph, October 11, 2003.
Tags: Great Britain, Kenya
Bush Signs Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003
On September 4, President George W. Bush signed the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 into law — the first federal act ever designed to address the problem of sexual assault in prisons.
The law, passed without opposition by both the Senate and House in July, creates a 9 member National Prison Rape Reduction Commission to investigate and report on the problem of rape in the nation’s prisons. In addition to providing for an annual Department of Justice review of prison rape rates, it provides funds for states to spend to prevent prison rape and prosecute alleged prison rapists.
As Wendy McElroy noted in a column commending the passage of the bill, estimates of prison rape rates are all over the map. A 2001 Human Rights Watch report on the topic estimated that anywhere from 250,000 to 600,000 prisoners — mostly men — are raped every year in American prisons.
McElroy also notes that feminist groups, who after all insist that rape is a gendered crime committed by men against women, were nowhere to be found lobbying for the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Instead it was the conservative Concerned Women for America along with a number of faith-based groups that lobbied for the bill.
The full text of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 can be read here.
Source:
Confronting prison rapeA. Wendy McElroy, Fox News, September 16, 2003.
Law targeting prison rape signed; diverse coalition backed measure. Trom Strode, Southern Baptist News, September 8, 2003.
Prison Rape Elimination Act Becomes Federal Law. Press Release, Stop Prison Rape, September 4, 2003.
Tags: George W. Bush
Leniency for False Rape Accuser in the UK
Kevin Meyers had an interesting op-ed piece in the Daily Telegraph in August about the lack of outrage over leniency shown to false rape accuser Alison Welfare.
Welfare create an elaborate ruse to try to falsely convict her boyfriend of rape. Meyers describes the bizarre lengths which Welfare went to appear a victim of rape,
She sent herself threatening e-mails, and then told the police they came from him [her boyfriend].
She tore her clothes, daubed herself with paint, bound and gagged herself, and allowed herself to be found in a “distressed” condition in a McDonald’s lavatory in Peckham, south London, having been “raped” at knifepoint.
Her boyfriend, Christopher Wheeler, was arrested and spent two months in jail before the ruse was finally discovered.
Yet after being convicted of such an outrageous deception, Welfare was sentenced to only 1 year in jail and could be released after only 6 months. Meyers writes,
There has been no outcry at the leniency shown to Alison Welfare. However, there was an outcry in the last case that I remember in which a woman was charged with making malevolent and baseless accusations of rape. That was from feminists, denouncing the fact that the woman was sentenced to a couple of months’ imprisonment for making false rape charges against two Irish soldiers in Cyprus.
“This case will deter genuine rape victims from reporting rape,” screamed the Irish Rape Crisis Centre, demanding the release of the Irishwoman responsible.
The illogic was breath-taking, for we rightly reserve particular opprobrium for rapists. But by making light of the false accusation of rape, women’s groups are trivializing rape itself. You cannot debase a currency for some of the time; once debased, it stays debased.
. . .
False allegations of rape, however, are about power, for they mobilize the proper revulsion society feels about the crime against the unfortunate target. So we should protect the powerful societal taboo on rape by treating those who falsely allege rape with the severity with which we treat rapists. That is the least the true victims of rape deserve.
Certainly people such as Welfare who go to such extraordinary lengths to subvert legal and cultural taboos against rape for their own purposes should be severely punished. A one-year sentence for such an elaborate ruse is a bad joke.
Source:
Malicious accusers are as bad as rapists. Kevin Meyers, The Daily Telegraph, August 17, 2003.
Malaysian Regional Minister Condemns Lipstick and Perfume
Nik Aziz Nik Mat, chief minister of the Malaysian state of Kelantan, created a controversy in September with his declaration that Muslim women should avoid wearing lipstick or perfume outside the home because it could stir up sexual passions and increase the risk of them being raped.
Nik Aziz has a habit of making such statements about women, including his argument that the state should only employ ugly women because they would be unlikely to get married and leave their jobs.
Dr. Ng Yen Yen of the Malaysian Association of Youth Club said of Nik Aziz’s statement,
I find it ridiculous that a leader of today can have that perception of violence against women. Little girls with no make up and perfume have became rape victims.
He never fails to shock me over how little he understands gender issues. What sort of society is he creating in Kelantan and Terengganu?
What sort of society, indeed.
Malaysian minister: ‘Lipstick invites rape’. Jonathan Kent, The BBC, September 2, 2003.
Lipstick-rape comment raises a stink. Izatun Shari, The Star.Com, September 2, 2003.
Tags: Malaysia