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Index £15,000 for asylum seeker illegally detained in UK, Guardian, 10 March
Senior Met officer blames scepticism and
inertia for low conviction rate,
Guardian, 4
March 'Why is conviction rate so appallingly low?' Guardian quotes WAR, 15 Jan 2007 Article by Beatrix Campbell in New Statesman 16 April . . . New research commissioned by the Met police delved into the
Met’s own case files . . . for the first time checked out the histories of
suspects. Beyond reasonable doubt So what's it like to sit on a jury at a rape trial? An anonymous juror offers his unique insight. The Guardian, 12 April One-fifth
of British women were sexually abused as children
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Press Highlights 2008 - 2002 2008
". . . following a judicial
review of her case, she was released from detention and will now
receive damages estimated at £15,000 for unlawful detention because
of the length of time she was held without having the correct
examination.
Deputy high court judge Kenneth Parker QC said he believed a report
soon after PB had been detained would have provided evidence of
torture and probably resulted in her release from detention.
"[The] ruling is a fantastic victory and sets a crucial precedent for many other women in detention," said a WAR spokeswoman yesterday. "Like PB, many women have had their cases fast-tracked and been detained, denied legal representation, medical and other expert help, and implementation of the Home Office's own rules which should have secured their release. . . "
Senior Met officer blames scepticism and
inertia for low conviction rate,
Guardian, 4
March
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The new rules have had no “discernible
effect” on the number of allegations of rape ending in a successful
prosecution as the conviction rate has continued to fall, according to the
report published by the Home Office.
It found that the rules that aim to restrict defence barristers from
depicting rape victims as promiscuous have been “evaded, circumvented and
resisted”...
Unpublished
letter to The Independent, 4 April 2006
Dear Editor
Vera Baird MP says rape convictions depend on where you live ("Rape
conviction rates", 30 March). Some areas may not be as dreadful as
others, but the 'good' areas can only boast a 14% conviction
rate. This is not because "rape is notoriously difficult to
prove, (your editorial) or because of a lack of "education and public
information," but because those charged with implementing the law do it
badly, carelessly or rarely. The conviction rate is going down even as
more women are reporting their attackers. The conviction rate (average: 5.3%)
is not a lottery, postcode or otherwise, but predictable injustice,
determined by sexism, racism, the attacker's social status, and a host of
other irrelevancies. Women and girls in every walk of life want to know
when this discrimination against rape survivors is going to be
addressed. The public information we need is that rape will be
investigated and prosecuted thoroughly, and rapists convicted. What an
education for would-be rapists and leader writers that would be.
Lisa Longstaff
Women Against Rape
Unpublished
letter to The Times, 13 April 2006
Dear Sir
Your editorial (Rape and the Law, 10 April) went to the heart of
the matter: 40 cautions for rape "... assumes greater importance in the
context of the overall failure of the system to deal properly with reported
rape cases." We share this view (see Law pages,17 January).
Cautions for rape are the tip of the iceberg; the iceberg itself is the lack
of convictions -- the conviction rate has fallen to a shocking 5.3%.
That is, most rapists don't even get a caution. The proposal to give
community orders to men who commit domestic violence, in which rape often
figures, is a further license to assault, maim or even kill women and
children.
Will The Times
join us in asking the police and Crown Prosecution Service why
their employees undermine rape prosecutions by incompetent, even reluctant,
investigation and presentation of evidence, finding obstacles to
prosecution rather than on building a case? Sacking a few employees
would concentrate minds wonderfully. Until then, sexism and other
institutional prejudice will continue to determine the rate and success of
rape prosecutions.
The CPS offered
the justification that 29 of these 40 who received a caution were under age
21. May we remind the CPS that little comparable concern has been shown
to teenagers convicted of crimes against property, for example those
criminalised for graffiti and truancy via the use of ASBOs.
Yours sincerely
Lisa Longstaff
Women Against Rape
Unpublished letter to The Evening Standard, 13 April 2006
Dear
Editor
Your report ("Cautions for rapists "place women
at risk", 10 April) said cautions are a deterrent to rape victims
coming forward. Indeed they are a deterrent, a danger, and an
insult to the victims. Yet the number of women reporting is steadily
increasing. In many cases women bring to us, the police investigation
is riddled with problems - contributing to a scandalous
conviction rate of only 5.3%.
Despite government
claims to be committed to prosecuting rapists, many victims still face:
police urging them to drop the case, refusing to gather evidence, interview
witnesses, protect survivors from assailants who threaten victims if they
report, and inaccurately recording statements; and CPS carelessness
and refusal to challenge the prejudices, lies and
slanders by the defence, and so on. The excuse that rape is
uniquely hard to prove then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Sacking a few police and CPS lawyers for gross underperformance in
even a few rape cases would broadcast a genuine
commitment to tackling rape to their own staff and to all of us.
Yours sincerely
Women Against Rape
An interview with a woman in our network whose rapist stepfather was given a caution was broadcast on the Today Programme, Radio 4, 9 May 2006.
'Why
we believe the police have lost sight of rape'
The Times, LAW, 17 January 2006
The recent Amnesty International survey found that two thirds of people do not blame victims for rape. What the public does not know is that there are grave problems with the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence.
Over the years, the police have responded to criticism with special measures:
· 1985: when Women against Rape published its survey on rape, Ask Any Woman, they introduced rape suites and special training. Recorded rapes: 1,842. Conviction rate: 24 per cent.
2005
One in three people blame women for being raped, finds
Amnesty survey
21 November 2005
... "Women Against Rape, said prejudices were
ingrained in the way rape cases were examined."Let them worry about the
awareness of the police, judges and the Crown Prosecution Service, and public
awareness will change," she said" ...
"...the
Home Office does not believe rapes and beatings amount to persecution" says Green MEP Jean
Lambert, Guardian, Letters, 14 October 2005
In the UK alone over 50,000 rapes take place each
year but only 600 rapists are actually sent to jail, and this in a country
with a stable legal system. It is therefore particularly worrying, for women
globally, that the Home Office does not believe rapes and beatings amount to
persecution
These attacks could have
been stopped letter to Camden New Journal re Anthony Hardy, the 'Camden
Ripper' 6 Oct 2005 read whole letter
The Hardy Inquiry,
held in private, which exonerated the psychiatrists, did not go far enough
into Hardy's previous violence or the authorities' responsibility for not
prosecuting him earlier. Yet he was known to hate women, particularly
prostitute women, had a history of extreme violence and hospital staff had
expressed "concerns that he was a danger to the public"...
Women and girls come to us when prosecutions are dropped by police or CPS. The story is always the same: key evidence was inaccurately recorded, misinterpreted, destroyed or deemed “insufficient”. As a result less than 6% of reported rapes and 5% of recorded domestic violence end in conviction and two women every week are murdered by their partner or ex-partner.
Many women and girls would be alive today if their attackers had been prosecuted and appropriately sentenced the first time they struck!
Signed by: Women Against Rape, Legal Action for Women, English Collective of Prostitutes, National Association for People Abused in Childhood, Save Our Day Centres (mental health service users), Single Mothers’ Self-Defence, Peter Garsden (Association of Child Abuse Lawyers).
The family no one could save, Guardian, 7 June
2005
For 14
months, Julia Pemberton told anyone who would listen that her husband was going to kill her. When he finally forced his way into her home
with a gun, she made a desperate 999 call. By the time the police arrived she
and her son William were dead. Now her family want to know why no one took
any notice. They talk to Fran Abrams
Scandal of
justice revolution that betrayed rape victims, The Observer, 1 May 2005
Despite radical reform
of the way police and the courts deal with sex crimes, conviction rates are
at a record low. Amelia Hill on the shocking story of Britain's rape crisis
…..last month's Home Office report, A Gap or a Chasm?, revealed that the proportion of rape allegations resulting in a conviction has fallen to a record low - from 24 per cent in 1985 to 5.6 percent in 2002. The overall picture is even worse. In 2002, 11,676 rape cases reached court, but just 655 led to a conviction - and in 258 of those the rapists had pleaded guilty. This means the women were believed in only 3.4 per cent of contested cases.
…..Two Home Office reports published last year say fear of going to court remains a reason for victims dropping cases.
Rape myths ... and the truth.
Women
cry rape as revenge or to cover up consensual sex they later regret.
False or malicious rape claims account for just 3 per cent of allegations.
One in four women have experienced rape or attempted rape, but only 57 per
cent of those who are raped consider that what has happened is serious. This
figure becomes even lower - at 31 per cent - when the perpetrator is a
current or ex-partner.
That most rape victims are attacked by a stranger.
Women are most likely to be raped by current or former partners.
Getting a case to - and through - court is easier.
Between half and two-thirds of rape cases are dropped. Only 14 per cent
reached trial in 2002. Where a trial took place, acquittal was likely.
Rapists are now more likely to be convicted.
The conviction rate is an all-time low, 5.6 per cent, despite increasing
reports of rape.
Evening Standard, 29 March 2005
Women Against Rape IN
THE HOT SEAT: "We're not asking that rape be made a special case,
just that it be treated as a serious crime"
Q. In 2002, the Government overhauled rape laws in an effort to increase conviction rates and "re-balance the system in favour of victims". The number of rapes reported annually in Britain is at an all-time high of 11,700 - yet only one in 20 leads to a criminal conviction, an all-time low. What is going wrong?
A. Every time laws are passed, the people who are supposed to implement them carry on regardless. Women still call us every day, saying the police didn't believe them, or if they did the Crown Prosecution Service wouldn't prosecute, and if the case got to court they didn't get a chance to have their say, that evidence wasn't presented, that they were humiliated and discredited, and that no one defended them. The police blame the CPS, the CPS blames the police, they both blame the court system and everyone, including the rapist, is allowed to get away with it.... prosecutors who persistently fail to make a woman's case and present evidence in court [should be sacked].
Q. A recent Home Office report claimed the real number of rapes per year in this country is at least 47,000. Why are there so many cases still going unreported?
A. Women don't report rape because they don't think the man will be convicted. There is a saying in legal circles that rape is an easy allegation to make but a hard one to prove. This is not true; it's not an easy allegation. Women who are raped find it hard to talk to their family and friends about it - imagine how hard it is to tell strangers who you know may not believe you, who will question your integrity and lifestyle, knowing that you might have to go through the same thing in court and that it could amount to nothing.
Q. "Consent" - whether a woman has agreed to sex - is the key issue in rape cases. As a defendant can still claim he "believed" consent had been given, doesn't this just make rape one person's word against another?
A. The barrister questioning them may have only come across the case that morning. He is certainly not in a position to defend a woman if the defence casts doubts on her character. There are loopholes that allow sexual history to be brought in. A woman will be briefed to limit her answers to yes and no, so she never gets a chance to put her case across in her own words. It's not surprising that the truth doesn't come out.
Q. Isn't alcohol, and binge-drinking in particular, the real danger to women?
A. People also say women shouldn't walk in certain areas, invite a man back to their house for coffee, or wear a short skirt. It amounts to the same thing. Claiming that "binge drinking" is the problem is basically saying that the rape is a woman's own fault because she is drunk.
Q. Hearing such horrific stories day in, day out, do you find it hard not to lose faith in men?
A. Many men call us on behalf of their daughters, wives or mothers. They are devastated and determined to stop rape. What we need is to change the priorities and policies that do so much to tell women that rape is their own fault, or that it is not very serious.
2004
The Guardian, 14 August 2004
Women
and children first:
Deportations of
asylum seekers have taken a vicious new turn &
Refugees 'detained during legal process'
2
articles by Natasha Walter
The government and its agencies are acting on a continuum with a hostile
public attitude that has been developed by the rightwing press. But however
inured you are to the nasty rhetoric, what is shocking is that harsh
treatment seems to be increasingly targeted at women and children. Nicola
Rogers says that she believes the children are no longer seen as children,
but simply as an extension of the adult, the scum, the leech. And some people
working in the field also say they believe that, given the pressure on
immigration officers to meet quotas for removals, women with young children
are being increasingly targeted for detention and deportation because it is
assumed that they will go quietly. So although women make up only a small
minority of those in detention, stories of ill-treatment and injustice
involving women and children are becoming more frequent.
The Guardian, Letters, 12 July 2004
Erosion
of asylum rights
Rape survivors are
vulnerable and find it difficult, often impossible, to speak about the
violence they have suffered. The law acknowledges this, granting rape victims
anonymity. Women who have been raped who seek asylum in Britain are even more
vulnerable. Deeply traumatised, they face the additional and frightening
hurdle of being interviewed by officials in totally unfamiliar surroundings
and often through translation.Yet according to David Lammy, the minister for
constitutional affairs, the government is not "persuaded that victims of
rape or torture, however defined, should be regarded as being in a category
of vulnerable people".
The asylum bill will deny
rape victims the right to legal aid and therefore full representation. Like
Andrew Phillips, who opposed this sexism in the Lords, we find this an
"astonishing proposition". It is a malevolent and life-threatening
erosion of rape victims' rights.
read more published correspondence between Minister David
Lammy & BWRAP & WAR
The Guardian, Letters,
25 June 2004
Why Blunkett must share
the blame for Soham
Bichard sharply
criticised the record-keeping and vetting procedures of various police
forces. Our evidence to the inquiry asked why Huntley's previous nine sexual
assaults went unprosecuted. Thirty-six (mainly women's) organisations
endorsed our request.
While this was outside the inquiry's remit, it remains the crucial unanswered question - time after time the police ignored evidence or failed to make further investigations.
This shocking policing is not unusual. Hundreds of girls and women each year come to us when prosecutions are dropped by the police or CPS. Challenging those decisions, we often find that key evidence was inaccurately recorded, misinterpreted or destroyed. No wonder just 5% of recorded cases of domestic violence and less than 6% of reported rapes end in conviction.
Sexism, not
record-keeping, is the main barrier preventing the successful prosecution of
rapists and other violent men. If women's and girls' safety were prioritised,
men like Huntley would be stopped before they became murderers.
Women Against Rape
The Guardian, Letters,
24 May 2004
Rape in Iraq
It was neither the
Red Cross nor the Amnesty report that propelled the torture of Iraqi
prisoners on to the front pages. It was the photos. The torture carried on
until the ocular proof made political embarrassment unavoidable.
Yet the photos of rape and other sexual torture of women at Abu Ghraib prison have still not been released to the public (The other prisoners, G2, May 20). Evidence of the widespread rape of women soldiers within the US military has similarly been ignored. Yet US National Public Radio mentioned 10 days ago that 100 US women soldiers claim to have been raped by their colleagues in Iraq. Why is this not pursued and reported here?
We wrote to all women MPs and peers asking them to press for full disclosure of what is happening to women in Iraq at the hands of both US and UK troops. We have not received a single reply.
Cristel
Amiss
Black Women's Rape Action Project
Lisa Longstaff
Women Against Rape
The Guardian Letters, 13 May 2004
We are told special "techniques to soften up prisoners" are taught to
certain units of the US and British military, and are the basis of the Abu
Ghraib outrages. It is well-known that such "techniques" were used
in the north of Ireland in the 1970s and afterwards. It is not so well known
that a version of them was used against Irish women - strip-searches,
repeated internal body searches inducing miscarriages, denial of sanitary
towels to menstruating prisoners etc - sexual humiliations which, because of
the taboos of Irish society at the time, were largely kept out of the
Republican propaganda. So are the abuses in Iraq similarly extended to women,
and similarly hidden?
Margaretta D'Arcy
Corrandulla, Co Galway
IRAQ PRISON SCANDAL - A Double Ordeal for Female Prisoners
Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2004, Tracy Wilkinson
BAGHDAD - One woman
told her attorney she was forced to disrobe in front of male prison guards.
After much coaxing, another woman described how she was raped by U.S.
soldiers. Then she fainted.
A U.S. Army report on abuses at Abu Ghraib prison documented one case of an American guard sexually abusing a female detainee, and a Pentagon spokesman said Monday that 1,200 unreleased images of abuse at Abu Ghraib included "inappropriate behavior of a sexual nature."
Whether it was one or numerous cases of rape, many Iraqis believe that sexual abuse of women in U.S.-run jails was rampant. As a result, female prisoners face grave prospects after they are released: denial, ostracism or even death.
A woman who is raped brings shame on her family in the Islamic world. In many cases, rape victims have been killed by their relatives to salvage family honor, although there is no evidence this has happened to women who have been prisoners in Iraq.
"It is like being sentenced to death," said Sheik Mohammed Bashar Faydhi, a senior cleric based at Baghdad's largest Sunni mosque.
Some Iraqi women said they were struggling to come to terms with the alleged abuses of female detainees at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-controlled lockups.
Few female inmates will talk about it. Their lawyers lower their voices when the subject of rape comes up.
. . . But female lawyers who visited the prison in March said their clients provided accounts of abuse and humiliation.
To enter the prison west of Baghdad, the attorneys waded through dirt and coils of barbed wire, and waited for hours.
Inside, they met with nine female detainees - four of whom, they said, had not been charged with any crime. U.S. military officials said at the time that there were 10 or 11 women being held at Abu Ghraib.
. . . Army officials have acknowledged detaining women in hopes of persuading male relatives to provide information. The lawyers said interrogators sometimes threatened to kill detainees. . .
The Independent,
6 January 2004
Huntley was not a
one-off
. . . It took the murder of two children in Soham
to expose, yet again, how often the police do not act to protect women and
girls. In the eight years before he killed Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman,
there were at least 11 reports of Ian Huntley's sexual offences against young
girls and under-age teenagers. Huntley was rarely charged or even
interviewed, and he was never convicted. Time after time, the police ignored
evidence or failed to make further investigations about Huntley's offending.
And, in addition to the reported incidents, several ex-girlfriends have since
said that they suffered violence - being beaten unconscious, thrown down
stairs - at Huntley's hand.
In the 30 years that we have worked with thousands of rape survivors, we know that this shocking policing is not unusual. Huntley was protected by the police assumptions that we have confronted for years: that women's and girls' evidence is less reliable than men's, and that rape is not a serious crime, especially if the complainant has, or had, a relationship with her attacker.
. . .We fear that, once again, recommendations of a public inquiry will serve not women and children but the Government's political agenda (for keeping records on "suspect" people, violent or not, promoting identity cards, etc). The public feels so strongly about rape that the issue is often used to attack civil liberties without any benefit to women's and children's safety. It is not keeping records in general that is the problem; it is the sexist policing and prosecution of rapists and other violent men.
The Guardian, 8 Jan 2003
Chris Arnot reports
on research that questions the legal right of violent parents to retain
contact with their children
. . .More than 46,000 of these contact orders are issued by British courts
every year. Only 1,276 applications for paternal contact are refused - a mere
2.7% of the total. Yet this is a country where a woman is murdered by her partner or
former partner every three days; where one woman in four is the victim of domestic
violence at some point; where one in six applications for re-housing by local
authorities comes from those fleeing violent partners; where innumerable
children see or hear one parent being brutally attacked by another.
. .
The Lord Chancellor's Department, meanwhile, has been digesting a report it commissioned into the safety of child contact centres. Three researchers at Warwick University, Rosemary Aris, Christine Harrison and Cathy Humphreys, found that mothers were "often very unhappy" about what they considered inadequate supervision when they took their children along to spend time with their fathers. There were deep concerns about the threat of violence and child abduction. A third of the children interviewed shared those concerns and wanted their mothers close by. Fathers, on the other hand, were annoyed by what they considered unnecessary surveillance.
There are some 280 contact centres scattered throughout England and Wales. Often sited in day nurseries or church halls, they are intended to give fathers the opportunity to spend time with children from former relationships in a structured setting. That is the theory - but the reality can be rather different.
"We're convinced the safety and
well-being of a significant minority of women and children complying with
these court orders are being compromised," says Harrison, a lecturer in
the school of health and social studies at Warwick. "Fewer than 10%
of the contact centres are adequately supervised. There should be separate
entrances for fathers and mothers with children, separate waiting rooms, and
a higher ratio of staff to families."
In an ideal world, she says, that supervision should come from professional staff, trained to be aware of intimidation. As it is, the centres tend to be manned by volunteers - often people with a strong belief in the nuclear family. In that respect, they reflect the overwhelming view of government and the judiciary.
. . . according to the Warwick
researchers' paper, Safety and Contact. "Over 85% of the women we
talked to through contact centres had experienced domestic violence; we
expected the figure to be high, but not that high," says
Harrison, who has also become conscious of the connection between domestic
violence and child abuse. "In between 30% and 60% of cases, there will be a direct
link," she says. "Social workers, welfare professionals and
solicitors should be asking questions about this co-existence."
There should be questions, too, about the widespread assumption that violence ceases when a couple split up. "It doesn't," Harrison says. "Sometimes the threats, the intimidation and the harassment escalate. . . .
Sturge and Glaser go further. "We consider that there should be no automatic assumption that contact with a previously or currently violent parent is in a child's interest," they write in Contact and Domestic Violence: The Experts' Report. "If anything, the assumption should be in the opposite direction."
The Lord Chancellor's Department has set up a New Labourish-sounding "safety stakeholders' sub-group" as a result of the Warwick researchers' report, which has been in the department's possession for nine months. "That kind of delay is nothing unusual in these cases," says Harrison. She believes that the commissioning of the report in the first place is a sign that the issue is being taken seriously, but it remains to be seen whether the judiciary will take heed and act upon new guidelines...
When that awareness becomes far more widespread, there are likely to be more "no-contact" orders...
Safety and Contact: an Analysis of the Role of Child Contact Centres in the Context of Domestic Violence and Child Welfare Concerns is at: www.lcd.gov.uk/research/2002/10-02es.htm
Women's eNews
Kenyan Women To Sue British Army for Alleged Rapes
By Jennifer Friedlin
. . . 600 women from the nomadic Masai and Samburu tribes who have recently
come forward alleging they were raped over a period of 30 years by British
soldiers on rotation in northern Kenya for training exercises.
. . . After years of living silently with their claims, the women are now preparing to file the equivalent of a class-action against the British Army.
. . . Rebecca Samaria, a women's rights activist in Archer's Post, says she spent years complaining about the alleged rapes to the all-male Samburu chiefs. But they barely listened.
As the rapes allegedly continued, husbands walked out on their wives, taking the family's precious cows and any other valuable possessions, as is their right in Samburu culture.
In response, Samaria, 38, started an independent village in 1990 where 25 abandoned and impoverished women now live and work. Today, the women support the humble collective of mud and dung huts by pooling their resources. They sell beaded jewelry and run a campsite and cultural center for tourists. The proceeds have been used to establish a primary school and to send a couple of children to a university.
In the safe haven of the collective, the women also debate issues such as female genital mutilation and domestic violence, an accepted part of Samburu tradition.
"We have decided to start the group to uplift our lives," said Samaria, the sound of women singing in Samburu and dancing echoing through the camp. "These days the women are coming up very nicely and taking care of their families and making their family to be strong."
The Guardian 5 July 2003
In Kenya, the
British army stands accused of systematic abuses
Natasha Walter
Imagine that half a dozen
German women had just claimed they had been gang-raped by British
soldiers who were stationed in their
country on exercise.
Imagine that even when the women had
reported the rapes the
soldiers had been allowed to fly home and the incident was never investigated. Imagine
that a few months later another such
incident took place.
If such accusations were being made against British soldiers by European women, and if the women's stories were backed up by hospital and police records and compelling testimony from the traumatised young women, then the media would have gone into a frenzy - demanding to know how British soldiers could go on the rampage, and why officers were covering up for them.
The Times, 31 July 2003
Woman fears her
freed rapist will attack again
A WOMAN who brought
the first private prosecution for rape has appealed to the police for
protection because she fears the rapist, who is about to be freed, has been
following her movements. She says she is terrified that Christopher Davies, a
chef from Margate, who is due to be released on licence today or tomorrow,
will track her down and attack her again.
The Independent on Sunday, 16
March 2003
Women at Broadmoor used as
guinea pigs for male sex offenders, says former patient
A
former patient at Broadmoor, the high-security hospital, has told how she and
other women were used as guinea pigs in the attempted rehabilitation of
dangerous sex offenders and convicted psychopaths.
The extraordinary allegations of sexual abuse and rape are revealed today in an interview given by the former patient. Such disclosures by women are extremely rare, not least because of fears of reprisals and the stigma surrounding any stay in Broadmoor.
The woman, Catherine, (not her real name) was a patient at the hospital for three years. Now living in the community, she has revealed that female patients were ordered to pair up with male offenders at a special event dubbed the clinical disco by staff.
The youngest female patients were also frequently groomed by paedophiles and then sexually abused. These revelations come only a week after Julia Wassell, the hospital's former director of women's services, told how she was driven from her job when she reported to her superiors more than 1,000 allegations, including rape, sexual harassment, indecent assault and verbal abuse.
Women's E-News
'Native American Women
Organise Against Rape and Sexual Assault' - V-Day
Did you know that the rate of
sexual assault among Native American Women is 3.5 times higher than for of
any other racial group in the U.S.? Did you know that 70% of the American
Indian victims of sexual assault report an offender of a different race?
On October 10th, V-Day launched the Indian Country Project to raise awareness and funds to stop violence against Native American women in the U.S. and First Nations women in Canada. The project will bring V-Day events to native women around North America, and will bring awareness of native women to V-Day events around the world.
Unpublished letter to The Guardian, 26 November
2002
WAR
. . . The law
says that if a man believes the woman consented, even if his belief is
unreasonable, he cannot be found guilty of rape. Many men believe that women are or should
be sexually available to them. Instead
of disabusing them of this “belief”, the law gives it credence.
Every time the man is allowed to put forward the defence that he believed the woman consented, her sexual history, irrelevant to the facts of the rape, is raised to justify what he did by what he knew about her. In this way, men get away with the most violent rapes because they claim to believe the woman liked it rough since a friend told them so.
Furthermore, they say delay in reporting should cast doubt on the victim’s credibility. So any woman who, after months of agony, finally decides to report a rape will risk being disbelieved. Clamping down on paedophiles is in the news, but young women we know with the courage to report their fathers or stepfathers still operating paedophile rings, have their cases classed as “historical” and dropped.
Instead of addressing the sexism in the law and the biased gathering and presentation of evidence by police and courts, the government is again using rape to undermine the rights of defendants generally. Raising the previous convictions of the accused, abolishing double jeopardy, and promising longer sentences will do nothing but increase the possibility of miscarriages of justice. We say: Not in the name of rape survivors. . . .
Unpublished letter to The Guardian, 22 November
2002
WinVisible - Women with Visible and Invisible Disabilities
It is galling to
see protection against rape of people with learning disabilities or mental
illness presented as entirely new by the government in their White Paper,
then uncritically reported: “Three new offences recognise their lack of
capacity to consent.” (20 November)
Sexual intercourse with a so-called “mental defective” has been a crime at least since 1956. Labour has not made the changes to the rape law that would really make a difference. We told the Sexual Offences Review that treating us as a lower form of life in the sexual offences law is an invitation to disability discrimination and therefore non-prosecution. Assaults are rife on those of us who are this vulnerable, but hardly any cases get to court. Police called in to investigate sexual assault by men bathing women in care homes are no longer interested once they find out that the complainant has Alzheimer’s Disease. Hospitals refuse to take responsibility for the rape of women patients, or to confine rapist patients, and refuse to bring in truly women-only wards. The rare compensation we get is lower because we already have disabilities (so more make no difference), we are treated as a drain on society in comparison to those victims of crime who were waged workers, and we are assumed to feel less and need less, even though we are often more distressed than other adults.
Though the Home Office will replace “mental defective” with less abrasive terms, for which we are supposed to be grateful, nevertheless they are keeping us in a separate category whereby different considerations are brought to the rape and sexual assault of children, women and men with disabilities.
The main definition of consent in rape law will have a list of examples where consent will be assumed unlikely -- why can’t this include people with disabilities, and the individual circumstances be worked out in court? This is not a rhetorical question: we demand an answer.
crossroadswomenscentre@compuserve.com
Womens E-news
'Spain
Harassment Trial is Rare Victory for Women'
MADRID, Spain
-- A sexual harassment case so ugly and spectacular that it's being made into
a TV movie has given women in Spain a triumph in court and a rallying cry for
more victims to speak out. Spain has traditionally been lax on sexual
harassment and the maximum penalty was a fine. However, sexual harassment
became a jailable offense in a 1999 reform of the penal code. Still, women's
advocacy groups say the vast majority of women here shy away from denouncing
such conduct or recognizing it as harassment at all and that complaints in
the male-dominated world of politics are virtually unheard of.
So it was a particularly sweet victory for them in late May, although an incomplete one, when a mayor in northern Spain was convicted of sexually harassing one of his employees-a brilliant accountant half his age-for months after a brief relationship between them ended. A movie about the case is expected to air on Spanish television this fall. The win was only partial because this time, too, the man avoided prison. Instead, a three-judge panel voted 2-1 to fine him the equivalent of $6,500 and ordered him to pay $12,000 in damages.
The Independent, 18 July 2002
'Rape by soldiers is much more than 'simple
lust'
The authorities do not dispute that she was raped. They dispute the idea that
this can be a form of persecution
Natasha Walter
. . . I spent
some time this week with a woman from Uganda, whom we can call Jeanette. She
is a middle-aged, softly spoken woman who is struggling to make some kind of
life for herself in London, living on £30 a week in a room that she shares
with a stranger. She has claimed asylum here, but on Monday her final
application for judicial review was rejected by the Court of Appeal.
The main facts of Jeanette's case are not disputed. She came to Britain in December 2000. Before that, she had lived in Uganda with her son, and they ran a shop near to the Congolese border. One day, four soldiers came to her shop and asked her and her son if they had any dealings with the rebels.
"I said, I don't know anything about rebels," Jeanette told me. "They started searching the house. They went to my son's room and one soldier started beating him. I was in the shop. I started crying. Another soldier slapped me, and then one soldier came back from my son's room and said to me, 'You have been saying that you know nothing about rebels, so what is this?' and showed me a piece of paper that I didn't know anything about.
"Then two of them made me go to my room and started searching my room. They said, 'What is in this case?' and I was looking for the keys to the case when..." Jeanette stops talking for a while, and sobs choke in her throat.
"The soldiers raped me," she says eventually. "This is a great shame for me." The soldiers took her son away, and Jeanette ran for her life; she threw herself on the protection of a friend, who hid her, and then helped her to get to the UK before she could be found by the army again.
Even if you believe that there are too many asylum-seekers coming to Britain and that too many of them have unfounded claims, still, Jeanette's case seems to fit perfectly into the strict legal requirements for claiming asylum. She does seem to have a well-founded fear of persecution. Indeed, the persecution seems to have been particularly brutal, with a particularly harsh effect upon her. She has been diagnosed by a consultant psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and has tried to kill herself since arriving in the UK.
. . . Interestingly, they do not dispute the fact that she was raped in the circumstances that she describes. They simply dispute the idea that this can be seen as a form of persecution. One appeal judge, Lord Justice Latham, said on Monday that the soldiers' rape was a matter of "simple and dreadful lust". Because the laws on asylum are there to protect people who are confronting persecution, rather than lust, this conclusion means that Jeanette can be returned to those lust-crazed soldiers.
Ian Macdonald, the QC who argued Jeanette's case in the Court of Appeal, was quite scathing about the way that the law is currently being interpreted. "If you don't recognise that rape can be part of deliberate persecution, then there is an inbuilt bias against the persecution that women face," he points out to me. "After all, if a man was beaten unconscious during interrogation, it would be seen as part of the political persecution he suffered - but if a woman is raped, it is seen as a separate problem."
In the current political climate it is extremely hard to make a case for a more understanding attitude. "I don't think anyone should underestimate the pressure on the officials," says Ian Macdonald, "and if you can sideline certain persecutory acts by saying those acts are just gratuitous lust, you can exclude large numbers of persecuted women from seeking asylum".
*Jeannette, interviewed in this article, won her right to stay with WAR's help.
Private Eye, No 1055. 31 May - 13 June 2002
'The Rape Escape'
A recent government report on rape has confirmed what many women and women’s
groups have long argued: it is becoming more and more difficult to secure
convictions. Successful prosecutions have fallen from one in three down to
one in 13.
Even that depends on the victim being "lucky" enough to get into court in the first place. The study, by the inspectorates of both the police and the crown prosecution service (CPS), looked at 1,741 reported attacks and found that only 28 percent resulted in a caution or charge by police. Of 230 cases referred to the CPS, fewer than half went to court.
One case highlighted was that of Louisa (not her real name), a 33 year-old woman from east London who had to overcome many hurdles before her allegations of repeated rape and abuse against her adoptive father finally got to Snaresbrook crown court. She described how the man, who was married to her sister and had taken her into his family from the age of 12, had abused her as a servant and for sex in both their native Ghana and when he later brought her to Britain.
Louisa’s sister and nephew were both prepared to testify about his tyranny at home and how he had lied in statements to police about his relationship with Louisa. When she threatened to report him, he had even obtained a false death certificate from Ghana for his ‘real’ daughter, claiming Louisa was impersonating her.