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Putting the Term "Rape" on Trial - TIME
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And according to Clarence Mock, Safi's defense attorney, the term rape seethes with enough emotion to prejudice a jury and is itself a legal conclusion. Once that word is uttered, Mock says, "the skunk is in the jury box and it's hard to get the smell out."
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Mock felt that the ban ensured his client a fair trial. "She, like any other witness, is subject to the rules of evidence," he says of Bowen. "To say that there is a First Amendment right of the witness to say whatever they want in a courtroom is a silly notion."
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The second trial was scheduled to begin last spring. This time, Bowen refused to comply with the court-ordered language ban, which had been expanded to include the terms "sexual assault kit" and "sexual assault nurse."
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On Bowen's behalf, protesters demonstrated outside the Lincoln courthouse, and a petition, which Bowen signed, circulated on the Internet to change Nebraska law.
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Bowen's attorney, Wendy Murphy, says her client had nothing to do with the protest, which was organized by PAVE (Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment), a Chicago-based advocacy group for rape victims.
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But since Bowen has decided to take her language-ban appeal to the federal district court, she and her lawyer have begun soliciting support from PAVE and other national advocacy groups.
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It's significant that this First Amendment challenge regarding the rights of witnesses has originated in a sexual-assault case. Sex crimes, due in part to their intensely personal nature, tap into a complicated set of cultural values and historical meaning; thus, a ban on sex-crime-related words carries a different weight from one on words like "murder" or "embezzlement."
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Michelle Anderson, an expert in sexual violence and the law, and the dean of the City University of New York Law School, notes that rulings like Cheuvront's reflect the way that the courts have traditionally viewed rape cases. "The notion that the word rape is so charged derives from an historical willingness to place a higher burden on rape victims who come forward," she says, pointing out that in the past, rape cases had required corroboration and evidence of the use of force, and instructions could be given to the jury to treat an alleged rape victim's testimony with special caution.
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"It's a way of putting a thumb on the scale because often in acquaintance rape cases, the woman experiences the intercourse as rape and the man experiences it as sex," Anderson says of the language ban. "It's a way of denying the woman's ability to describe her experience as she lived it."
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The third sexual-assault trial has yet to be rescheduled, but in the meantime, Bowen hopes to eventually take her appeal from the federal district court to the U.S. Supreme Court and achieve a national standard for allowable language in the courts — one that upholds a witness's right to free speech without treading on the right of the accused to a fair trial.
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After six years, singer R. Kelly to go on trial - CNN.com
Tags: article, crime, celebrities, rape on 2008-09-02 -All Annotations (0) -About
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But after six years of repeated delays, jury selection is set to begin Friday in the Grammy-winning R&B singer's trial on child pornography charges, prompted by a videotape allegedly showing Kelly having sex with a girl as young as 13.
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Prosecutors, though, will have a unique challenge: The alleged victim, now 23, says it wasn't her. And Kelly's attorneys -- including Ed Genson, who often represents the rich and famous -- haven't admitted it's Kelly in the video.
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The 41-year-old Kelly, whose first name is Robert, faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. But Kelly -- one of urban music's biggest stars, and a consistent hitmaker despite his legal woes
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Police and prosecutors said their investigation, including interviews with about 50 witnesses, determined Kelly and an underage girl were on the tape, and that FBI forensics experts had determined the tape was authentic.
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It is unclear whether prosecutors have asked -- or would be allowed -- to tell jurors about accusations that Kelly allegedly had sexual relations with other minors, because some of the trial proceedings have been kept secret by the judge.
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Kelly has settled three lawsuits accusing him of having sex with underage girls, filed in 1997, 2001 and 2002. In the third suit, the woman claimed that she began having sex with Kelly when she was 16, and that he forced her to have an abortion.
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In 2003, Kelly was arrested in Florida on child pornography charges after investigators said they found photos of him having sex with a girl. Charges were dropped after a judge ruled detectives illegally seized the photographs from a digital camera in his home.
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Documents show Kelly secretly married the singer Aaliyah in 1994, when she was 15
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Despite his legal troubles, Kelly -- who rose from poverty on Chicago's South Side to become a superstar singer, songwriter and producer -- still retains a huge following, and his popularity has arguably grown since being charged in 2002.
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Although he won a Grammy in 1997 for the gospel-like song "I Believe I Can Fly," his biggest hits are sexually charged songs like "Bump N' Grind," "Ignition" and his current single.
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Huckabee: Politicization of rape victims' deaths 'heartbreaking' - CNN.com
Tags: article, crime, politics, rape, violence on 2008-09-02 -All Annotations (0) -About
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"There are families who are truly, understandably and reasonably, grief stricken," Huckabee told CNN. "And for people to now politicize these deaths and to try to make a political case out of it rather than to simply understand that a system failed and that we ought to extend our grief and heartfelt sorrow to these families, I just regret politics is reduced to that."
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The case of the rapist, Wayne DuMond, began in 1985, when he was accused of raping a 17-year-old girl. He was later convicted and sentenced to a life term.
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In 1996, Huckabee, during his first term as Arkansas governor, expressed support for the parole of DuMond in a letter to him.
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Huckabee said he had considered granting DuMond clemency in 1996, but he dropped the idea in response to public outcry and because he wanted to ensure DuMond was supervised when he was released from prison.
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Huckabee said it was the decision by former Arkansas Govs. Bill Clinton and Jim Guy Tucker that made DuMond eligible for parole, and Huckabee declined to reduce DuMond's sentence further.
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However, Charles Chastain, a parole board member at the time, told ABC News he felt pressure from Huckabee when the board considered DuMond's parole in 1996, and the Arkansas Times reported in 2002 that two other board members said they were influenced by Huckabee to parole DuMond.
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Huckabee noted that the three board members who said they were pressured were appointed to the board by Democrats Clinton and Tucker.
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Huckabee said Wednesday his discussion with the parole board in 1996 was a general discussion about clemency, not about the DuMond case.
But a former Huckabee aide, Butch Reeves, tells CNN that the DuMond case was discussed during the meeting with the parole board, but that it was the board members who asked Huckabee about the case.
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Documents posted on the Web site The Huffington Post indicate Huckabee received letters from several victims of DuMond before his release.
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The letters detailed his past actions and pleaded that he remain incarcerated.
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"I feel that if he is released it is only a matter of time before he commits another crime and fear that he will not leave a witness to testify against him the next time," one victim wrote. She described how DuMond had raped her at knifepoint.
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CNN.com - Florida Senate eyes tougher sex offender law - Apr 20, 2005
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On a 118-0 vote, the House passed legislation that would require longer prison sentences, lifetime probation and electronic monitoring for sex offenders convicted of crimes against children.
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The bill would punish the molestation of children under 12 with a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life, "followed by probation or community control for the remainder of the person's natural life and subject to a system of active electronic monitoring."
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The legislation also comes less than three days after authorities in Ruskin, Florida, found the body of 13-year-old Sarah Michelle Lunde in a pond Saturday.
Sex offender David Onstott, who previously dated the girl's mother, told authorities he choked the teen and dumped her body in the pond on April 10, Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee said.
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The bill also would make it a third-degree felony in Florida to harbor a sex offender.
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CNN.com - Congress gets Lunsford legislation - Apr 21, 2005
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Members of Congress on Thursday were introduced to legislation that would require states to keep closer tabs on convicted sex offenders not behind bars.
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"While individual states have passed legislation targeting sexual offenders and predators, I feel that we need to have strong federal guidelines for states to follow."
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Currently, states are supposed to send sex offenders an annual mailer with an address verification form.
Under the Jessica Lunsford Act, states would be required to send the mailers semiannually and at random times, so offenders don't know when to expect them.
For those who do not answer the mailers, the legislation would increase penalties to imprisonment and a $100,000 fine. Any offender who fails twice to register with a state or fails more than once to answer a mailer would be required to wear an electronic ankle monitor.
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The bill is currently in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, according to a congressional bill-tracking site. Brown-Waite said 43 lawmakers have signed on.
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The Florida Senate is now considering a bill, also called the Jessica Lunsford Act, that would impose longer sentences and tougher penalties for convicted sex offenders. It would mandate that, after their release, the offenders be electronically monitored for the rest of their lives. The Florida House unanimously approved a similar bill Tuesday. (Full story)
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Rep. Ted Poe, a Republican Congressman from Texas, has introduced legislation that would make the FBI's database of sex offenders available to the general public, Brown-Waite said.
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"The reason we're here is because of a little girl who was 9 years old and lived in Florida," Poe said.
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CNN.com - Teen pushes change in youth sex offender laws - Jun 9, 2005
Tags: article, activism, crime, rape, law, violence on 2008-09-02 -All Annotations (0) -About
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A teenage girl who was abused as a child and convinced Wisconsin lawmakers to make public the records of juvenile sex offenders, urged Congress Thursday to create similar federal regulation.
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"The simple truth is that juvenile sex offenders turn into adult predators. Kids all over the country need the same kind of protection as in Wisconsin," she told the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.
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Critics say opening the records of juvenile offenders would scar them and diminish chances for rehabilitation.
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Wisconsin's law requires police chiefs and sheriffs to assess the public risk of each person on the registry whose offenses occurred as juveniles and notify the community about those considered likely to re-offend.
Rep. Mark Green, R-Wisconsin, plans to introduce federal legislation similar to Wisconsin's law.
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Amie, her father Mark Zyla and supporters, took their fight to the state Legislature in January after seeing 23-year-old Joshua Wade, the man convicted of assaulting her nine years ago, on local news as a suspect in a similar crime.
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In an aside to child victims, she advised, "stand up to your abusers. Abuse does not have to affect your whole life. If I can overcome the hurt and trauma, then so can you."
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U.S. Marine guilty of 'wrongful sexual contact' in Japan - CNN.com
Tags: article, crime, military, rape, violence on 2008-09-02 -All Annotations (0) -About
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A U.S. Marine accused of raping a 19-year-old Japanese woman last year was found guilty Thursday of "committing wrongful sexual contact and indecent acts," the U.S. military said, but he was acquitted of rape.
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Dean is among four Marines under court-martial in the case. The others are Sgt. Lanaeus J. Braswell, 25; Gunnery Sgt. Carl M. Anderson, 39; and Gunnery Sgt. Jarvis D. Raynor, 34, the military said.
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Japanese authorities investigated but decided in November not to file charges.
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Dean also was found guilty of conspiracy to commit indecent acts and two minor charges. He was acquitted of conspiracy to kidnap or rape.
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The case is similar to a recent alleged sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl involving a U.S. Marine on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. That case sparked outrage and stirred memories of an earlier rape committed by U.S. servicemen.
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Staff Sgt. Tyrone Luther Hadnott, 38, was charged last month with the rape of a child under 16, abusive sexual contact with a child, making a false official statement, adultery and kidnapping, the military said.
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Anti-American sentiment boiled over in 1995, after three American servicemen were convicted in the kidnapping and gang rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl.
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Two years ago, a U.S. civilian military employee was jailed for nine years for raping two women.
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Sexually assaulted female troops struggle to recover - CNN.com
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Even as women distinguish themselves in battle alongside men, they're fighting off sexual assault and harassment. It's not a new consequence of war.
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Of the female veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who have walked into a VA facility, 15 percent have screened positive for military sexual trauma,
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In January, the VA opened its 16th inpatient ward specializing in treating victims of military sexual trauma, this one in New Jersey.
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Depression, anxiety, problem drinking, sexually transmitted diseases and domestic abuse are all problems that have been linked to sexual abuse, according to the Miles Foundation, a nonprofit group that provides support to victims of violence associated with the military.
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Since 2002, the foundation says, it has received more than 1,000 reports of assault and rape in the U.S. Central Command areas of operation, which include Iraq and Afghanistan.
In most reports to the foundation, fellow U.S. service members have been named as the perpetrator, but contractors and local nationals also have been accused.
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Plappert, 47, said she was raped by Iraqi men in 2003 at a store in Hillah, when she got separated from her group.
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She said it's hard for people outside a war environment to understand how living in high-stress, primitive conditions can affect your ability to make decisions. She didn't report the attack immediately, she said, because she felt an obligation to continue the mission and not burden others. She also wondered how the report would be perceived.
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Schapper said other female troops she has spoken with described similar experiences. A picture of one was posted with "Slut of Bayji" written underneath. Another endured having a more senior enlisted soldier ask her favorite sexual position over a public radio, said Schapper, who has met with members of Congress on behalf of the nonpartisan advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
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Connie Best, a clinical psychologist and professor at the Medical University of South Carolina who retired from the Navy Reserves, said that people typically think of sexual harassment as someone making a comment about someone's appearance but that it goes well beyond that.
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"There's automatically this thing that 'sexual harassment is not a big deal, it's not as bad as rape,' and indeed it often is not as distressing as a completed sexual assault, but it still can be something that highly affects a person," Best said. Research also has found that working and living environments where unwanted sexual behaviors take place have been associated with increased odds of rape.
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After high-profile attacks in Kuwait and Iraq, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld convened a 2004 task force on the treatment and care of sexual assault victims. One change that followed was the creation of a confidential component in the military's reporting system, so a victim can come forward to get help without necessarily triggering an investigation.
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In the fiscal year that ended October 1, 131 rapes and assaults were reported in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Kaye Whitley, director of the Defense Department's sexual assault prevention and response office. Comparing that to previous years isn't possible because of changes in the way data was collected, she said.
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The actual number is probably higher than what's reported. Among members of the military surveyed in 2006 who indicated they had experienced unwanted sexual contact, about 20 percent said they had reported it to an authority or organization.
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This summer, the Pentagon is bringing experts together to come up with a more aggressive prevention strategy. It also is working with the nonprofit group Men Can Stop Rape to help teach troops how to identify warning signs of problems around them.
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When victims do complain, too often the perpetrator is not moved out or punished, said Colleen Mussolino, national commander of the Women Veterans of America.
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A vast majority of women at war feel safe with their comrades in arms, "but for the ones who feel unsafe, it's hell," said Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain who directs the Women in Military Project at the Washington-based Women's Research and Education Institution.
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At a recent women veteran's conference in Washington, Leanne Weldin, of Pittsburgh, who deployed in Iraq with the Arizona National Guard in 2003 as a 1st lieutenant, described arriving in the Kuwait staging area and seeing warning signs of rape. She said she endured some minor sexual harassment while deployed and was groped by an Iraqi teen while sitting in a Humvee.
When her own daughter wanted to join the Army, Weldin said later, she didn't discourage her. But she offered some sobering advice.
"Watch out for yourself. Don't party with the soldiers in the barracks. You've got to watch out for date rape. Watch out for yourself. It's still a male culture. Don't let yourself get taken advantage of. Don't let yourself get sucked in. Don't let your guard down," Weldin said.
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he VA now provides free care to any veteran from any era who has experienced military sexual trauma. That's a change from the 1991 Persian Gulf War and earlier wars. Since 2002, about 20 percent of female veterans from all eras and 1 percent of male veterans have screened positive for military sexual trauma.
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It's unknown whether incidents of rape and assault are higher in the military population than the civilian population. One study, however, of 1991 Persian Gulf War veterans found that incidents of assault, rape and harassment were higher at war than in peacetime military samples, according to the VA's PTSD center.
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It's only in recent years that the military and VA have kept comprehensive statistics, and even the two agencies define military sexual trauma differently.
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The VA still sees veterans who experienced sexual attacks in Vietnam -- and even World War II.
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geocities - Google Search
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History of Rape: A Bibliography
ArchiveLanham and London: Scarecrow Press, 2000: p. 99.] CONTENTS. The History of Rape: A Bibliography - URL: http://de.geocities.com/history_guide/horb/index.html.
de.geocities.com/history_guide/horb/
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Bosnian 'Rape Camp' Survivors Testify in The Hague
Tags: feminism, rape, war, human rights, violence, law, crime, article on 2008-07-03 -All Annotations (0) -About
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Run Date: 07/19/00
By Jerome Socolovsky
Special to WEnews -
In the first international trial focusing on rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity, 16 Bosnian Muslim women confronted their alleged rapists, speaking out about the systematic assaults for a war crimes tribunal--and for the history books.
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The women, identified only by codes, were among the 16 survivors who testified for the prosecution in the Foca rape trial, named after the southeast Bosnian city overrun by Serb forces at the outset of the ethnic war that lasted from 1992 to 1995.
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An estimated 50,000 girls and women were raped during the conflict.
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The proceedings have been going on since March at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, an ad hoc court set up by the United Nations, down the street from the International Court of Justice in this seaside Dutch city of The Hague.
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Almost every night in the summer and fall of 1992, Serb soldiers would enter the detention centers and select their victims
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Some were kept as personal sex slaves by former neighbors--much older men whose wives and families they knew.
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Foca's women's prisons have come to be known at the war crimes tribunal as the "rape camps" or "rape factories" of the Balkan conflict.
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Although rape has been part of warfare since men began doing battle, what distinguished it in the Bosnian conflict was its perpetration in a systematic, widespread manner with official encouragement.
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Now, prosecutors in The Hague are trying for the first time in history to make rape punishable as one of the most serious crimes under international law.
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In her book, "War Crimes against Women," scholar Kelly Dawn Askin says Bosnian Muslim women were prized targets because, in their patriarchal culture, communal pride was inextricably linked to their virginity--or their fidelity as married women.
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Because the transmission of identity is patrilineal in both Serb Orthodox and Muslim traditions, the women were taunted about the Serb babies they would bear as a result of the rapes.
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"It's about domination, power, violence," says Patricia Viseur Sellers, a former attorney with the Philadelphia public defender's office, now the tribunal's expert on gender war crimes.
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"It's the same motivating factor that would make someone torture someone in a jail cell in Argentina. That person probably runs a newspaper stand during non-wartime and would never think that they're either capable or would want to do that," she said.
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When it was established in 1993, the tribunal marked the first international prosecution of war criminals since Nazi and Japanese leaders were put in the dock after World War II.
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At the Nuremberg trials, rape was never prosecuted.
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In the Tokyo trials, it was not recognized as a full-fledged war crime even though it would have been one of the easier prosecutions of atrocities.
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Today, the Foca case is not the only international trial to include rape charges, although it is by far the most significant.
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On July 21, the Yugoslav tribunal will rule on an appeal by a Bosnian Croat paramilitary fighter, sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for failing to prevent the rape of a woman prisoner by a subordinate.
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At another U.N. tribunal on the slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda, judges held that sexual violence could be considered an act of genocide.
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Jurisprudence from these trials will provide the underpinning case law and form the building blocks of the statute for the International Criminal Court, currently in the ratification process. That tribunal is intended to prosecute atrocities anywhere in the world.
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One of the more important precedents established at the Yugoslav tribunal is that witnesses who have suffered traumatic experiences are not necessarily considered unreliable, as has been the case elsewhere.
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The court's statute is considered progressive on gender crimes, requiring no corroboration for the testimony of sexual assault victims.
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"He wanted to hurt me. But he could never hurt me as much as my soul was hurting me."
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Jerome Socolovsky covers the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague for The Associated Press.
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Women's eNews is a nonprofit independent news service covering issues of concern to women and their allies.
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Systematic Rape in Bosnia: a Tool of Genocide
Tags: statistics, rape, violence, feminism, human rights, war, law, article on 2008-07-03 -All Annotations (0) -About
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The site of these crimes, known as the Partizan sports hall, was in the center of Foca, a small, predominantly Muslim town in eastern Bosnia. At time, it was used as a transit facility for women and children about to be deported from the town. But for two months in 1992, between June and August, it functioned as a rape camp, holding 74 people, including about 50 women.
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Partizan was but one of dozens of Serb rape camps in Bosnia - some are said to be still in operation
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A special mission of the European Community estimated that 20,000 or more Bosnian Muslim women had been raped by Serb forces through the end of last year; numerous investigations by other governmental and non-governmental organizations all have concluded that rape has been widespread.
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In Sarajevo, the besieged capital of the devastated state of
Bosnia, the State Commission on War Crimes, headed by Croat Stjepan Kljuic,
is in investigating all three men. Its allegations against Ostojic alone
read like a page from the Nuremberg Nazi War Crimes Tribunal. -
Seven victims at a refugee camp at Kirklareli, Turkey, and in
southern Serbia retold the story of systematic rape in and around Foca and
of the rape camp in the heart of the town. Written statements by 10 others
were made available by the gynecologist who first examined them after their
release last August -
According to Bosnia Muslim sources, Ostojic played a critical role
in establishing a pattern of abuse of women. Alija Delimustafic, who was
Bosnia's interior minister at the time of the capture of Foca, said he had
received direct evidence from wiretaps that proved Ostojic had ordered the
raping of women in Foca. -
Delimustafic left the Bosnia parliament some
months ago and is now working in Vienna as a private businessman. -
that was the beginning of the
night of the long knives against the Serbian prince, -
Both Pilaff and Omerdzic said their information came from refugees
or the families of women still being held in Bosnia. Omerdzic believes
those taken to Velecevo either were killed there or still are being held.
He also estimated that thousands of Muslim women are still held in Serb
camps inside Bosnia, where widespread rape continues. Newsday was unable to
confirm assertions. -
Karadzic said that he had not heard that women had been held and
systematically raped nightly over two months at Partizon hall
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Amazon.com: "rape camps": Key Phrase page
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