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The case against anonymous prosecution witnesses, Guardian, 10 July
Call for new rape inquiry squads,
Lost promise for rape victims, Los Angeles Times, 30 June £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 Letters: The case against anonymous prosecution witnesses, The Guardian, 10 July 2008Having spent three decades defending rape survivors, we are aghast at the witness anonymity bill now before parliament. Rape survivors are anonymous in the media, not in the witness box. This bill proposes that the accused should not know who is accusing them, and therefore should not be able to challenge or appeal the evidence against them. The excuse is that some witnesses are afraid to come forward. But for every such case there are many where witnesses do come forward but they are not interviewed and/or their evidence is lost or dismissed or they are not called to give evidence in court. We have seen case after case destroyed by police and CPS bias and inefficiency. This is not only true of reported rape, with its shocking 6% conviction rate. Racist assaults, for example, have a 7% conviction rate. We are now helping a rape survivor facing a workplace disciplinary procedure based on anonymous accusations. She believes the man who raped her is behind them, but cannot defend herself since her accuser cannot be challenged. To extend such grotesque injustice to the criminal courts would destroy any hope of justice. Some of the rape victims we fight
for are asylum seekers who have fled dictatorships where the word of the
police is enough to get people locked up for any crime, guilty or
innocent. The same will be true in Britain if anonymity prevails. Call for new rape inquiry squads, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7496013.stm - read the whole story Every police force should set up a specialist squad to investigate rape allegations, a senior officer says. John Yates, who speaks on the issue for the Association of Chief Police Officers, argues such teams would help raise standards of victim care. They would also help improve conviction rates as rape inquiries are demanding and require specialist skills, he told a London conference on the issue. About 6% of reported rapes in England and Wales result in a conviction. … A spokeswoman for the campaigning group Women Against Rape said: "Over three decades we have seen the police and the government unleash an avalanche of new policies, procedures, specialists, experts, initiatives, conferences and press releases, while conviction rates have fallen or stuck at such an appalling level that women call us wondering what is the point of reporting rape." ...
Rape case was 'a complete mess', http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7496600.stm - read the whole story ... Susan's daughter was 15 when she reported a rape by a man in his 20s she had met the previous day. The case went to court, but collapsed after an officer lost key evidence. "It was a complete mess from start to finish. It was actually a specialist Sapphire unit which is meant to be a flagship for rape," Susan said.
"My daughter was 15, she looked about
12 at the time, but they did not seem to take it seriously." ...
Lost promise for rape victims,
Los Angeles Times,
30 June 2008,
By Sarah Tofte
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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
Claire Glasman
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.
Claire Glasman Lisa Longstaff
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.
Claire Glasman,
WinVisible (women with visible and invisible disabilities)
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 Just