The Israeli military has systematically committed sexual, reproductive, and other gender-based violence in its siege of Gaza, including attacks so horrific that they amount to “genocidal acts” against Palestinians, a new UN report has found. The report by an independent UN human rights commission released Thursday finds that Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza’s sexual and reproductive…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
PNG Post-Courier
Prime Minister James Marape has issued a strong appeal to all young men and boys in Papua New Guinea — stop abusing girls, mothers, and sisters.
He made the plea yesterday before flying to Australia, emphasising the importance of respecting women and children in society.
Marape urged young men to take their issues to him instead of resorting to violence against women and children.
Marape also called for the nation to rise in consciousness to preserve the values and achievements of their fathers and mothers who fought for independence 50 years ago.
“We want to give a special recognition to the fathers and mothers of our country, a generation and people of our country to be proud to be here today,” he said.
He expressed his pain at seeing the continued cycle of abuse and disrespect towards women and children in the country.
Marape’s message was clear: violence and abuse towards women and children would not be tolerated, and the nation must come together to ensure the safety and well-being of all its citizens.
‘Don’t do it to our sisters’
“These are not two things that we want to take on. For every young boy out there, if you have an issue in society, I don’t mind you taking it upon me. But please don’t do it to the girls in the neighbourhood,” he said.
“Don’t do it to our sisters in the neighbourhood. Don’t do it to our mothers and aunties in the neighbourhood.
“In a time when our nation is facing a 50th anniversary, I call for our nation to rise in a consciousness to preserve what our fathers and mothers did 50 years ago.
“Lawlessness, disrespect for each other, especially women and children amongst us. This is something that I speak at great lengths and speak from the depth of my heart.
“It pains me to see girls, women, and children continue to face a vicious cycle of abuse and total abhorrence, abuse of children, rape,” he said.
“I just thought these are important activities coming up. I want to conclude by asking our country through the media.
“We are in another state of our 50th anniversary year.
‘Let us take responsibility’
“We have many challenges in our country. But all of us, we take responsibility of our country. As government, we are trying our absolute best.
“Citizens, public servants, private sector, all of us have responsibility to our country. Unless you have another country to go and live in, if property is your country in the first instance, I call out to all citizens, take responsibility in your corner of property.
“Privacy alone cannot be able to do everything that you expect it to do.
“I’m not omnipotent. I’m not omniscient. I’m not omnipresent.
“I’m but only one person coordinating at the top level. Call for every citizen of our country.
“As we face our 49th year and as we welcome our 50th of September 16,) we call this on every one of us.”
Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
“When you’re in prison, the retaliation starts. … I don’t think my judge sentenced me to go through this.” The U.S. government has agreed to pay a record-breaking amount of nearly $116 million to settle lawsuits brought by 103 people who survived sexual abuse and assault at a federal women’s prison in California. The facility, FCI Dublin, was shuttered earlier this year. Its former warden is now…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Content warning: This article discusses the details of sexual assault.
The interview (This Week, 3/10/24) that cost ABC $15 million.
ABC has agreed to pay $15 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential library and $1 million toward Trump’s legal fees “to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll” (AP, 12/14/24).
Fox News (12/15/24) gloated that “Stephanopoulos and ABC News also had to issue statements of ‘regret’ as an editor’s note” on the online version of the offending piece (This Week, 3/10/24). The note reads:
ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.
This settlement is a dangerous omen for press freedom, given Trump’s threats to use his power to go after his media critics (NPR, 10/23/24; CNN, 11/7/24; PEN America, 11/15/24; New York Times, 12/15/24; Deadline, 12/16/24).
Washington Post (7/19/23): Judge Lewis Kaplan “says that what the jury found Trump did was in fact rape, as commonly understood.”
Trump has been found liable for defaming and sexually abusing Carroll in two cases, both of which he is appealing (Politico, 9/6/24). “Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury,” Stephanopoulos said (ABC, 3/10/24). “Donald Trump has been found liable for defaming the victim of that rape by a jury. It’s been affirmed by a judge.”
However, there is a legal difference between “sexual abuse” and “rape” under New York law. The jury found that Trump had violated Carroll with his fingers, not with his penis, and thus the incident was legally classified as sexual abuse, not rape (USA Today, 1/29/24).
However, as the Washington Post (7/19/23) reported:
The filing from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan came as Trump’s attorneys have sought a new trial and have argued that the jury’s $5 million verdict against Trump in the civil suit was excessive. The reason, they argue, is that sexual abuse could be as limited as the “groping” of a victim’s breasts.
Kaplan roundly rejected Trump’s motion Tuesday, calling that argument “entirely unpersuasive.”
The Post continued:
“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’” Kaplan wrote.
He added: “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”
Kaplan said New York’s legal definition of “rape” is “far narrower” than the word is understood in “common modern parlance.”
In other words, Stephanopoulos’ initial description was not legally accurate, but was instead relying on the popular understanding of the word, according to the judge overseeing the case.
Human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid (Newsweek, 12/15/24): “This is the cowardice of legacy media out to make profit, rather than uphold principle.”
For most journalists, such an offense isn’t nothing: Journalists should always be as accurate as possible, and when they do slip up, they should issue corrections. He should have used the most accurate terminology the court used.
But should this mistake cost the network $16 million, most of which will be used to prop up the legacy of the person who made the complaint, a former president on his way back to power?
Newsweek (12/15/24) noted that it was legally perplexing for ABC to settle so early: “Legal experts also criticized the broadcaster for settling the lawsuit before depositions were due to take place,” it explained. The piece quoted former prosecutor Joyce Vance:
I’m old enough to remember—and to have worked on—cases where newspapers vigorously defended themselves against defamation cases instead of folding before the defendant was even deposed.
Because this case never went to trial, we will never know if there was any evidence of actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth in this misreporting, as would be required to secure a defamation reward under New York Times v. Sullivan (Knight First Amendment Institute, 3/18/24). And while correcting the record seems reasonable for ABC, forking over millions in cash that could be otherwise used to employ teams of working journalists seems excessive.
Newsweek (12/15/24) also covered some of the backlash to the deal:
Democratic attorney Marc Elias wrote: “Knee bent. Ring kissed. Another legacy news outlet chooses obedience.”
Reporter Oliver Willis also chimed in, writing on Threads: “This is actually how democracy dies.”
Tech reporter Matt Novak said: “Not good for the rest of us when you do this shit, ABC.”
“But that’s probably half the point from management’s perspective,” he added Saturday.
“The First Amendment was drafted to protect the press from just such litigation,” attorney Floyd Abrams told CNN (11/1/24). “Mr. Trump may disagree with this or that coverage of him, but the First Amendment permits the press to decide how to cover elections, not the candidates seeking public office.”
The fact that the network is coughing up money as a result of Trump’s case sends a warning to other media that no media will be safe under a Trump regime. Trump has also sued CBS, “demanding $10 billion in damages over the network’s 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.” His suit alleges that the Harris interview and “the associated programming were ‘partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference’ intended to ‘mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales’ of the presidential election in her favor” (CNN, 11/1/24).
If continuing the CBS lawsuit sounds petty in light of the fact that Trump won the election, that’s because it is petty. But protracted litigation could inflict real damage on the network. Fox News (12/13/24) bragged that the “CBS suit could potentially impact an enormous media merger.” As we know, Trump hates journalists, and is vowing to go after them when he gets back into power (FAIR.org, 11/14/24).
To be fair, this strategy, which is meant to create a chilling effect on speech, can backfire on Trump, as when he was ordered to “pay nearly $400,000 in legal fees to the New York Times and three investigative reporters after he sued them unsuccessfully over a Pulitzer Prize–winning 2018 story about his family’s wealth and tax practices” (AP, 1/2/24). That’s all the more reason why ABC should be fighting this dubious claim by Trump.
The New York Post editorial board (12/15/24) saw this as a big win for Trump, noting that Stephanopoulos had used the R-word several times in the segment:
The law gives even public figures some rights against such smears; if the case had proceeded, Trump’s legal team would’ve been able to access ABC News’ internal communications in order to prove the network’s reckless attitude toward the truth.
Trump was actually quite magnanimous in not making ABC pay him the settlement, even if the deal makes the company by far the largest donor to the Trump library.
Conservative legal commentator Jonathan Turley (Fox News, 12/16/24) speculated that ABC’s owner, Disney, likely wanted to start off on a better foot with a new Trump administration. “Disney is trying to adopt a more neutral stance after years of opposition to its stances on political issues and accusations of ultra-woke products,” he said. With “networks like MSNBC and CNN in a ratings and revenue free fall after the election, Disney clearly wants to start fresh with the new administration.”
In reality, ABC’s capitulation may have less to do with ratings and more to do with the GOP takeover of all three branches of federal power. Trump’s avowed plan to reward his friends and punish his enemies could force so-called “liberal” media into being more cheerleaders than a check on political power.
Even before the election, FAIR (10/25/24, 10/30/24) noted how the owners of the LA Times and Washington Post stepped in to keep their editorial boards neutral in the presidential race. In the case of the LA Times, owner Patrick Dr. Soon-Shiong has reportedly continued after the election to soften the paper’s editorial voice, a move that has “concerned many staff members who fear he is trying to be deferential to the incoming Trump administration” (New York Times, 12/12/24).
Now that Trump and his legal army see that at least one network will simply pay to have a legal complaint go away, they may feel emboldened to go after others. That could put a damper on critical coverage of the federal government when Americans need it the most.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
By Mosese Raqio in Suva
Two out of three women in every church in Fiji experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime — and there are “uncomfortable truths” that need to be heard and talked about, says a Pacific church leader.
This was highlighted by Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) general secretary Reverend James Bhagwan while delivering his sermon during the “Break the Silence” Sunday at Suva’s Butt Street Wesley Church.
Reverend Bhagwan said in this sacred and safe space, “we have to hear about the brokenness of our world and our people which includes both the victims and the perpetrators”.
He said that if parishioners had a hard time talking about sexual violence perpetrated against mere human beings, then understandably it might be hard thinking about the sexualised connotations of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Reverend Bhagwan said if people could break the silence about what was happening in their communities, and if they could break the silence about what had happened to Jesus, then they could start to talk about these issues in their faith communitie
Reverend Bhagwan said he hoped that people not only talked about Jesus Christ in their prayer breakfast but also “talk about these issues”.
He talked about how men and women were crucified back in Jesus Christ’s time.
Humiliation of execution
He added that they were made to carry their cross to their place of execution as a further humiliation, and then they were hung naked on the cross in public.
Reverend Bhagwan said that enforced public nakedness was a sexual assault and it still was today.
He said the humiliation of Jesus Christ was on clear display and he was able to walk without shame among people, even though he knew they had seen his naked shame.
Reverend Bhagwan said it is in God’s promise that people were urged to break the silence, remove the gags of shame that were placed on victims of violence, and instead “echo their call for justice”.
He added that hope and healing could only be offered if people were willing to hear and bear the burden of wounds of trauma and abuse.
Today marks the beginning of what is known as 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, an international campaign used by activists around the world as an organising strategy to call for the elimination of all forms of gender-based violence.
‘Break the Silence’
While Christian communities have supported the “16 Days of Activism” in various ways, it was not until 2013 that churches began to observe Break the Silence Sunday in Fiji and around the Pacific.
This was an initiative of the Christian Network Talanoa.
It is a Fiji-based ecumenical network of organised women and Christian women’s units seeking to remove the culture of silence and shame around violence against women, especially in faith-based settings.
In 2016, the Fiji Council of Churches committed to observing Break the Silence Sunday.
The Pacific Conference of Churches is rolling out this campaign to all its 35 member churches and 11 National Councils of churches.
Republished from Fiji Village with permission.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Content warning: The story discusses childhood sexual abuse.
In Polk County, Florida, where its sheriff has said his department will “go to the ends of the earth” to arrest child predators, one child victim was left wondering how she ended up on the other side of the law.
Taylor Cadle was 12 years old when she disclosed to a trusted adult that her adoptive father had been sexually abusing her since she was 9. Law enforcement was quick to respond, and almost just as quick to suspect that Taylor had made up the allegations. The lead detective, Melissa Turnage, began to question Taylor aggressively, even threatening her with returning to foster care if she continued with her allegations.
“I told her time and time and time and time again that I am not the liar here,” Taylor said of the detective.
Despite Taylor’s pleas, Turnage eventually sought criminal charges against her for lying to police.
For the Emmy Award-winning Center for Investigative Reporting and Netflix documentary Victim/Suspect, I found hundreds of others who, like Taylor, began as alleged victims reporting sexual assaults to police and ended up criminal suspects. My reporting uncovered shocking police missteps in several of those investigations. All of those alleged victims remain adamant that their reports were truthful.
In a surprising development in her case, Taylor vindicated herself. With our partner PBS NewsHour, I went to Polk County to meet Taylor—and hear how she finally put her abuser in prison.
A Florida Teen’s Remarkable Fight to Put Her Rapist Behind Bars is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
Corporate news media have consistently blundered through their coverage of the violence on October 7, with documented war crimes outshined by—and sometimes disbelieved because of—horrific claims that later proved false. There were not 40 beheaded babies, or babies hung from clotheslines or baked in ovens, and no pregnant woman was discovered with her belly cut open and her fetus stabbed.
Most of these atrocity stories disappeared after being debunked. But one especially painful and inflammatory claim continues to circulate: that Hamas militants carried out “systematic and widespread” rape on October 7 (New York Times, 2/21/24). This claim has become so embedded in the Israel/Palestine discourse that officials like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris continue to offer it as a reason to support Israel’s ongoing murderous assault on Gaza. And that has happened in no small part due to prominent and repeated coverage from corporate media—most notably the New York Times.
Cited and reprinted around the world (e.g., Times of Israel, 12/29/23), the New York Times‘ “Screams Without Words” report (12/28/23) established systematic sexual violence by Hamas as a core part of the October 7 narrative.
The paper’s claim—made most influentially in its December 28 above-the-fold investigation “Screams Without Words”—is that “Hamas weaponized sexual violence on October 7,” that militants tactically carried out “rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women in the attacks on Israel.”
Other newspapers cited and republished the Times’ claims, and both the US and Israeli governments have used the Times coverage to further their military and propaganda campaigns. Shortly after the publication of “Screams,” a resolution “condemning rape and sexual violence committed by Hamas in its war against Israel” was passed by the House 418–0, its sponsors citing the Times reporting and its “horrific stories” to buttress the resolution. So too did Israel heavily cite the Times when producing a “special report” on October 7 sexual crimes.
From the beginning, there were serious problems with the claims of mass rape by Hamas. Yet a new FAIR study finds that, both before and after the publication of “Screams,” the paper devoted significant coverage to promoting that narrative.
At the same time, reports of escalating Israeli-perpetrated sexual violence against Palestinians—of which there is a long, well-documented history—have found little purchase in the paper of record. When such assaults are mentioned, the study found, the paper almost always buries the news beneath sanitized headlines, using understated, clinical language—strikingly different from the definitive and evocative language they use for allegations of Palestinian violence.
According to the World Health Organization:
Sexual violence is any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, or other act directed against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting.
The New York Times, however, often uses a more circumscribed definition of sexual violence, restricting it to a limited range of acts, as in this passage (12/4/23): “Israeli officials have accused the terrorists of also committing widespread sexual violence—rape and sexual mutilation—particularly against women.” Indeed, rape and sexual mutilation constitute sexual violence in conflict, but so do many other acts (public degradation, verbal abuse and threats, nonconsensual touching and many others).
As it stands, the most comprehensive evidence regarding sexual violence on October 7 was presented by the United Nations (5/17/24) in its examination of crimes committed by all parties between October 7 and December 31, 2023. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory reported that the available evidence displays “indications of sexual violence” committed by Palestinians on October 7 that “were not isolated incidents,” including “bodies that had been undressed” and “the restraining of women…prior to their abduction or killing.”
It noted that it “has not been able to independently verify” allegations of rape made by journalists and the Israeli police, and that it had enough evidence to deem some of these allegations false. Notably, “the Commission did not find credible evidence…that [Hamas] militants received orders to commit sexual violence.”
Israel’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem (8/24), documented “repeated use of sexual violence, in varying degrees of severity, by soldiers or prison guards against Palestinian detainees as an additional punitive measure.”
That same report—which was limited in scope to the end of 2023—noted witness and victim testimony, as well as ante mortem video footage and photographs, that documented “many incidents in which ISF [Israel Security Forces] systematically targeted and subjected Palestinians to [sexual violence] online and in person since October 7.”
In August 2024, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem published a report—entitled “Welcome to Hell”—about the treatment of Palestinian detainees in Israel’s detention camps. Based on interviews with 55 prisoners, as well as relatives of incarcerated individuals, the report deemed Israeli abuses of all kinds, including sexual violence, to be “so systemic that there is no room to doubt an organized, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities.”
In other words, there is credible evidence of various forms of sexual violence committed by both Palestinians and Israelis. At the same time, there is not evidence of the lurid “systematic and widespread” Hamas rape claims made and spread by the New York Times—while there is evidence that the sexual violence Israel is committing is systematic and widespread, a contrast Times readers would almost certainly be quite surprised to learn, given the paper’s coverage.
In our study, FAIR used the Nexis news database and NYTimes.com in an attempt to identify every New York Times news article, opinion piece and newsletter discussing conflict-related sexual violence in Israel/Palestine digitally published during the 11-month period of October 7, 2023, through September 6, 2024. (See footnote for search terms.) Transcripts, letters to the editor, corrections, podcasts and videos were excluded from the sample.
During the studied interval, we found 195 pieces (149 news articles and 46 opinion pieces) that mentioned allegations of sexual violence in the region. Of those, 158 (or 81%) reference sexual violence against Israeli women and girls by Hamas and other Palestinians. Forty-eight pieces mentioned sexual violence by Israels against Palestinians. (Both these numbers include 11 pieces that discussed sexual violence suffered and perpetrated by both Israelis and Palestinians.)
When talking about Palestinian violence, opinion pieces—which constituted over a quarter of the references—regularly made unqualified assertions like “Israel was brutally attacked by Hamas in a rampage of murder, torture and rape” (2/3/24). The Times published an op-ed (11/3/23) by Israeli President Isaac Herzog that asserted that Hamas “tortured children, raped women and destroyed peace-loving communities.”
News articles turned allegations into facts in the Times’ own journalistic voice, well before any investigations had been completed. The paper (12/5/23) reported, for instance, that Biden “condemned the ‘unimaginable cruelty’ of Hamas attackers who raped and mutilated women in Israel on October 7.”
Even when looking at the maltreatment of Palestinian prisoners, the New York Times (1/23/24) could not bring itself to refer to the mass stripping of prisoners as “sexual violence.”
In contrast, the 48 Times pieces referencing Israeli-led sexual violence always prevaricated. The vast majority (88%) were news articles, as the paper published only six op-eds referencing such violence. No article, whether news or opinion, labeled it as sexual violence in their own words.
Twenty-eight of them (e.g., 1/23/24) mentioned that Palestinians are stripped regularly in public with “hands bound behind their backs [and] blindfolded.” Some of these included photographic evidence. Forcible stripping is recognized by international law as sexual violence; nevertheless, none of the 28 called it, as Ira Memaj at The Nation (5/13/24) did, “clear-cut evidence of sexual violence.” Only four of them (12/28/23, 4/17/24, 6/12/24, 6/13/24) characterized the abuse as even potential sexual violence, and even then only in the words of UN reports.
Twelve of the 48 articles described invasive sex acts—one (6/6/24) noted a Palestinian detainee who “‘died after they put the electric stick up’ his anus,” and another (5/1/24) reported that an Israeli soldier ordered a Palestinian peace activist “to perform oral sex” on him.
A third of the New York Times‘ descriptions of invasive sexual violence by Israelis against Palestinians involved a 1949 attack that was the basis for a 2023 novel (New York Times, 10/18/23).
Four of the 12 articles that described invasive Israeli acts referenced the Frankfurt Book Fair canceling Adania Shibli’s award ceremony for her novel Minor Detail, which details the historical rape and murder of a Palestinian Bedouin girl by Israeli soldiers. Each of these four articles acknowledged that she “was gang-raped and murdered by an Israeli Army unit in 1949” (10/18/23). Strikingly, the only articles that were able to state, both in plain English and not as mere allegation, that acts by Israelis amount to sexual violence or rape concern a 75-year-old case written about in a novel.
We also made a count of which articles about sexual abuse specifically used the words “rape” or “sexual violence.” We chose those words in particular because they bear legal weight—in international law, “rape” and “sexual violence” are specifically outlined and prohibited as crimes against humanity. When the Times includes one or both of these terms (or doesn’t), it indicates how the paper views a given set of actions, and how it wants its readers to interpret them.
Out of 195 total stories about sexual violence in the region, 115 used the word “rape” and 76 of them use “sexual violence.” Of the articles mentioning “rape,” 105 (91%) marked Palestinians as the rapists and 11 (10%) of them named Israelis. However, four of the 11 articles about Israeli perpetrators of rape refer to Shibli’s novel. Out of the 76 articles using the word “sexual violence,” 73 (96%) of them reference Palestinians as the perpetrators and nine (12%) of them name Israelis.
The family of Gal Abdush, featured on the front page of the New York Times to illustrate its “Screams Without Words” report (12/31/23), argues persuasively that their relative could not have been raped, as the Times alleges, given the timeline of events on October 7.
New York Times articles describing “the sexual violence Hamas militants committed on October 7” (1/19/24) trickled out almost immediately after that day (e.g, 10/10/23), quickly becoming a steady stream. From October 7 through December 27, the day before “Screams” was published online, the Times put out 71 articles mentioning sexual violence, 59 of them pointing to Palestinian perpetrators. (Four of the 12 referencing Israeli perpetrators were about the historical novel.) Many of these presented the claims of “mass rape” as accusations from Israeli officials or others, but some portrayed them as fact—as with a report (12/4/23) that, despite Hamas denials, “ample evidence has been collected” that “its fighters committed sex crimes.”
On December 28 (appearing in print on December 31), the Times published its bombshell, “gut-wrenching” investigation, evocatively titled “Screams Without Words.” The article asserted in its headline that “Hamas weaponized sexual violence,” and began like a screenplay for a Netflix drama:
At first, she was known simply as “the woman in the black dress.” In a grainy video, you can see her, lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed. Her face is burned beyond recognition and her right hand covers her eyes.
As it continued, readers were given more heinous details of more rape victims, and the assertion that “the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on October 7.”
The New York Times (1/10/24) cited itself as a source that had “establish[ed] that the attacks [by Hamas] were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence.”
After “Screams,” the Times‘ news and opinion pieces began to refer to its own investigation to counter Hamas’s denials of ordering its attackers to commit sexual violence on October 7—writing (1/10/24), for instance, that the paper had “establish[ed] that the attacks were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence.”
The Times continued to regularly publish references to sexual violence in its Gaza crisis coverage; our study found the paper’s focus only began to really wane in March, settling by April around a level less than half as high as in the early months. In the final two months of the study period, when its balance finally shifted toward Israeli perpetrators, the paper published only 8 and 4 pieces, respectively, mentioning sexual violence in Israel/Palestine.
Yet at that point in the crisis, major reports had just been published—including by the Times—that Israeli security forces were systematically using sexual violence against Palestinians. The paper’s coverage of this ongoing Israeli-perpetrated sexual violence increased at this point, but pieces referencing Palestinian-perpetrated sexual violence still outnumbered them 15–11.
The Intercept (2/28/24) reported that the New York Times relied “overwhelmingly on the word of Israeli officials, soldiers and ZAKA workers to substantiate their claim that more than 30 bodies of women and girls were discovered with signs of sexual abuse.”
To many, “Screams Without Words” seemed a compelling exposé of brutal abuse. But after its release, detractors and scholars spoke out with concerns about its reliability. While there are certainly strong grounds to believe that instances of sexual violence occurred on October 7, that is not what is being contested. As the Intercept (2/28/24) put it:
The central issue is whether the New York Times presented solid evidence to support its claim that there were newly reported details “establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on October 7.”
And, in fact, a series of investigative pieces from the Intercept (1/28/24, 2/28/24, 3/4/24) revealed that the Times’ prized cover story was built on shaky foundations, with the paper dismissing assurances from hospitals and hotlines that they had gotten no reports of sexual violence, relying instead on politicized sources with a record of debunked atrocity claims.
In January, producers of the Times’ Daily podcast pulled an episode based on “Screams,” the Intercept (1/28/24) reported, as the paper of record could not decide whether it should
run a version that hews closely to the previously published story and risk republishing serious mistakes, or publish a heavily toned-down version, raising questions about whether the paper still stands by the original report.
Facing internal and external criticism, the Times “went into bunker mode” and pursued a ruthless investigation—not into how the paper could have published such inflammatory allegations based on shaky evidence, but into who leaked evidence of internal dissent. Management employed “Nixonian tactics of leak-hunting and stonewalling” (Nation, 3/1/24). “Frustrated” Times staffers told the Intercept (1/28/24) that the original story “deserved more factchecking and much more reporting. All basic standards applied to countless other stories.”
Mondoweiss (12/30/23) noted that ZAKA, the New York Times‘ main source for its “Screams Without Words” piece, has played “a key role in Israel’s orchestrated propaganda campaign, spreading fake news and vague information in the service of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.”
Then, in a February article, the Intercept (2/28/24) offered insight into the authors of “Screams.” Leadership at the New York Times selected two inexperienced freelancers in Israel—Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella—to conduct on-the-ground reporting, while Jeffrey Gettleman, the Pulitzer Prize–winning correspondent, was responsible for weaving it together. Schwartz formerly worked as an Israeli intelligence officer and was caught liking genocidal posts on social media shortly before the Times employed her.
Additionally, the breadth of “evidence” was shown to be unreliable. For instance, in the case of two of the three identifiable victims reported in the Times article—sisters killed in the kibbutz Be’eri—both the kibbutz spokesperson and the UN denied the claim, based on all the available evidence (Intercept, 3/4/24). (On March 25, the Times finally added a bracketed disclaimer to its online article that describes video evidence “undercutting this account.”)
Notably, much testimony came from ZAKA (Intercept, 2/27/24), described by the Times (12/28/23) as a nonprofit “emergency response team” but described by others, like the esteemed Israeli journalist Yigal Sarna, as a “militia” (YNET, 2/15/05). ZAKA’s volunteers are not trained in medical procedures or forensic science; in fact, the organization has actively taken legal action against the use of forensic procedures like autopsies (Behadrei Haredim, 1/1/13).
Many of the charges ZAKA made in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack turned out to be fabrications; they were responsible for the false claims of babies beheaded and burned in ovens, and pregnant women with their wombs slashed open (Mondoweiss, 12/30/23). Yet such tales, which circulated widely in the immediate aftermath of the incursion, played an important role in legitimizing the massive violence that Israel subsequently unleashed on Gaza.
“The testimonies of ZAKA volunteers, as first responders on the ground, had a decisive impact in exposing the atrocities in the South to the foreign journalists covering the war,” Eitan Schwartz, a consultant to Israel’s National Information Directorate, told the Israeli outlet YNET (11/12/23; cited in Intercept, 2/27/24). “These testimonies of ZAKA people caused a horror and revealed to the reporters what kind of human-monsters we are talking about.”
But media outlets rarely explain who it is they are quoting when they relay ZAKA’s lurid atrocity tales. As one ZAKA spokesperson (YNET, 11/12/23) put it:
Being a voluntary organization without a political agenda leads to openness and more receptiveness…. Our testimonies are fully accepted as if they are dealing with an international humanitarian volunteer or a doctor.
Moreover, some family members of the only other identified victim discussed in “Screams”—Gal Abdush, the victim whose family is depicted on the cover, and whose story comprises a third of the report—spoke out to refute the Times’ narrative about their relative. They said that it would have been impossible for her to have been raped, given the timing of her death, and that the Times lied and manipulated them (Mondoweiss, 1/3/24).
Abdush’s sister, Miral Altar—who is a fervent Zionist—wrote, “They are animals, they raped and beheaded people, but in my sister’s case, this is not true.” In an interview on Israeli Channel 13 (1/1/24), Nissim Abdush repeatedly denied that his sister-in-law was raped, and proclaimed that “the media invented it.”
Unfazed by grave journalistic errors—if not malpractice—Times columnist Bret Stephens (3/5/24) chose to chastise the skeptics, writing, “How quickly the far left pivots from ‘believe women’ to ‘believe Hamas’ when the identity of the victim changes.” The problem, however, is not that people “believe Hamas”—they just don’t believe the New York Times.
Among the acts of sexual violence recounted in Ilan Pappe’s Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld, 2006) was an incident, recorded in David Ben-Gurion’s diary, in which Israeli soldiers based at Kibbutz Nirim “captured a twelve-year-old Palestinian girl…gang-raped her and in the end murdered her.”
“Screams” stands out as the most impactful and tone-setting story produced by the New York Times during the studied period. A similarly in-depth, damning and adjective-fueled Times piece detailing Israeli-perpetrated sexual violence does not exist. That absence has nothing to do with the veracity of claims made by Palestinian victims; they are not less verifiable, or less widespread. There’s actually a long history of Israeli-perpetrated sexual violence, and it is extremely well-documented.
In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld, 2006), Israeli historian Ilan Pappé provided many detailed accounts of rape throughout the Nakba. He explained how David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, “seems to have been informed about each case and entered them into his diary.”
Furthermore, a recent technical glitch in the Israel State Archives revealed that Aharon Zisling, Israel’s first agriculture minister and signatory to the Declaration of Independence, “said in 1948 that he ‘can forgive instances of rape’ committed by Jews against Arab women” (Haaretz, 1/5/22).
Despite this history, the paper of record opts for selective outrage. The closest the Times came to publishing anything about Israeli-perpetrated sexual violence that was as damning as “Screams” was a front-page (but below the fold) article (6/7/24) by Patrick Kingsley and Bilal Shbair about Israel’s Sde Teiman detention center—described by a lawyer who visited the site as “more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo” (+972, 6/27/24).
This obliquely headlined article (6/7/24) was the closest the New York Times came to putting systemic Israeli-perpetrated sexual violence on its front page—yet readers wouldn’t find it mentioned until well after the jump.
After CNN (5/11/24) published “Strapped Down, Blindfolded, Held in Diapers: Israeli Whistleblowers Detail Abuse of Palestinians in Shadowy Detention Center,” the Times (6/6/24) offered its own reporting of Sde Teiman in the obliquely headlined “Inside the Base Where Israel Has Detained Thousands of Gazans.” (The headline in the print edition was even more obscure: “Behind Lines Where Israel Takes Gazans.”)
While comparable in length to “Screams,” and damning in the facts it lays out, the article did not focus exclusively—or even primarily—on the sexual violence committed at Sde Teiman; this occupied just five of the 90 paragraphs. It also had a remarkably different tone from “Screams.” It lacked the emotional weight, but also the forthright naming of “sexual violence” or “rape,” even as it included an image of a truckload of bound, blindfolded and stripped Palestinians.
The two most detailed paragraphs about sexual violence read:
Mr. al-Hamlawi, the senior nurse, said a female officer had ordered two soldiers to lift him up and press his rectum against a metal stick that was fixed to the ground. Mr. al-Hamlawi said the stick penetrated his rectum for roughly five seconds, causing it to bleed and leaving him with “unbearable pain.”
A leaked draft of the UNRWA report detailed an interview that gave a similar account. It cited a 41-year-old detainee who said that interrogators “made me sit on something like a hot metal stick and it felt like fire,” and also said that another detainee “died after they put the electric stick up” his anus.
This is how the Times reports on Israeli-perpetrated sexual violence: Impaling people’s rectums with hot or electrified metal rods is just not news enough for its own headlines—nor damning enough to be labeled “rape.”
Even now, following the release of video footage depicting Israeli soldiers gang-raping a detainee, and Knesset members debating their right to do so, the Times’ equivocation prevails with headlines like “Unrest at Army Bases Highlights a Long Battle for Israel’s Soul” (7/31/24).
The New York Times‘ subhead (6/13/24) references “sexual violence…by Hamas,” and not by Israel—though the story said the UN was commission was “unable to independently verify the accusations of rape, sexualized torture or genital mutilation that had been reported in the news media.”
In June, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory issued its “first in-depth investigation of the events that took place on and since 7 October 2023”—offering the most comprehensive assessment of sexual violence at the time. In the Times’ summary (6/13/24), published one week after its piece on Sde Teiman, Erika Solomon devoted an entire section to the report’s findings on sexual violence, but left much wanting.
In “The UN Report on Israeli and Palestinian War Crimes: What We Know,” Solomon first used the term “sexual violence” prominently in the subhead, which read:
The findings cite acts such as sexual violence and the deliberate killing or abducting of civilians by Hamas. They also accuse Israel of collective punishment and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
For the many readers who don’t bother to read further, the subhead reinforces the notion that sexual violence is what Hamas, not Israel, commits. But the section dedicated to sexual violence acknowledged that the report accuses both sides of sexual violence. Furthermore, Solomon admitted, for the first and only time in the Times’ coverage, buried in the bottom third of the story, that the Commission “found no credible evidence that militants were ordered to commit sexual violence”—discrediting months of reporting in the paper about “Hamas’s campaign of sexual violence”—and that it “was unable to independently verify the accusations of rape, sexualized torture or genital mutilation that had been reported in the news media”—referring to the purported crimes on October 7 so highlighted by the Times.
The Commission also found that sexual violence is “part of ISF operating procedures,” which Solomon did not report. Overall, the UN report is a damning indictment of the Israeli state’s record of sexual violence, and of the New York Times’ reporting on the issue—neither of which are made at all apparent in Solomon’s report.
In Israel/Palestine on Record (Verso, 2007), Howard Friel and Richard Falk explain how
the enduring pattern of the Times’ maximalist coverage of Palestinian violence and minimalist coverage of Israeli violence obscures the magnitude of Israel’s transgressions.
In this case, the Times amplified dubious and discreditable stories, serving to legitimize an unlawful occupation. It forced voices calling for justice into a defensive and optically abysmal position.
Furthermore, as the Egyptian feminist coalition SpeakUp! articulated:
Exploiting women’s bodies and rape allegations as war propaganda carries profound and extensive implications, affecting not only the immediate conflict but also influencing global attitudes and perceptions about women. This approach undermines the credibility of legitimate cases of sexual violence. It may lead to skepticism and disbelief when survivors share their experiences, perpetuating a culture of silence and impunity.
As the New York Times’ army of reporters emphasize one thing and de-emphasize another, frame one thing as fact and cast doubt on the other, lie by omission and bury the lead, they remind us that all victims are equal, but some victims are more equal than others (FAIR.org, 3/18/22, 11/17/23).
*Search terms: FAIR searched for articles containing variations of the terms Israel, Palestine or the West Bank in conjunction with one or more of the following terms: sexual violence, sexual assault (or other variations), sexual abuse (or other variations), rape (or other variations), stripped (or other variations), forced nudity, rectum, oral sex or anus. False positives were excluded from results.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
A landmark bill aimed at standardizing and improving the way police treat victims in the aftermath of a sexual assault has become law in Connecticut.
The new law establishes a council that will create a model policy for police responding to sexual assault, and it received unanimous, bipartisan support. The law also requires that officers refer victims to a victim advocate, distribute information about services available, and help the victim and any children present obtain medical care. Every law enforcement agency in the state will have to meet or exceed the model policy by September 2025, and the council will collect data about police and the overall criminal justice response to sexual assault statewide.
Democratic state Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, a co-sponsor of the bill, cited an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting in her testimony about the need for sexual assault victims to be treated better by law enforcement. The investigation, featured in Victim/Suspect, a documentary film by Center for Investigative Reporting Studios, found dozens of cases, including several in Connecticut, in which women reporting sexual assaults were ultimately charged with crimes after law enforcement doubted their stories or zeroed in on behavior common for victims of trauma.
“This isn’t just a bill that victims and survivors want, it’s a bill that law enforcement also wants and needs in order to serve the public to the very best of their ability,” Kavros DeGraw said.
Kavros DeGraw attended a screening of Victim/Suspect sponsored by the Bipartisan Women’s Caucus last fall. There, she met Nicole Chase, who was featured in the film and an episode of Reveal and a constituent of Kavros DeGraw’s.
Chase told an officer in the Canton Police Department in 2017 that her boss had sexually harassed her and ordered her to perform oral sex. When she acknowledged weeks later in a formal interview that the sex act had occurred, the detective concluded she’d lied by omission and charged her with making a false statement.
“I was unaware that (this phenomenon) was happening, not just all over Connecticut, but also all over the country,” Kavros DeGraw said.
Prosecutors later dropped the case against Chase, and the city of Canton eventually settled a civil lawsuit. Her boss was never charged with any crime. Kavros DeGraw vowed she would do something about Chase’s treatment.
During a public hearing on the bill, Kavros DeGraw used Chase’s case as an example of why the new bill is needed. “While the case was eventually settled in court in favor of the survivor, it does not erase the trauma the survivor experienced,” she said.
Gov. Ned Lamont signed the bill into law this month.
Our investigation into sexual assault cases found that police routinely deploy interrogation techniques meant for criminal suspects on alleged victims, including lying about evidence. When reporting victims recant or backtrack, it can lead to false reporting charges: Of 52 cases involving false reporting charges that we analyzed closely, nearly two-thirds involved a recantation. In nine cases, the recantation was the only evidence cited by police.
About half of the 52 cases we analyzed came from Connecticut, where a statewide court system allowed us to more easily locate false reporting cases tied to sexual assault. Our analysis found four Connecticut cases in which the reporting victim was arrested or charged with a crime within 24 hours; in two cases, a recantation was the only evidence police cited. In one prominent Bridgeport case, an 18-year-old reported she was raped by two men at an off-campus college party. Detectives concluded that the sex was consensual and charged her with false reporting and felony tampering with evidence.
But the detectives’ conclusion was based largely on her recantation during a 45-minute recorded interview-turned-interrogation. The audio recording showed that a detective lied to her about nonexistent evidence, told her that she wasn’t telling the truth, interrupted her frequently, and repeated questions again and again until she agreed with him that the sex was consensual. She was not aware that she had become the suspect of a crime and was interviewed alone. She pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree falsely reporting an incident and one count of interfering with police and was sentenced to a year in prison.
While the new law doesn’t specifically mention the use of false reporting charges against alleged sexual assault victims, it aims to address the circumstances under which victims often fall under suspicion. Chase endured a long police interview alone, and she thinks an offer for support from a victim advocate could have changed the entire trajectory of her case, had the police specifically mentioned it, as they’ll now be required to do.
“You’re sitting with somebody that’s not judging you, that knows what trauma does,” she said. “It is just somebody there to be there for you.”
Chase said having an advocate might have made her feel safe enough to disclose more details earlier in the process – and maybe prevent the arrest that followed.
She hopes the model policy will more clearly define what a false report is, since she was charged based on not being forthcoming enough.
“That’s not lying,” Chase said. “That’s not falsely reporting something. That is just not being willing to open up to you yet because I don’t feel comfortable with you.”
Kavros DeGraw said she intends for the newly created council to specifically address the use of false reporting charges against victims in its model policy and to mandate trauma-informed training for police to combat misconceptions about missing details or inconsistent statements.
“There are so many pieces to the trauma of these incidents,” she said. “You may not have all of the details in that first meeting, and not because of omission or purposeful lying, but because you have just experienced a trauma, and often it comes back over time.”
New Connecticut Law Aims to Support Victims of Sexual Assault – and Prevent Them From Being Treated Like Suspects is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
Women who accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct were stunned by the Thursday decision by the New York Court of Appeals to overturn his 2020 felony conviction, again speaking out about the former Hollywood mogul’s behavior. Both survivors and legal experts said the court’s ruling points to issues with how difficult it can be for survivors of sexual violence to be believed and how the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Since President Joe Biden first took office, advocates for sexual violence survivors and the LGBTQ+ community have pressured his administration to update the federal regulations that protect such groups from discrimination in schools and colleges. Now that day is here. The Department of Education announced on Friday that it has finalized the rule under Title IX — the historic federal civil rights…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Imagine this scenario. All across Australia, as children in pre-school colour-in dinosaur pictures and make clay cupcakes, a sinister thing is happening. It is revealed that 39.2% of them have been subjected to abuse. Some have been bashed, and some have even been sexually assaulted. What do you think would happen following this exposé? An uproar? Parents up in arms? Ministers losing their jobs? Now visualise this for the opposite age spectrum. Yes, we’re now imagining that this is across Australia but in aged care.
The only thing we don’t have to imagine is the 39.2% figure because this is an actual statistic which indicates the percentage of those living in aged care facilities who experience abuse in the form of neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse or sexual assault.
During the months that the Aged Care Royal Commission conducted its business, we heard tragic and horrific stories of vulnerable older people who were subjected to unimaginable abuse and neglect.
The Commissioners said it is a national shame that up to 50 sexual assaults take place every week in aged care. These are just the reported cases. How many more are silently ignored? We know that sexual assaults are under-reported. This is particularly pronounced amongst the older population and especially in residential aged care facilities.
Before the Serious Incident Response Scheme was introduced in April 2021 as a way to collect data about abuse, KPMG conducted a study of aged care providers who reported in 58.8% of sexual assault cases, there was no impact on the victim. It goes to show how little aged care providers understand sexual assault. We know that even if a woman is non-verbal, and has cognitive impairment like dementia, her body realises when it is violated. The poor understanding of sexual assault perpetrated against older women mean that cases are missed, and symptoms of trauma are misdiagnosed leading to additional medication given to ‘quieten’ the older woman, so she ‘settles down’. The other thing to note about older women who have been sexually assaulted in aged care is that half die within a year of the assault taking place.
Let’s presume that an aged care provider has staff trained to look out for sexual assaults, and know the protocol. They call the police and report the case. The police arrive on the scene, but give up investigations immediately because they are told that the older woman has dementia. So, of course, she is playing out her “rape fantasies”. (This is an actual quote from police following the report of rape in an aged care facility.) There is little understanding amongst the police of dementia, as recently witnessed in the tasering of a doddery, older woman with dementia holding a knife in an aged care facility.
Now, let’s presume that the police are trained in how to handle sexual assault allegations in aged care, and have gathered evidence to take it to court. Here, we have to presume that judges and the jury are fully versed with what sexual assault means, and how it impacts older women, including those who are especially vulnerable due to co-morbidities and cognitive decline. She knows what happened, but can she withstand the type of questioning which defence lawyers engage in to inject the element of doubt? Can judges and juries get over their unacknowledged ageist bias which commonly negates a wrinkled, bent-double older woman as a rape victim?
The National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children has identified ‘Recovery and Healing’ as one of the 4 pillars for action (the others being ‘Prevention’, ‘Early Intervention’ and ‘Response’). What happens to older women who have been sexually assaulted or subjected to other types of abuse in aged care? What access to ‘Recovery and Healing’ do they have? How many victims are given access to therapy? And how many more victims continue to be locked up in dementia units with their perpetrators?
When aged care providers do not have enough staff to provide meal support to their residents (one study conducted for the Aged Care Royal Commission revealed that 68% of the residents studied in aged care were malnourished or at risk of being malnourished), what hope can we have that those who have been abused are being taken care of, and provided with the healing they are entitled to? And that active steps are taken to protect them from further abuse?
There is lack of support for victims of sexual violence who live in aged care settings. Picture: Adobe Stock
It is instructive that the Australian government has not listed aged care facilities as a ‘primary place of detention’ for the purpose of our compliance with being a signatory to the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This is an important opportunity lost for external experts to scrutinise practices in all places where people are detained in Australia to ensure humane treatment. Residents in aged care facilities, especially those locked up in secure dementia units, are conveniently left-out.
The problems of chemical restraints which too many residents in aged care are subjected to are issues to be discussed at another time. This focus on sexual assaults in aged care is to highlight the problems associated with keeping older women safe when they are in institutionalised settings, and the challenges we face when it comes to the prevention and prosecution of cases. We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of all the trauma some older women carry from years of abuse which could have begun as sexual abuse when they were children. There are also the Care Leavers (the ‘Forgotten Australians’) who have suffered a range of traumatic abuse in institutions as children and who are justifiably horrified at the thought of seeing out their twilight days in yet another institution.
Aged care is a feminist issue because the majority in residential aged care facilities are women (66%). It is a national shame that even in our dying days, women continue to be victims of sexual assault. And we are still not believed. Imagine that.
The post Imagine This… appeared first on BroadAgenda.
This post was originally published on BroadAgenda.
Last year, 25-year-old Carlee Russell called 911 in Hoover, Alabama, reporting that there was a child on the interstate. Then Russell vanished, and no child was found. A massive search effort followed, along with a national media frenzy. Two days later, she returned home, seemingly unharmed but claiming that she had escaped a kidnapping.
After about a week, sympathy for Russell turned to anger as investigators concluded that she had faked her disappearance and charged her with two misdemeanors for false reporting. She pleaded guilty, and a judge ordered Russell to pay nearly $18,000 in restitution and to serve probation and community service – a sentence deemed far too lenient by those outraged by Russell’s actions. Nothing less than jail time would satisfy them.
“The biggest thing was just the impact it had,” said Alabama state Rep. Mike Shaw, a Republican from Hoover. “I mean, hundreds of people showed up to search, and it was a pretty damaging thing for the community.”
Emboldened by the community outrage, Shaw and other state lawmakers proposed legislation that was designed to deter, or at least more severely punish, the next Carlee Russell. The bill, which has cleared the House of Representatives and is poised for a vote in the Senate, would create a new class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison for a false report that “alleges imminent danger to a person or the public.”
“One of the real problems with that false report is that it hurts the next person who actually experiences something,” Shaw said. “If you have a false report, it kind of makes everybody skeptical on the next one.”
As anyone who has been told the fable of the child who cried wolf knows, Shaw is right that false reports lead to more skepticism. But the outsized attention they receive obscures the fact that they’re relatively rare. And this legislation doesn’t consider a prevalent problem: the troubling track record of police in Alabama and across the country when it comes to framing reports of violence as having been made up.
Kijana Mitchell is an Alabama-based advocate for survivors of domestic violence who’s also worked as a 911 dispatcher. She said she’s encountered law enforcement officers who suspect a victim is lying simply because they make the common and complicated decision to return to an abusive relationship.
And she fears this bill could work in the favor of abusers – “master manipulators” who will use it to convince victims not to report an assault to skeptical officers. “A law like this can scoop up a lot of innocent victims” if people aren’t able to prove their case to the police’s satisfaction, Mitchell said. “This added factor that our lawmakers are trying to bring into the equation will really bolster a lot of (abusers’) ability to keep victims from speaking up.”
For the last six years, I’ve been collecting and researching cases in which people – mostly young women and sometimes children – were charged with falsely reporting a rape or sexual assault. I’ve amassed more than 230 cases that span the country, an investigation we first shared in the documentary “Victim/Suspect,” streaming on Netflix. In our first-of-its-kind qualitative analysis, we found a pattern of police turning their suspicions to the reporting victim before thoroughly investigating the alleged crime.
Academic studies consistently estimate that 2% to 8% of reports of sexual assault and rape are false. But police officers presume reporting victims are lying much more frequently: In one 2010 study, a majority of sex crimes detectives with less than seven years of experience believed that anywhere from 40% to 80% of rape reports were false. And a 2018 study found that officers’ estimates of false rape reports go up the more they believe in popular myths about rape, like the idea that women lie about rape after regrettable sex or they bear responsibility if they were drunk.
In case after case I reviewed, detectives didn’t interview suspects or send rape kits to the lab. Instead, they interrogated the reporting victim, seizing on the moment when they backtracked or buckled under the pressure, framing it as either a recantation or a confession.
In one-quarter of the 52 cases we analyzed, it took investigators less than 24 hours after the report was made to conclude the victims were lying.
Tangled up in these reports are complicating factors: gaps in memory due to trauma, delays in reporting and a lack of physical evidence. I’ve watched or listened to more than a dozen recorded interrogations and interviewed women who were charged with false reporting.
What I heard again and again were police officers clumsily or aggressively questioning alleged victims, who were typically interviewed alone, in the same manner in which they interrogated suspects. One detective lied to a teenager, saying videos proved her account of being raped at a party wasn’t true. She was left confused and desperate to end the interaction. Another detective told a 12-year-old who insisted she was raped by a family member that she would have to return to foster care. A college student facing harsh questioning about an allegation of sexual assault eventually agreed when police said it wasn’t true, wanting to drop the case.
All of them saw the police conclude their reports were intentionally fabricated and were charged with crimes.
Emma Mannion is all too familiar with this dynamic. In 2016, when she was an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Alabama, she told police that a man she’d met earlier that night had raped her in the back of a car while his friend stood guard.
“Knowing what I know now, I would absolutely not report,” said Mannion, now living in her home state of New Hampshire.
Tuscaloosa investigators concluded within a few days that she lied because she was ashamed that she had sex with a stranger. Under questioning for two and a half hours, Mannion never backed away from her allegation that she was raped – and still hasn’t. But there was a moment in her interrogation when everything seemed to change. A detective chided her for wasting police resources. She had distracted him from working with “true victims,” he said.
“I’m so sorry,” she responded.
“Well, if you’re sorry, then that makes me feel better,” the detective said, softening his tone.
Police records summarized that Mannion confessed to lying about the assault and she was charged with making a false report to law enforcement.
Shortly before Mannion had to decide whether to fight the charge, she heard about what happened to University of Alabama student Megan Rondini, who was also interrogated by Tuscaloosa police after reporting a rape. Similarly, detectives quickly turned the focus of their investigation against Rondini. While a grand jury considered criminal charges against her in February 2016, Rondini took her own life.
Mannion said she wasn’t mentally stable enough to go through a trial and relive the incident again and again. She pleaded guilty to a youthful offender charge, a generic label used for nonviolent crimes. Mannion faced only a misdemeanor. But other young women seeking justice after being sexually assaulted could face felony charges.
“I already have a hard time comprehending and understanding how they did what they did,” Mannion said. “I cannot fathom (Tuscaloosa police) looking at 18-year-old Emma and going, ‘Yes, this is a felony charge, and she should go to prison.’ ”
There is no evidence that false reports in Alabama – or nationwide – are increasing or creating a measurable strain on police resources. Nonetheless, this isn’t the first time Alabama has tried to make false reporting penalties more severe. In 2019, then-Rep. Dickie Drake, a Republican, introduced a similar bill, aiming to make a false report of sexual assault or rape a class C felony. At the time, advocates and survivors testified against the measure, saying it would only deter legitimate reports of assault. It didn’t make it out of the Judiciary Committee.
Sen. Merika Coleman, a Democrat based in the greater Birmingham area, spoke out against the bill back then and intends to do the same when the new proposal goes to a vote in the Senate. “I think that it can make our communities less safe,” she said. “If someone is afraid to report because they may face up to 10 years in prison if they are not believed, and then you would have a monster still on the streets.”
She also said the racial dynamics of Carlee Russell’s case can’t be ignored. Russell is a young Black woman who received the type of sympathetic media treatment usually reserved for blond-haired, blue-eyed women. “I think people got pissed off,” Coleman said. “White folks got pissed off.”
The proposed bill includes a qualifier that the false report must allege “imminent danger” to a person or the public, a provision a sponsor said is intended to account for only the most egregious false reports: someone falsely reporting a bomb threat, for instance, or a report similar to Russell’s that launches a big police response. But could a report of a stranger rape or an abusive spouse with a gun also be considered an imminent threat? After Mannion reported rape, her university issued a public safety notice to warn other students.
Best estimates suggest that only about a third of sexual assaults are reported to police, and advocates worry this bill could further exacerbate already existing police and victim mistrust.
“My greatest fear is that this bill will cause victims of sexual violence to read this as another reason NOT to report,” Brenda Maddox, executive director of the Tuscaloosa SAFE Center, a sexual assault crisis center, wrote in an email. “These types of crimes are significantly underreported because by nature they are shrouded in secrecy, not to be talked about in the light of day, and often turned back on the victim as being culpable in their own crime.”
Shaw, the state representative who proposed the House version of the bill, said he spoke to constituents, law enforcement officers and his fellow legislators while drafting this legislation. But he said he didn’t reach out to anyone who works with victims, the community that is most likely to ask police for help and at risk of being accused of false reporting.
He acknowledged the bill is in response to the Russell case – a “sample size of one,” he said. “I think it’s somewhat reactive. But we’re really trying not to be.”
If this bill passes and law enforcement officers in Alabama pursues felony charges for a rape or domestic violence case and there are questions about the quality of the investigation, Shaw promised that he would look into it.
Alabama Lawmakers Want Prison for False Reporting Charges. That Could Have Serious Consequences. is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
Ayoob Adel Ahmed was a 23-year-old Bahraini citizen when Bahraini authorities arbitrarily arrested him for the final time on 14 May 2015. During his detention, he endured numerous violations, including brutal torture, enforced disappearance, sexual harassment, and other abuses. The most severe violations and burdens, however, stem from medical neglect, which has transformed him from a healthy young man into a prisoner suffering from a permanent disability. He is currently serving two life sentences, along with a total of 98 years imprisonment sentence in Jau Prison on politically motivated charges.
Ayoob was first arrested on 15 June 2013 from his grandmother’s house, when masked plainclothes officers ambushed the home and arrested him without presenting any arrest or search warrant. He was then taken to the Samaheej Police Station. En route to the police station, he was subjected to beatings all over his body, especially on his broken leg, and to sexual harassment by Lieutenant Yusuf Mulla Bakhit. During his interrogation at the Samaheej Police Station, police officers tortured Ayoob, and this torture continued upon his arrival at Jau Prison. Prior to his arrest, he had been pursued by the authorities due to a ruling issued against him in absentia for participating in a pro-democracy march on 26 November 2012 in the Muharraq area. This march was met with repression by the riot police forces, resulting in his left leg being hit by a tear gas canister and immediately broken.
While serving his six-month prison sentence issued in absentia for the charge of illegal assembly, Ayoob discovered that he had been unfairly convicted in absentia on additional charges, resulting in an additional 12 years in prison. Additionally, the Jau Prison administration refused to provide Ayoob with necessary medical treatment, including crucial X-rays to monitor his fractured leg, despite having undergone leg surgery just over a month prior to his arrest. Despite severe pain and repeated requests for treatment, the prison administration delayed addressing his condition. Following a hunger strike, the prison administration agreed for Ayoob to undergo an operation to remove the iron rods from his leg and place them externally. However, complications persisted, with his leg remaining in an iron shackle for three months due to nerve damage from delayed treatment. Enduring prolonged pain and sleeplessness, Ayoob underwent another operation to remove the external iron and insert an internal plate. After four weeks of intense pain inside the hospital, only alleviated through sedatives that became ineffective, he escaped from the hospital.
On 14 May 2015, at dawn, National Security Agency (NSA) forces stormed a house in the Malikiya area where Ayoob and his friend were sleeping, arbitrarily arresting them both without presenting any warrant. Subsequently, the officers transferred Ayoob to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) building, where he was interrogated for two weeks without the presence of his lawyer. During interrogation, Ayoob forcibly disappeared, and CID officers subjected him to physical and psychological torture. They beat him on various parts of his body, especially on his broken leg, deprived him of sleep and family contact, and threatened him with rape. As a result of the torture, Ayoob’s health deteriorated significantly, leading to symptoms such as blood in his urine and a risk of kidney failure. Under duress, he confessed to the fabricated charges against him. On 17 May 2015, Ayoob was brought before the Public Prosecution Office (PPO) without the presence of his lawyer. The PPO charged him with 1) making an explosion, and 2) possessing and using explosives and endangering people’s lives and money for a terrorist purpose, ordering his detention pending investigation. On 27 May 2015, Ayoob was transferred to Jau Prison, where officers subjected him to further torture, insults, and threats, including beatings with hoses, kicks, and slaps, deliberately targeting his injured leg. A week after being transferred to Jau Prison, Ayoob’s enforced disappearance ended, as his family learned that he was being held in Jau Prison.
In July 2015, Ayoob was transported with a group of inmates by bus to the Jau Prison administration building. Inside the bus, a policeman intentionally obstructed the windows and delayed the bus for an extended period, allegedly with the intention to harm them, according to Ayoob’s account. This led to two detainees falling, with one experiencing convulsions and the other fainting. Subsequently, Police Officer Mohamed Suleiman beat Ayoob inside the prison administration building in the presence of First Lieutenant Mohamed AbdulHamid Maaruf.
Ayoob was not brought before a judge within 48 hours after arrest, was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trials, and was denied access to his attorney before and during the court sessions. Furthermore, the court utilized the confessions extracted from him under torture as evidence against him in his trials. Consequently, the court convicted Ayoob between June 2013 and February 2019 of numerous charges, including 1) illegal assembly, 2) planting a fake bomb on Muharraq Bridge, 3) criminal arson, 4) causing an explosion, 5) possessing and using explosives and weapons endangering people’s lives and funds for terrorist purposes, 6) attempted murder, and 7) escaping from prison. He received two life sentences and a total of 98 years in prison. Notably, the first three crimes he was convicted of were alleged to have occurred while he was suffering from a recently broken leg and using crutches to walk, making his convictions questionable.
While serving his sentence in Jau Prison, Ayoob faced repeated verbal abuse and humiliation based on his religious beliefs and was deprived of family contact and visits. Additionally, due to the visitation restrictions that prevent visits without barriers, he has opted to abstain from visits. More significantly, he has been suffering from severe medical neglect, resulting in a significant deterioration in his health. Currently, he experiences severe back pain, damaged vertebrae, a left leg shorter than the right, and blood in his urine, putting him at risk of kidney failure. Furthermore, the iron rods that were supposed to be removed from inside his foot in January 2017 have not yet been extracted, causing difficulty walking, complications, and intense pain. Recently, he contracted a rare disease for which there is no treatment available in Bahrain, and he has not received any medical attention. Despite these health issues, Ayoob is denied medical appointments, X-rays, surgery, and proper medications. Consequently, he has undertaken numerous hunger strikes to demand urgent medical treatment.
Ayoob and his family filed complaints with various governmental and human rights organizations, including the National Institution for Human Rights (NIHR) and the Ombudsman. However, these complaints have received little to no response or action from the authorities, exacerbating Ayoob’s already dire situation.
In 2023, Ayoob suffered severe symptoms, including blood in his urine and abdominal pain, yet he was only transferred to intensive care three days after experiencing these symptoms, and after continuous requests for medical attention. Furthermore, Ayoob’s family remained unaware of his condition while he was in intensive care, as the prison administration refused to give them information on his health condition. Additionally, prison officials denied him the opportunity to file a complaint regarding the delay he faced in receiving treatment and health care.
On 20 February 2024, Ayoob conveyed in an audio recording his ongoing denial of medical treatment. He emphasized that the deliberate withholding of necessary medication by the prison administration, as well as delays in removing the iron rods from his leg and addressing his damaged back, had rendered him disabled and incapable of walking properly, worsening both his leg and back conditions. Ayoob warned that such negligence amounted to a policy of slow death, not only depriving him of mobility but also violating his fundamental right to proper healthcare.
Ayoob’s arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, torture, sexual assault, denial of access to legal counsel during interrogations and trials, unfair trials, discriminatory treatment based on his belonging to the Shia sect, deprivation of family contact and visits, and medical negligence represent clear violations of the Convention against Torture and Other Degrading and Inhuman Treatment (CAT), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party.
As such, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls upon the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Ayoob. ADHRB also urges the Bahraini government to investigate the allegations of Ayoob’s arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, torture, denial of attorney access during interrogations and trial, discriminatory treatment based on his Shia sect affiliation, deprivation of family contact and visits, and medical neglect, while holding the perpetrators accountable. Furthermore, ADHRB sounds the alarm over Ayoob’s deteriorating health condition, urging the Jau Prison administration to promptly provide him with appropriate healthcare, holding it responsible for any further deterioration in his health. Finally, ADHRB calls on the Jau Prison administration to immediately grant Ayoob his right to regularly communicate with his family and receive assistance with his essential needs.
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Husain Mohamed Falah was a 17-year-old Bahraini minor and high school student when Bahraini authorities arrested him from his home on 15 December 2014 without presenting any arrest warrant. During his detention, he endured torture, sexual harassment, denial of attorney access during interrogation and trial, and an unfair trial. He is currently serving a life sentence in Jau Prison, facing religious discrimination, medical neglect, and being denied his rights to education and communication with his family.
On 15 December 2014, at 4:00 A.M., plainclothes officers arrived with a 16-passenger bus, an armored vehicle, and more than 10 Jeep cars, and conducted a forceful raid at Husain’s family house where they were sleeping. They broke the doors of the house and the garage, confiscated his identification card along with his phone, and took him on the bus to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) building without providing any arrest warrant or reason behind his arrest. En route to the CID building, officers blindfolded Husain inside the bus and hit him on the head. On the same day at 6:00 A.M., Husain’s parents received a 4-second call from him, stating that he was in the CID building. Two days later, at 4:00 A.M., officers returned to Husain’s home, raided it, and filmed the raid with two cameras without submitting a search warrant They searched Husain’s room, focusing on his personal belongings. They confiscated an old phone he had that did not have a SIM card and was not working. On 19 December 2014, Husain was brought blindfolded near his home, to a location where Bahraini authorities claimed he participated in “rioting and the killing of a police corporal”.
At the CID building, Husain was interrogated for a week without the presence of a lawyer. CID officers tortured him by completely blindfolding him, stripping him of his clothes, forcing him to stand for extended periods with his hands cuffed, pouring hot water on him, and spitting on his face. Officers also subjected Husain to electric shocks, sexual harassment, and verbal abuse, and prevented him from contacting his parents. Subsequently, he confessed to the fabricated charges brought against him under torture.
Following his interrogation, Husain was brought on 22 December 2014 before the Public Prosecution Office (PPO), which subsequently ordered his detention for two months, and his lawyer was not allowed to attend. He was then transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center, where he endured further torture. On 24 December 2014, Husain’s family was able to visit him for the first time since his arrest.
Husain was not brought before a judge within 48 hours after arrest, was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trial, was denied access to his attorney before and during the court sessions, and was unable to present evidence or challenge the evidence presented against him. Furthermore, the court utilized the confessions extracted from him under torture as evidence against him in his trial. On 30 December 2015, Husain was sentenced to life imprisonment and deprivation of his Bahraini nationality after being convicted in a mass trial with 22 other defendants for 1) joining a terrorist cell to kill a police corporal on 8 December 2014, and 2) carrying out riots on 9 December 2014. Although Husain was transferred to the courtroom for the sentencing hearing, he was not allowed to enter and was forced to wait outside. Then the lawyer came out and informed the family of the judgment. His citizenship was reinstated on 27 April 2019, through a royal pardon. Husain appealed his sentence, and on 22 December 2016, the Court of Appeal rejected his appeal and upheld the initial verdict. Consequently, the Court of Cassation upheld the sentence on 5 June 2017.
Husain is currently serving his sentence in Jau Prison, enduring discriminatory treatment based on his belonging to the Shia religious sect and facing threats and deprivation of his rights by the prison officers from time to time on the pretext of taking revenge for the alleged murder of a policeman. In addition, he’s currently deprived of calling his family, experiencing issues within his eye retina that are getting worse as a result of medical negligence, and is denied his right to continue his university education. Husain’s family filed complaints to the Ombudsman, documenting the raid, torture, and eye conditions. The Ombudsman received these complaints and visited Husain with no result obtained. This mistreatment and medical neglect prompted Husain to go on hunger strikes every now and then to protest against the prison’s poor status and the violations to which he was subjected.
Husain’s warrantless arrest, torture, sexual assault, denial of access to legal counsel during interrogations and trial, unfair trial, deprivation of his rights to education and communication, discriminatory treatment based on his belonging to the Shia sect, and medical negligence represent clear violations of the Convention against Torture and Other Degrading and Inhuman Treatment (CAT), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Furthermore, the violations he endured as a minor contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.
As such, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls upon the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Husain. ADHRB also urges the Bahraini government to investigate the allegations of Husain’s arbitrary arrest as a minor, torture, denial of attorney access during interrogations and trial, deprivation of his rights to education and communication, discriminatory treatment based on his belonging to the Shia sect, and medical neglect while holding the perpetrators accountable. At the very least, ADHRB calls for a fair retrial for him under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release. Additionally, it urges the Jau Prison administration to promptly provide appropriate healthcare for Husain, holding it responsible for any possible deterioration in his health. Finally, ADHRB calls on the Jau Prison administration to immediately grant Husain his right to regularly call his family and allow him to continue his university studies.
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At 7:45 on Monday morning, employees at the federal correctional institution (or FCI) in Dublin, California, abruptly placed the prison on lockdown. “Everything seemed normal,” 58-year-old Rhonda Fleming told Truthout. Breakfast had been served as usual. After eating, she went to the education department to do some legal research. Ten minutes later, the entire prison was placed on recall — meaning…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In 2010, Milique Wagner was arrested for a murder he says he had nothing to do with. The night of the shooting, Wagner was picked up for questioning and spent three days in the Philadelphia Police Department’s homicide unit, mostly being questioned by a detective named Philip Nordo.
Nordo was a star in the department, known for putting in long hours and closing cases – he had a hand in convicting more than 100 people. But that day in the homicide unit, Wagner says Nordo asked him some unnerving questions: Would he ever consider doing porn? Guy-on-guy porn?
Wagner would go on to be convicted of the murder in a case largely built by Nordo – and Wagner’s experience has led him to believe Nordo fabricated evidence and coerced false statements to frame him.
For years, Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Chris Palmer and Samantha Melamed have dug into Nordo’s career, looking into allegations of his misconduct. In this episode, they follow the rumors to defense attorney Andrew Pappas, who subpoenas the prison call log between Nordo and one of his informants. It’s there where Pappas finds evidence that something is not right about the way Nordo is conducting his police work.
Pappas’ findings prompt the Philadelphia district attorney’s office to launch an investigation into Nordo. The patterns that prosecutors found by reviewing Nordo’s calls and emails with incarcerated men, examining his personnel file, and interviewing men who interacted with him showed shocking coercion and abuse.
Almost 20 years after the first complaint was filed against Nordo, the disgraced detective’s actions became public. He was charged and his case went to trial. Palmer and Melamed analyze the fallout from the scandal and seek answers from the Police Department on how it addressed Nordo’s misconduct and how he got away with it for so long.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in December 2022.
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The federal prison in Dublin, California, made nationwide headlines in 2022 when six employees, including the warden and chaplain, were arrested for sexually abusing women in custody. Later, two more guards were arrested, giving Dublin the highest number of staff charged with sexual abuse of any U.S. prison. Since then, seven employees, including the warden and chaplain, have been convicted or…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Lauren Chooljian from New Hampshire Public Radio reports on a widespread culture of sexual misconduct in the addiction treatment industry. Across the country, women seeking treatment are being harassed and assaulted by men in positions of power. The problem is so pervasive that it has a name among those in the industry: the 13th Step.
We begin with Chooljian explaining to host Al Letson the case that got her started on this investigation. It involved Eric Spofford, owner of New Hampshire’s largest addiction treatment network. After exposing allegations that Spofford was harassing patients, Chooljian, her sources and staff at New Hampshire Public Radio became the targets of intimidation and, in some cases, vandalism.
Chooljian then chronicles another case, this one in California, that illustrates how difficult it is to bring to justice wealthy, powerful people in the industry. Chris Bathum owned a network of treatment centers in California and Colorado and was routinely sexually assaulting clients and offering them drugs. He was also submitting false billing claims to insurance companies. We meet two women, Rose Stahl and Debbie Herzog, who were separately investigating Bathum. Stahl started as a client at one of Bathum’s centers and later worked for him. She pursued evidence that he was assaulting women at the center, while Herzog was looking into insurance fraud.
Stahl blew the whistle about Bathum’s inappropriate behavior to leadership within the company, but the actions they took did not stop him. At the same time, Herzog was facing hurdles in convincing law enforcement to pay attention to the case she was building about insurance fraud. Then serendipitously, Herzog and Stahl learn of each other’s efforts and team up to try to bring Bathum to justice.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
Nearly 65,000 rape-related pregnancies occurred in states with total or near-total abortion bans post-Dobbs v. Jackson, new research finds, while those same states saw only a handful of legal abortions performed on average per month. According to research published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Wednesday, there were an estimated 64,565…
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When K.S. heard there was a vegan animal rights activist running for mayor in Berkeley, California, her interest was piqued. K.S., who requested to use her initials out of fear of retaliation, was living in Los Angeles but immediately signed up to volunteer remotely. It was the summer of 2020, and she was 23 years old, with a year of post-undergraduate college under her belt working at PETA.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Shadeed Beaver, who is 13 years into a 27-year prison sentence, was excited when he first learned about “Bridges To Life,” a restorative justice class offered at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, Washington. The class, which pairs incarcerated people with victims of crime, guides participants through conversations aimed at developing mutual understanding. It provides a rare opportunity…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
“The first time I was raped I was eleven.” Crystal did not know her first rapist. She was also raped several times by her uncle when she was fifteen. “And when I was between 18 and 22. I was raped about ten times.” Later, when she entered prison, sexual violence followed her. “Being stripped here, in prison — even though I know the outcome will not be sexual — still feels the same as being raped…
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Sequestered in a small interrogation room, sipping an iced coffee, Nicole Chase was trying to explain just how dysfunctional things had become at Nodine’s Smokehouse Deli and Restaurant, a family-owned place in Canton, Connecticut, that specialized in smokehouse meats and toxic masculinity. There was the time one of her colleagues came to work high on acid, she said. On a day the restaurant made…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it cleaved the United States in two. States like Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and Texas have all banned essential reproductive care and created a national public health crisis. These bans are particularly dangerous for survivors of rape and domestic violence and the advocates who fight for them. Other states, such as Colorado, New York…
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On July 30, the Israeli Knesset passed a sexual assault law showing, as Israel’s sole liberal newspaper put it, that the “processes of fascism are in full swing.” The law doubles the penalty for sexual assault offenses that were “nationalistically motivated,” however defined. In other words, sexual attacks by Arabs against Jews will face harsher sentences if prosecutors can prove the assailant was…
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As President Joe Biden announces major reforms to how the military prosecutes sexual assault, the U.S. Navy is still shrouding those court proceedings in secrecy and fighting a ProPublica lawsuit to make such cases public. Last month, Biden issued an executive order that finalized a mandate from Congress to drastically change who had authority over sexual assault and murder cases in the military.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
By Mary*
Trigger warning: this blog discusses sexual violence and may be upsetting for readers. A list of support services is listed at the end of this blog.
Growing up, I’d never imagined where I’d be now. A survivor. Of not just one, but multiple sexual assaults.
I’d always thought that to be raped was one of the worst things that could happen to me.
I empathised with survivors. Yet the crime, the risk and the perpetrators seemed so far away from my life and my existence.
As a teenager, I knew of only one survivor (to my knowledge). As far as I knew, none of my close friends or family had been affected (however, I would now question this).
Sexual assault was not something I imagined I’d be talking about now – other than as an ally and advocate against gender-based violence.
However, little did I know, that I’d be assaulted twice by the time I was in my mid-30s. And that my perception of assault was to change rapidly. As would my perception of society.
Yes, things would never be the same again…
As a woman, I grew up being taught to protect myself. I was told to not walk alone at night, to have extra cash in my handbag (back in the day) and to check-in on friends to see if they’d got home safely.
Danger is a reality that we learn to pre-empt and recognise – but hope never accumulates into anything real.
Yet the reality is, it is real. And more so than we think…
Why? Because the perception of assault we’re taught as young girls/women, is VERY different to the reality.
Here in the UK for example, we don’t live in a conflict zone – where rape is used as a weapon of war). Child/forced marriage is criminalised and crippling poverty (whilst prevalent) isn’t a common push factor (whilst of course recognising the factors that push people into sex work).
As a society, we’re generally taught that sexual assault is alien, far away and completely distinguishable from our everyday lives.
Through the media and a lack of education on consent and relationships, sexual assault is painted as:
You’ll scream. You’ll say “no”. You’ll say “please stop!” And, most crucially: there’ll be absolutely no doubt about what’s happened.
A doubt that won’t be echoed by loved ones, that won’t be questioned by society and most importantly: by you the survivor.
Society tells us that the after the assault, we’ll receive sympathy, understanding and support. That “everything will get better”.
Yet, surviving two assaults has instead taught me the harsh reality. One we all need to face…
For years I carried the “shame” of how I lost my virginity. I was 16 and under the influence of alcohol. Today, I still hold only a few hazy memories of that night.
On holiday overseas, I went to the perpetrator’s apartment with a friend after celebrating my exam results.
I didn’t want to lose my virginity when I agreed to go. I hadn’t planned anything to happen (no condoms in tow). And, I wasn’t remotely interested.
In his flat, I was sat on the sofa with a drink. Yet, the next thing I remember is being directed to his bedroom, fully nude, my hand in his.
Then: lying on my back, searing pain. Blood.
No protection – putting me at risk of unwanted pregnancy and contracting an STD (things I was very clued up about, knowing I’d use protection when I’d eventually have sex).
Leaving his apartment, he refused to walk me home.
Once back at my hotel, I felt like something inside me had died. That life would never be the same again.
I lay on the bed, crying – without really knowing why.
The next day, I went in search of the morning after pill at a local pharmacy. I thankfully got it after being re-directed to the local hospital (as well as a negative STD check once home).
My case was common. Research has found that in 41% of cases of penetrative sexual assault, a condom was not used.
Yet there was not one safeguarding check. No one asked me about consent (that I can remember) or questioned the lack of contraception. Nada.
There were questions about my last period. But, presuming/discovering I was over the age of consent (which I was), no other questions followed.
And I didn’t question it either. I thought it was consensual. I hadn’t screamed. I hadn’t “fought back”.
I don’t really recall wanting/agreeing to it, but I hadn’t said “no”. I knew what was going on. I just couldn’t remember everything.
Intoxication or hazed trauma – who knows. My “friend” later told me that she’d told him: “to f**k me.”
The fact that I was a teenager with a man in his early 20s – a child whose virginity had been stolen – remained ignored, misunderstood and buried.
Life moved on. Except, I carried a sense of guilt and shame that I’d “made a horrible mistake”. A burden that I carried for almost 20 years.
Fast forward into my mid-30s, my then spouse referred to the incident as an assault. Assault I thought? I wasn’t assaulted.
It wasn’t until a friend (a childhood survivor himself) referred to me as exactly that with a mutual friend, that I learnt the reality.
Again, questioning him, I denied it. Yet many conversations later, I came to realise: I was assaulted. I just hadn’t realised.
Had this happened to a friend, I’d never have doubted it. Yet with myself, there was a blind spot.
But I knew what was happening? I didn’t tell him no? I chose to have a drink.
A child, under the influence of alcohol, unable to make “choices” about contraception – it all started to slowly make sense.
Informed consent, power dynamics, coercion – these were all topics we’d never been taught about at school. But should have been.
Now an adult and almost two decades later, I was coming to terms with the reality – albeit with difficulty.
I confined in more and more friends (male and female), expecting them to say that I was making it up/had misunderstood (as I still often believe/doubt).
Yet, over and over, friends would say the same thing: “Mary, that’s rape”.
Yes, all of that shame and self-hatred I’d carried was directed to a victim – a victim of a crime knowingly and happily carried out by a grown adult.
A man that’s probably married with kids by now. I often wonder, does his partner know…?
After learning the reality of my assault, I thought things would get easier. But they didn’t…
I discovered that being a survivor is a secret that you’ll carry with you forever – with mounting pressure.
Society is simply not equipped (or willing) to deal with the issue.
With a culture of victim blaming, a lack of understanding on consent and relationships, shame and stigma around assault and gaslighting of victims, survivors’ struggles continue beyond the trauma of the assault itself.
And what’s more, you learn that: you’re never safe from sexual assault.
I know this because, the sad truth is that, the more I talked about my experiences with friends, the more I realised just how many people had been affected. Both male and female.
Some had kept the secret hidden for years – telling no one. And others, like me, didn’t even realise they’d been assaulted.
Sharing our experiences, more than one female friend came to realise that their “first time” or first sexual experience had been forced by the man in question.
Men who didn’t talk about what happened, men who gaslit them, men who denied it.
And it was this gaslighting that I too was about to discover. As, a few weeks into dating one man, I was assaulted. An act he denies.
Gaslighting me, he claimed “it didn’t happen”. He then accused me of being rude (when confronting him) and “selfish” for not meeting his “sexual needs”.
Gaslit, confused, and worried that I was simply “triggered” by the past: I didn’t know what to think. The memories were hazy but the panic and tears very real.
Telling him I needed space, I lay on his bed (he was in another room) and cried. Alone. Then, realising it was night and being confused, I stayed and proceeded to make dinner.
The next morning, discussing the previous night with friends, the tears began to flow. My breakfast then lay thrown up and flushed down the toilet.
I told him it was over. “We had a great night last night… I can’t change your mind about it” he echoed, opening the door. I walked out and never saw him again.
Distressed, I tried to return to my normal routine. After all: it wasn’t the first time it had happened. I was a “strong woman” I told myself.
Yet the irony is that I missed a call for specialist trauma services that day because I couldn’t face picking up the phone. However, I carried on.
Until the next day, when I simply couldn’t do it any longer. I broke down and my mental health started to plummet.
Confused about what happened, I reached out to more friends. I was shocked, dazed and trying to make sense of what happened.
The incident that took place when I was 16 was different – I was as a child – and an intoxicated one at that.
But now, a young adult, I’d encountered a different scenario. One that occurred with a man I was dating.
We’d been intimate before and what started as consensual, had ended up with assault.
Digging through the hazy gaslit scenario in my mind, I found myself Googling the issue. And I came across an article entitled: “Can you call it ‘rape’ if he makes you can omelette in the morning?”.
What I discovered, was a whole unspoken side of assault that only survivors and experts know and understand.
The reality is that:
Yes, in the aftermath, lay a whole series of problems, ranging from societal attitudes towards assault, to poor conviction rates.
To this day, I haven’t reported either of the assaults to the authorities and I haven’t told my family.
Why? Because the fact is that, I’d be taking a risk.
A risk of being inadvertently blamed (“why did you go to his flat?”), a demand for answers and a feeling of “breaking their heart” as their perceptions of me (as a “victim”) would shatter forever.
It was more emotional turmoil that I simply didn’t – and still don’t – need.
After hearing the varying reaction from a female family member regarding the two murders of Sarah Everard (murdered by a policeman) and Zara Aleena (a woman walking alone at night), I knew I didn’t want to open that can of worms.
During a telephone conversation, the question: “Why was she [Zara] walking alone at that time of night?” stood in stark contrast to a more blatant display of sympathy for Sarah – who had been handcuffed by a policeman and ordered into his car.
Of course, no decent person believes any that anyone should be assaulted or that it’s “their fault”.
But then why the questions? It doesn’t matter if some is walking around stark naked, at 3am in the morning, in the pitch-black dark: no one has the right to assault them.
Yet, continuing to blame survivors, we’re not only subject to a crime itself, but the burden of the secret that society throws back in our faces.
Time after time, we hear: “what was she wearing?”, “why was she out alone?”, “she just regretted it the next morning”.
Of course, we should all think about our safety – but if only people could spend more time and energy calling out the sexism and abuse, than simply projecting onto survivors. Then, perhaps we’d get somewhere.
Instead, society continues to simply perpetuate the problem and stigmatise survivors. For example, if victim blaming wasn’t enough, add to the equation the reactions, responses and fears of (heterosexual) men.
I, of course, learnt quickly to not tell men. I came to realise that my “secret” must only be shared with people who’d demonstrated the trust, love and capacity to “cope with it”.
Some men saw it as a vulnerability – attempting to exploit the situation. Narcissists would feed off it. Like a bird of prey seeking out a target.
Then there were the cowards. Men that made it all about themselves, “fearing” that I’d blame them for something if we ever got physical.
Again, the misogyny that continues to create the environment for assault in the first place, continues to “punish” survivors. Painting us as victims for men to contemplate about how they can best manage or exploit the situation.
As survivors, we don’t want pity. We don’t want fear. We simply want to be respected and to be safe.
We don’t want thinly veiled attempts of empathy because “women are someone’s mother, sister, wife etc.” We deserve respect because we’re individuals in our own right.
We’re all human. And we don’t deserve to be abused.
Yet, it doesn’t end here. On top of the “who to tell” dilemma lies the risk of going through more emotional upheaval if we report the crime.
Why? Because here in the UK, the perpetrator will most-likely face no court case or sentence.
Plagued with a sense of guilt for not protecting other women (against a crime I didn’t commit), for not speaking out against injustice, yet a fear of “perverting the course of justice” by reporting a false crime, I haven’t reported anything.
Speaking to friends, advice included: “it’s not worth the excess trauma”, “it’s his word against yours” and “they’d rip you to shreds”.
And they’re right – there’s no one answer.
It’s my (unconfident, confused) word against his. And, if we were to get to a courtroom, prosecution rates are so low, they’d most likely not be found guilty.
Here in the UK for example, in 2021, 67, 125 cases of rape were reported to the police.
And how many subsequent prosecutions? A grand total of: 2,409 (for the period 2020 to 2021).
Yes, only 5% of cases that were taken to trial resulted in prosecution.
Dame Vera Baird, Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, issued a statement on the issue and it’s pretty damming:
“The distressing truth is that if you are raped in Britain today, your chances of seeing justice are slim.”
Coming to terms with my assaults, I started to better understand why survivors weren’t coming forward and why historical abuse is often buried and kept secret for so long.
It’s like being punished all over – by both society and the legal system.
Following the emergence of the #MeToo movement, we have seen an increase in survivors reporting sexual assault and greater awareness on the reality and prevalence of sexual violence globally.
Generation after generation, we do seem to be moving forward. However, not quickly enough.
We’re hearing, for example, more and more slogans such as “no means no” which attempt to raise awareness of consent.
However, these fail to recognise that consent isn’t always about vocalising “no” – as opposed to a simple “yes”.
Consent must be informed, clear and NOT REMOVED. Understanding the context is critical.
For example, is there alcohol involved? Is there coercion? Are all parties able to understand the concept of consent and reality of sexual intimacy?
What we need to be teaching about is INFORMED consent. Because, just as the reality of an assault is hazy to the survivor, so is the education and understanding of sexual assault we’re being given as a society.
There must be no doubt. And yes: you can change your mind or the circumstances may change.
Take for example the issue of stealthing – where a condom is removed without the other person’s consent. This is now rightfully now classed as rape here in the UK.
Yet the reality is that songs such as “Blurred Lines” and “rape jokes” perpetuate a continual rape culture. And this has serious consequences, building:
“…an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture. Rape culture is perpetuated through the use of misogynist language…thereby creating a society that disregards women’s rights and safety.”
(Marshall University’s Women’s Center)
Jokes about “her regretting it in the morning” and confusion over sex whilst intoxicated need to be addressed for what they are – skirting the issue in question.
A lack of education, prevailing misconceptions and continuous victim shaming continue to promote an ongoing rape culture. A culture where informed consent is, at best misunderstood, and at worst: ignored.
The abusive practice of gaslighting for example, is also now only just coming to public knowledge.
However, it continues to be used as a tool of denial and shaming by perpetrators and non-perpetrators alike in the context of sexual assault.
So, how do we move forward? Well, we need to tackle the issue head on – starting with the historic culture behind rape.
We need to dispel the myths and victim blaming narratives about clothing, alcohol and “times and places”.
And we need to encourage everyone to speak out and to educate children and adults alike on consent, assault and sexual trauma.
To ultimately prevent assault, we need a deep socio-cultural shift in attitudes.
We need to call out the narratives that shame victims and de-toxify spaces that promote rape culture.
We need critical education on informed consent which can critically help to both prevent assault and help survivors to better understand their experiences.
For example, a friend of mine recently ran a workshop on consent and sexual assault to a group of women. Whilst the workshop went well, what he didn’t expect was for four women to approach him afterwards saying they’d been affected.
They’d carried the abuse without realising for (what can only be assumed as) years.
Yet, understanding the abuse is just the first step. Because, when survivors accept that the abuse has happened and look for support, it’s often inaccessible and/or inadequate.
When I was looking for specialised support for example, countless charities offering specialist counselling were so overwhelmed that many couldn’t even put me on a waiting list.
And this was before the second assault even took place…
Survivors must be able to access crucial emotional and legal support in safe, accessible spaces which offer trauma-centred care and result in higher conviction rates.
This will hopefully encourage survivors to come forward, help aid their recovery and ultimately get justice.
Ultimately, it’s only when we stop blaming the victims, offer solid support and hold the perpetrators accountable, that we’re making it clear as a society that assault is wrong – it’s a crime – and you won’t get away with it.
So, time’s up folks. This issue must be addressed.
Survivors deserve better. Future generations deserve better. And we, as a society, deserve better.
The question is, with (as one fellow survivor so eloquently expressed) sexual assault being the only crime where we blame the victim, is society ready and willing to change…?
Support services and further information:
If you – or someone you know – has been affected by sexual assault, or if you’re looking to find out more information on the issue, here are some helpful resources:
For non-survivors in particular: please speak out against abuse. Offer a confidential empathetic ear and denounce victim blaming for what it is.
And to each and every person out there: teach the people in your lives that if there’s no (informed) consent; it’s assault.
Plain and simple.
*Name changed
This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.