Rape and the truth about false accusations.

The Enliven Project is a truth-telling campaign to bring sexual violence out of the closet and convert the most powerful bystanders to new allies.
Sexual violence is the biggest issue we aren’t talking about in America.  Incorporating lessons from the gay rights and AIDS movements and campaigns like Opportunity Nation, The Enliven Project will tell the truth about sexual violence in classrooms, break-rooms, and board-rooms, enlisting the most powerful bystanders to join the movement, promoting the most promising interventions, and increasing justice and acceptance for survivors everywhere.

The facts about sexual violence are startling.

An American man’s chance of prostate cancer is exactly the same as his chance of being sexually assaulted: 1 out of 6. Among American women, 1 of 8 will be diagnosed with breast cancer; 1 of 4 will be sexually assaulted. Yet in 2011, the Susan G. Komen Foundation spent $492 million on awareness and prevention, five times more than the four largest anti-sexual violence organizations combined.*
Victims of sexual violence are significantly more likely to suffer from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and abuse drugs and alcohol.  Many of them will attempt suicide.  And there is also evidence to suggest that sexual abuse in childhood can lead to lifelong health issues like cardiovascular disease and obesity.   Without a new approach, the U.S. will keep paying the steep price for sexual violence: $127 billion/year.

For every act of sexual violence that takes place, there is a perpetrator and a victim.  But there are also individual and organizational bystanders.  The parent who misses the warning signs that the family friend isn’t appropriate with children.  The teacher who ignores behavior that suggests something is wrong.  The principal who fails to offer training on child sexual abuse prevention and intervention.  The campus whose bureaucracy makes it all but impossible to report a sexual assault.  The employer that stays silent on a critical issue directly impacting the life and livelihood of 16-25% of its workforce.

Bystanders can pave the pathway to recovery from sexual violence, or they can reinforce shame, silence, and stigma.  From: The Enliven Project.

Note: I can't say that I agree with the orientation of this group as far as changing this situation is concerned but raising the issue is in itself important and I thought the graph was important.
RM

Read More

Women hold up half the sky and a whole lot more.

I don't normally try to write like this but there's an exception to every rule.

A short story in memory of a mother and all the women who raise us.

by Richard Mellor

Jane looked at her mother lying there motionless. She knew death would come to her soon but it would be a relief she thought. She looked calm, her soft grey hair laid against the pillow. Her eyes were closed and her skin, as always, tanned and wrinkled. She had to laugh as her mother’s description of her nose came to mind, “I’ve got a Roman nose” she would tell her children, “Roamin’ all over my face.”

Rose had had a hard time of it since her stroke three years ago. She couldn’t walk without assistance and being with Jane’s dad was even more stress as impatient as he was. She was a pretty fit 85 year-old prior to the stroke. She was a champion dart thrower and played on a ladies team. She also liked to dance, proud of her great legs, and walked everywhere; down to the town for some groceries or just for a coffee with her daughter. But the stroke put a stop to all that along with the trip she had planned to visit her son in America. Jane’s dad was jealous of his wife’s relationship with her children; it might undermine his role. “You think the sun shines out of his arse”, her husband would say to her about her relationship with her son, Dick.

Dick left the house the first chance he could, but his sister was younger; and anyway, it’s different for a girl. She was determined not to suffer the same fate as her mother, “I don’t know how you did it, mum” she said quietly, looking in to her mother’s eyes as if she might respond with a shrug and a rolling of the eyeballs like she sometimes did. “No, I wasn’t going to end up like that” she continued, this time half talking to herself, “I was determined not to make your mistakes; at a man’s beck and call and having to deal with his drinking and the moods and aggressive behavior that often accompanied it.” She was convinced that it was this stress that led to the stroke. She was not going to fall into the same trap. She didn’t blame her mother; after all, things were very different when she got married right after the Second World War. But she kept her distance even though she lived nearby.

Her dad used to say she was just bossy. She had raised three boys of her own so she certainly knew how to take charge, when to be soft and when to be firm. She would rather meet her mother downtown than up at her parents house. Her father was always critical of her like he was of his wife and her brother, and he tried to undermine her all the time in front of her husband. He was the boss, the one with the brains---the one in charge. Outside of the house he was a charmer, especially with the ladies, but in the home he was king and his rule was not to be challenged, that’s why he always undermined the children and his wife in the company of others.

Jane and her brother had talked about it. Why did mum tolerate it? Why didn’t she just leave? But they both learned that it was impossible. Her mother was from a different era. She had known no other man and also had a strong sense of loyalty---maybe she did love him in her own way, but she and her brother doubted it sometimes. She started to chuckle to herself as a completely different thought came in to her mind. Rose thought the young women today were too loose. “Remember what you told me about that nice Grenadier Guard, mum?” Jane said, squeezing her hand. Her mother had told her about being walked home from a dance at the Hammersmith Palais one night by a Grenadier Guard when she was 27: “Walked me ‘ome and shook my ‘and at the door, he did; men were gentlemen in those days.”

Her thoughts returned to the family life. Her mother did everything in the home. She cooked, clothed her children, she worked outside the home at times for extra income. She painted walls, laid carpets, repaired electrical fixtures and created and tended to a beautiful garden. But after almost 60 years of marriage she had been beaten down. Her defense when her husband went in to one of his aggressive tirades was to tell him he was right. “You’re right, Bill” she used to say angering him further.

Not long before she had the stroke, Jane’s mother told her how she felt about things. Normally she said very little or even defended her husband, as that was the right thing to do. She came from that generation that never shared with the outside world what went on in the family. After all, wasn’t the family supposed to be the font of love and pure values? And surely it was her fault he is like he is. If she had only been smarter, better looking. If only she’d kept her mouth shut in the beginning maybe things would have been different. Now she kept her mouth shut and that bothered him. “

"If he comes in and I can see he has had too much booze, I try not to speak.”, she told Jane one morning after he had returned home from the pub late the night before. “But that is wrong, it makes him madder, “you haven’t fucking spoken to me since I’ve been in.” he says. "I think if I don’t speak it’s peace but if I speak I have to be careful what I say ‘cause he’s spoiling for an argument so that’s how it is. Nobody would believe me so I don’t tell anyone.” She thought her mother had such strength to survive that all these years.

“I left school when I was fourteen. Left on the Friday and went to work in the factory on Monday in my school uniform.” she used to say. Her mum told her how she had her first period at work and how it scared her to death. She never expected to bleed down there. Jane’s grandmother was a pretty strict Catholic, the daughter of Irish immigrants, and she never discussed such things.

Jane’s brother had told her how he blamed their mother for years because when he was small she never stopped the beatings. To a young boy she was the other adult in the home and should have done something. But they both knew now that she couldn’t. Her mother seemed so fragile and small now. But when she and Dick were young, she seemed much larger. She was 5 feet ten inches tall compared to their father’s five seven. And she had big hands that had seen many years hard work. She had survived the blitz sleeping in the underground below London’s streets before being sent to a munitions factory attaching machine guns to spitfire wings. She had worked in factories and as a domestic. The eight years as an army wife had been among the best, living in Burma where her brother was born and Nigeria where she was born, they even had home help there.

But after the war Jane’s father managed a pub, not the best thing for an alcoholic, and it was a life of misery for her mum. When her dad went blind it was her mother, in her seventies and eighties that took care of him. She never really retired, Jane thought.

For years they excused her father’s behavior because he had spent almost four years as a prisoner of war in Japan, almost the entire length of World war 11.  He lost his mother at an early age and his father was, as he often said, “A rotten bastard.” “But you deserved better, mum, there’s no excuse for the way he treated you, no excuse.” she whispered, leaning over to kiss her mother’s forehead.

As she watched her mother, unaware that she was silently slipping away, she thought of how common it is that those who have done so much fail to be recognized, even by those that benefited from their actions. Jane had had three exhausting years dealing with the authorities after her mother had the stroke and both parents were put in the home. It was a relief for her that it was over, but she was happy that she had the opportunity to care for her as her mother had cared for her.

Jane and her brother had made up for lost time, had told their mother how important she was in their lives. She completely understood when her brother told her about the toilet incident and how it made him feel. At the insistence of her father, Rose was kept in the house right after the stroke rather than being put in a home where she could have received better care. But being legally blind, her father would have to go with her and he resisted that. While Dick was over on one of his visits, his mother needed to get up and go to the bathroom. She was sleeping in a bed downstairs so she could go to the outside toilet if she needed to go. It was not a good set up but what her father wanted.

Dick helped her up but she didn’t make it in time and spoiled herself. She was so embarrassed. On top of all this she had to listen her husbands tutting and muttering under his breath at yet another failure, “You don’t try hard enough, Rose, you have to fight harder.”, he said, lifting himself out of his armchair to assist her.

“Leave her alone and sit down.” Dick said angrily. His father could see he meant it and retreated. Dick walked his mother out to the toilet and pulled down her clothes in order to clean her up. He could see she was so embarrassed and he wanted to cheer her up as best he could.

“Damn mum, you’ve got no hair left down here. Where’d it all go?”

“I’m bloody bald” she replied, “I’m losing it all.”

As he began wiping her, Dick remembered an old rule his mother told him when he used to babysit for pocket money as a teenager or watch his younger sister.

“I’m doing it right aren’t I mum”? “With girls wipe away from the kickle away from the kickle”

The Kickle was the name Rose gave to the genitals. Dick and Jane always wondered where it came from and Dick later assumed it was from the Yiddish pastry of the same name as Rose worked for a while for a Jewish firm in the rag trade before the war though why she would choose that name was beyond him. Rose chuckled out loud.

“It’s terrible, you having to wipe my arse; it’s so embarrassing” “You know mum” Dick replied, “I am so lucky to have the opportunity to do this for you. How many years did you clean me up? How many times did you clean me up, mum? “It’s an honor to wipe your bum, an honor and a privilege” he assured her, seeing how embarrassed she was.


The last three years had been difficult for Jane, especially as her brother lived six thousand miles away; but she too felt a certain honor that she took care of her mother during that time, a certain privilege in it and understood why her brother felt the way he did.

“Thanks for taking care of us, mum”, she said, kissing her hand. “Thanks for getting us off to school, for dealing with prejudiced teachers and schoolyard bullies. Thanks for showing us how important it was to be strong but compassionate and forgiving.”

Jane felt her mother would finally have some peace now. Despite feeling the way she did about her dad, she didn’t hate him. Her brother had always accused her of being too easy on her dad and a bit too hard on her mum. “Maybe I was a bit hard on you mum, perhaps it’s because I’m a woman too,” she said.

After her mother died, Jane realized that her mother’s silence and way of dealing with her husband’s abuse, was in no way a weakness. She came to understand it was a strength that enabled her to survive in a hostile environment; to raise two children as best she could no matter what the odds. She understood that her mother was also up against much more powerful forces, social forces that placed men and women in certain roles and that gave one certain powers over the other. After all, why is there a Superman but only a Supergirl?  It's pretty obvious inner strength and courage has nothing to do with how much weight you can lift; her mother and millions like her were proof of it.

But she understood that her father was not entirely to blame either and that although we are individuals we are not independent of the society in which we live and are to a great extent created by it. In that sense, we are all victims.

Read More

Mass Protests Against Sexual Violence Spread Beyond India

 by Jack Gerson

Protests against sexual violence against women are spreading throughout the Indian subcontinent and may well be developing into an ongoing and sustained mass movement. Below, we reprint a story from the Guardian newspaper (UK) reporting that there are now mass demonstrations in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as many parts of India. The media in these countries have finally been forced to take up the issue of rape and overall horrific brutalization of women that they've been so silent on -- indeed, accepted and even encouraged -- for so long.

As the Guardian story makes clear, many protesters are holding the region's governments accountable for the atrocities. But as Arundhati Roy said in a Channel 4 (UK) interview that we republished here four days ago, the problem here is one of class as well as gender: the state security forces,  police and especially the Indian army, have long used rape as a weapon against poor, working class, and dissident women. We hope and anticipate that the mass protests will be taking up this theme more and more in this new year.

Here's a link to the Arundhati Roy video:
http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2013/01/arundhati-roy-on-rape-in-india.html

And here's a link to the Guardian story, followed by a full reprint of that story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/04/rape-protests-spread-beyond-india/print

Rape protests spread beyond India

Demonstrators in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh join protest movement against sexual violence

Protests against sexual violence are spreading across south Asia as anger following the gang rape and death of a 23-year-old medical student in Delhi courses through the region.  Inspired by the rallies and marches staged across India for nearly three weeks, demonstrations have also been held in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh – all countries where activists say women suffer high levels of sexual and domestic violence.

In Nepal, the case of a 21-year-old woman who says she was raped and threatened with death by a police officer and robbed by immigration officials, prompted hundreds of demonstrators to converge on the prime minister's residence in Kathmandu. They called for legal reforms and an overhaul of attitudes to women.

"We had seen the power of the mass campaign in Delhi's rape case. It is a pure people's movement," said Anita Thapa, one of the demonstrators.

Bandana Rana, a veteran Nepalese activist, described the ongoing protests in Delhi as "eye-opening". "A few years back, women even talking about sexual violence or even domestic violence was a very rare," she said.

Sultana Kamal, of the Bangladeshi human rights group Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), said the protests in Delhi had given fresh impetus to protests against sexual violence. One incident that has provoked anger in Bangladesh was the alleged gang rape of a teenager by four men over four days in early December in Tangail, 40 miles north-west of Dhaka. The men were said to have made videos of the attack before leaving their victim near a rail track where she was eventually found by her brother.

On Friday a teenager who was said to have been repeatedly raped in a hotel died in hospital in Dhaka of injuries sustained when she subsequently tried to take her own life.

But despite the widespread anger, the social stigma attached to rape victims remains a major problem throughout the region. Although Bangladesh police arrested suspects in both the cases and investigations are under way, activists fear that corruption as well as deep-seated misogyny among investigating officers and the judiciary make convictions unlikely.

According to ASK's statistics, at least 1,008 women were raped in 2012 in Bangladesh, of whom 98 were later killed.

Khushi Kabir, one of the organisers of a "human chain" in Dhaka to protest against violence to women, said its aim was "to show that people are not going to just let this [movement] die down".
Kabir said although previous demonstrations on similar issues were largely dominated by women, men were now protesting too. The protests had also drawn people from a broad range of society. "We had lawyers, schoolchildren, teachers, theatre activists and personalities, industrialists," she said.

One week after the Delhi rape victim died in a Singapore hospital, the widespread grief and outrage have moderated, but a fierce debate still rages over the country's sexual violence and attitudes to women. One politician from the opposition BJP party was forced to apologise after stating the women who did not stay "within moral limits … paid the price". A senior official in a hardline Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation provoked controversy when he claimed that westernisation was responsible for rapes in cities.

The Delhi rape case is being heard in a special fast-track court inaugurated last week to deal with such offences in the capital. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Saturday. Protests however continue, albeit at a lower intensity than in previous weeks.

The Indian media continue to give prominence to news items that would barely have received attention a month ago. On Friday it was reported that a 19-year-old woman had died in a hospital in the north-western city of Jaipur after she set herself on fire allegedly following aggressive harassment from a neighbour. She said the man had threatened to kill her brother and father if she did not marry him.

In another incident reported on Friday a woman was said to have jumped from a moving train to escape an assault. Sexual harassment on public transport is endemic in India where men target single young women. Such abuse is described euphemistically as "eve-teasing" with perpetrators dubbed "railway Romeos". One persistent problem, women say, is men filming their faces or bodies on mobile phones in buses or trains.

Indian activists have repeatedly argued that media descriptions of such activities as "eve-teasing" contribute to the widespread acceptance of sexual harassment in public places. A recent survey by the Hindustan Times newspaper found that nearly 80% of women aged between 18 and 25 in Delhi had been harassed last year and more than 90% of men of the same age had "friends who had made passes at women in public places". Nearly two-thirds of the latter thought the problem was exaggerated. It was also reported on Friday that though Delhi police had received 64 calls alleging a rape and 501 calls about harassment since 16 December, only four formal inquiries had been launched.

Senior officials across the south Asian region have defended their government's records on tackling sexual violence against women. In Delhi, Sushilkumar Shinde, the Indian home secretary, said on Friday that crimes against women and marginalised sections of society were increasing, and it was the government's responsibility to stop them. "This needs to be curbed by an iron hand," he told a conference of state officials from across India convened to discuss how to protect women. He called for changes in the law and the way police investigate cases so justice could be swiftly delivered. Many rape cases are bogged down in India's overburdened and sluggish court system for years. "We need a reappraisal of the entire system," he said.

Dr Shirin Sharmin Chowdhury, the Bangladeshi minister for women and children's affairs, said her government was "taking this issue very seriously".  "Just yesterday [Thursday] a sex offender … was given a very high punishment under the law," she said, "but sometimes the delay and the whole process of the trial takes a bit of time to ensure justice."

Protests are expected on Saturday in Bangladesh following the news of a new incident: the rape and killing of a student in the south-east of the country. The 14-year-old is reported to have left home to bring in her family's cows in Rangamati district one evening earlier this week. Her uncle later found her body in a forest. An autopsy report later confirmed that she had been raped and then strangled.

Read More

Arundhati Roy on Rape in India

Read More

Indian protesters defy law as Manmohan Singh calls for "calm"

Manmohan Singh, India's Prime Minister is calling for calm as protesters defy bans and battle with police for a second day in response to the rape of a young woman by a number of men on a bus, including the driver. She is alive but on life support.So far six have been arrested including the driver.

The daily harassment and sexual violence against women is an epidemic in India often suppressed  until breaking out in New Delhi with these protests against such brutality.  The injuries to this woman are horrific.  The demonstrators are calling for more protection of women on the streets and tougher laws.  Most rapes are never reported due to the shame the victim feels, the culture around rape in Indian society and the failure of the authorities to deal with it properly.   There are 900 rape cases in in Delhi alone that are "waiting to be heard" the Wall Street Journal reports.

Calls for "calm" from government spokespersons whether from the mouths of Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Putin or others are standard faire when the anger that people feel due to the violence and injustices of capitalist society turns in to mass action against the state. One politician in India not unlike his western counterparts claimed that 90% of rape allegations "involved consensual sex". We hear that all the time.  It's no wonder Marx was so reviled for attacking the so-called "sanctity" of marriage.  "To the moralist, prostitution does not consist so much of the fact that the woman sells her body but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.", wrote Emma Goldman.

Now the government attacks the protestors and wants to "enable dialogue." It wants "dialogue" on its own terms which means maintaining the status quo if they can.  The violence in India against the poor takes place daily amid incredible wealth.

These developments terrify the ruling classes of global capitalism.  The power of the masses terrifies them, they have to contain it at all times, stifle it, violently attack it in the name of calm and dialogue. 

Read More

Epidemic of rape and harassment of women in India

Police beat and attacked protesters that erupted after the raping of a woman who was thrown from a moving bus after her ordeal. She is in hospital in critical condition. Here is an interview with one activist.

Read More

Judge gives lighter sentence to rapist: victim didn't fight back hard enough.

Well here's one for you.  A California judge has felt the need to make an issue of the lack of fight a woman showed during a sexual assault.  The woman's boyfriend threatened to mutilate her face and genitals with a hot screwdriver, beat her with a piece of metal and made other violent threats before raping her and forcing oral copulation.  The woman must have been terrified.

The judge, who was a former prosecutor in a sex crimes unit  pointed out that in that unit he'd seen cases where a woman's vagina had been "shredded" by a rape and didn't see evidence of it in this case. 

 The woman reported the threats but apparently didn't report the rape until almost three weeks later. "I'm not a gynecologist, but I can tell you something: If someone doesn't want to have sexual intercourse, the body shuts down." the judge is reported as saying, "The body will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage is inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case,"

In the state of California, rape victims don't have to prove they resisted or were prevented from resisting because of threats.  The reasons for that should be obvious to anyone yet this judge decided that to be a true victim of a sexual assault one has to resist.  This personal view of his had important consequences in the case as he denied the prosecutor's request for a 16 year sentence and the guy got 6 years as that was what the case was "worth".  The judge received a public admonishment from the California Commission on Judicial Performance and apologized saying he was frustrated because of the argument with the prosecutor over the appropriate sentence.

According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), as of 2005, 60 percent of rape crimes went unreported, most rape survivors do not report the crime.  According to RAINN this number has fallen: in 1992, 84 percent of rapes went unreported.

One possible reason rapes go unreported according to RAINN is that even when survivors do file reports, nothing happens. RAINN claims that only 6 percent of all rapists, whether or not their crimes are reported, will ever serve a day in jail.

I was also reading today about rapes of women that are incarcerated and the piece gave some instances of an Alabama prison that has quite a reputation for this offense.  Rape is considered by most sources to be the most unreported violent crime in the US.

It might explain why this particular victim took her time to report the actual rape and the judge proved her fears justified.

Read More