VOICE OF COURAGE - Rep. Ann McLane Kuster

"On the House floor, a very personal rebuke of the Stanford rapist's sentence" PBS NewsHour 6/22/2016

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  We return to the U.S. Capitol now, but for a different form of speaking out.

The light sentencing of a Stanford University swimmer for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman sparked outage across the country and in Congress.

The story prompted New Hampshire Congresswoman Ann McLane Kuster to share her own experience with sexual assault during a speech on the House floor Tuesday night.

REP. ANN MCLANE KUSTER (D), New Hampshire:  I was an 18-year-old student.  I was going to a dance.  The dance was at a fraternity, and I intended to enjoy the evening with my friends.

We danced.  We listened to music.  We enjoyed the evening, and we enjoyed the party, until one young man assaulted me in a crude and insulting way, and I ran, alone, into the cold dark night.

I have never forgotten that night.  I was filled with shame, regret, humiliation, while he was egged on by everyone at that party standing by.

Several years later, I was working as a legislative assistant right here on Capitol Hill, and I was assaulted again, this time by a distinguished guest of the United States Congress.  I was 23 years old, and as Judge Poe referenced tonight, I didn't say a word to anyone.

And, in fact, until I wrote these words to share with you tonight, I had never told anyone this story.  My family didn't know, my husband my children, my friends.

I tell these stories tonight on the floor of the United States Congress not because they are remarkable or unique.  Sadly, I tell these stories because they are all too common, and, tonight, we will not be silent anymore.

Tonight, we stand together, Republicans and Democrats, mothers and sisters, from across the country to take a stand for liberty and justice for all.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Congresswoman Kuster also called for more accountability and education about sexual assault on college campuses and in communities.

MALE CHAUVINIST WORLD - Teen Consent

"Prep school rape trial raises questions about teen consent" PBS NewsHour 8/28/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Nineteen-year-old Owen Labrie, a former student at a prep school in New Hampshire, was accused of raping a freshman girl in 2014, but a jury cleared him of felony rape, convicting him on other lesser charges.  Jeffrey Brown discusses the case and the idea of sexual consent with Deborah Tuerkheimer of Northwestern University School of Law and Emily Bazelon of The New York Times Magazine.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  ..... we return to questions and concerns being raised about sexual assault among teens at the high school and college level, and what sort of consent can and should be given.

A trial over an alleged case of rape at an elite boarding school in New Hampshire concluded today.  The case has attracted national attention, and it touches on some broader issues.

Jeffrey Brown starts with some background.

WOMAN:  Guilty or not guilty?

WOMAN:  Guilty.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Owen Labrie wept as the verdict was read aloud in a New Hampshire state courtroom.  The former prep school student had been accused of raping a freshman girl before his graduation in May 2014.

But the jury this afternoon cleared him of felony rape and instead convicted him on three misdemeanor sex charges and one felony count of using a computer to lure a minor for sexual contact.  During the trial, prosecutors argued Labrie forced himself on the alleged victim during a so-called senior salute, a tradition at Saint Paul’s where some older students arrange trysts with younger ones, including for sex.

OWEN LABRIE, Defendant:  I thought she was having a good time.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Labrie said there was consensual sexual contact between the two, but later testified that — quote — “divine inspiration” compelled him to stop short of intercourse.

OWEN LABRIE:  I thought to myself, maybe we shouldn’t do this.  It hadn’t been my intention going into the night to have sex.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The identity of the victim, now 16 years old, has not been released.  She testified that she said no to Labrie three times during the encounter.

PERVERSION OF ISLAM - Slavery and Rape (Updated)

"SLAVERY AND RAPE BECOME RELIGION FOR ISIS" by Rukmini Callmachi (New York Times News Service), San Diego Union-Tribune 8/14/2019

NOTE:  This is from the online print version of the newspaper, therefore no article link.

In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin.  Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Koran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.

He bound her hands and gagged her.  Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.

When it was over, he knelt to pray again, book-ending the rape with acts of religious devotion.  “I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” said the girl.  “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever.  He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God,” she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity.

The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of the Islamic State in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution.  Interviews with 21 women and girls who recently escaped the Islamic State, as well as an examination of the group’s official communications, illuminate how the practice has been enshrined in the group’s core tenets.

The trade in Yazidi women and girls has created a persistent infrastructure, with a network of warehouses where the victims are held, viewing rooms where they are inspected and marketed, and a dedicated fleet of buses used to transport them.

A total of 5,270 Yazidis were abducted last year, and at least 3,144 are still being held, according to community leaders.  To handle them, the Islamic State has developed a detailed bureaucracy of sex slavery, including sales contracts notarized by the Islamic State-run Islamic courts.  And the practice has become an established recruiting tool to lure men from deeply conservative Muslim societies, where casual sex is taboo and dating is forbidden.

A growing body of internal policy memos and theological discussions has established guidelines for slavery, including a lengthy how-to manual issued by the Islamic State Research and Fatwa Department just last month.  Repeatedly, the Islamic State leadership has emphasized a narrow and selective reading of the Koran and other religious rulings to not only justify violence, but also to elevate and celebrate each sexual assault as spiritually beneficial, even virtuous.

“Every time that he came to rape me, he would pray,” said F, a 15-year-old girl who was captured on the shoulder of Mount Sinjar one year ago and was sold to an Iraqi fighter in his 20s.  Like some others interviewed by The New York Times, she wanted to be identified only by her first initial because of the shame associated with rape.

“He kept telling me this is ibadah,” she said, using a term from Islamic scripture meaning worship.

“He said that raping me is his prayer to God.  I said to him, ‘What you’re doing to me is wrong, and it will not bring you closer to God.’  And he said, ‘No, it’s allowed.  It’s halal,’ ” said the teenager, who escaped in April with the help of smugglers after being enslaved for nearly nine months.

Calculated conquest

The Islamic State’s formal introduction of systematic sexual slavery dates to Aug. 3, 2014, when its fighters invaded the villages on the southern flank of Mount Sinjar, a craggy massif of dun-colored rock in northern Iraq.

Its valleys and ravines are home to the Yazidis, a tiny religious minority who represent less than 1.5 percent of Iraq’s estimated population of 34 million.

The offensive on the mountain came just two months after the fall of Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq.  At first, it appeared that the subsequent advance on the mountain was just another attempt to extend the territory controlled by Islamic State fighters.

Almost immediately, there were signs that their aim this time was different.

Survivors say that men and women were separated within the first hour of their capture.  In village after village, the men and older boys were driven or marched to nearby fields, where they were forced to lie down in the dirt and sprayed with automatic weapons fire.

The women, girls and children, however, were hauled off in open-bed trucks.

“The offensive on the mountain was as much a sexual conquest as it was for territorial gain,” said Matthew Barber, a University of Chicago expert on the Yazidi minority.  He was in Dohuk, near Mount Sinjar, when the onslaught began last summer and helped create a foundation that provides psychological support for the escapees, who number more than 2,000, according to community activists.

Tried to escape

Fifteen-year-old F says her family of nine was trying to escape, speeding up mountain switchbacks, when their aging Opel overheated.  She, her mother, and her sisters — 14, 7, and 4 years old — were helplessly standing by their stalled car when a convoy of heavily armed Islamic State fighters encircled them.  “Right away, the fighters separated the men from the women,” she said.  She, her mother and sisters were first taken in trucks to the nearest town on Mount Sinjar.  “There, they separated me from my mom.  The young, unmarried girls were forced to get into buses.”

F’s account is echoed by a dozen other female victims interviewed for this article.  They described a similar set of circumstances even though they were kidnapped on different days and in locations miles apart.

F says she was driven to Mosul, about six hours away, where they herded them into the Galaxy Wedding Hall.  And in addition to Mosul, women were herded into elementary schools and municipal buildings in the Iraqi towns of Tal Afar, Solah, Ba’aj and Sinjar City.

They would be held in confinement, some for days, some for months.  Then, inevitably, they were sent in smaller groups to Syria or to other locations inside Iraq, where they were bought and sold for sex.

“It was 100 percent preplanned,” said Khider Domle, a Yazidi community activist who maintains a detailed database of the victims.  “I spoke by telephone to the first family who arrived at the Directory of Youth in Mosul, and the hall was already prepared for them.  They had mattresses, plates and utensils, food and water for hundreds of people.”

Detailed reports by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International reach the same conclusion about the organized nature of the sex trade.

The girls described how three Islamic State fighters walked in, holding a register.  They told the girls to stand.  Each one was instructed to state her first, middle and last name, her age, her hometown, whether she was married, and if she had children.

For two months, F was held inside the Galaxy hall.  “They laughed and jeered at us, saying ‘You are our sabaya.’  I didn’t know what that word meant,” she said.  Later on, the local Islamic State leader explained it meant slave.

Religious tradition

In much the same way as specific Bible passages were used centuries later to support the slave trade in the United States, the Islamic State cites specific verses or stories in the Koran or else in the Sunna, the traditions based on the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, to justify their human trafficking, experts say.

Scholars of Islamic theology disagree, however, on the proper interpretation of these verses, and on the divisive question of whether Islam actually sanctions slavery.

“In the milieu in which the Koran arose, there was a widespread practice of men having sexual relationships with unfree women,” said Kecia Ali, an associate professor of religion at Boston University and the author of a book on slavery in early Islam.  “It wasn’t a particular religious institution.  It was just how people did things.”

Cole Bunzel, a scholar of Islamic theology at Princeton University, disagrees, pointing to the numerous references to the phrase “Those your right hand possesses” in the Koran, which for centuries has been interpreted to mean female slaves.  He also points to the corpus of Islamic jurisprudence, which continues into the modern era and which he says includes highly detailed rules for the treatment of slaves.

“There is a great deal of scripture that sanctions slavery,” said Bunzel, the author of a research paper published by the Brookings Institution on the ideology of the Islamic State.  “You can argue that it is no longer relevant and has fallen into abeyance.  ISIS would argue that these institutions need to be revived, because that is what the Prophet and his companions did.”

One 34-year-old Yazidi woman, who was bought and repeatedly raped by a Saudi fighter in the Syrian city of Shadadi, described how she fared better than the second slave in the household — a 12-year-old girl who was raped for days on end despite heavy bleeding.

“He destroyed her body.  She was badly infected.  The fighter kept coming and asking me, ‘Why does she smell so bad?’  And I said, she has an infection on the inside, you need to take care of her,” the woman said.

Unmoved, he ignored the girl’s agony, continuing the ritual of praying before and after raping the child.

“I said to him, ‘She’s just a little girl,’” the older woman recalled.  “And he answered:  ‘No.  She’s not a little girl.  She’s a slave.  And she knows exactly how to have sex.’ ”  “And having sex with her pleases God,” he said.

"How Islamic State systematically turns girls into sex slaves" PBS NewsHour 8/13/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The Islamic State militants have imposed a brutal, ritualistic sex slave trade on thousands of women and girls who belong to the Yazidi sect, a persecuted religious minority.  Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times joins Judy Woodruff from Northern Iraq to discuss her reporting on the human toll of the Islamic State’s rule.

INDIA - Bans Documentary on Gan Rape

"Why did India ban a documentary on a deadly gang rape?" PBS NewsHour 3/10/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The 2012 deadly gang rape of a 23-year-old medical student in Delhi sparked outrage around the world and led to unprecedented protests.  A new documentary, “India’s Daughter,” sheds light on the violence, shame and injustice that Indian women often face.  Jeffrey Brown interviews Leslee Udwin, the film’s director, about why the case galvanized so much support and why India has banned the film.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Now to India and a documentary about a horrific event in the country’s recent past.  The government there doesn’t want citizens to watch the film, and has banned its airing.

Jeffrey Brown reports.

PROTESTERS:  We want justice!   We want justice!

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  It’s a now infamous incident that generated mass protests and stained India’s international image.  A 23-year-old medical student, Jyoti Singh, was gang-raped on this bus in South Delhi in 2012.  She died days later, and now her story is the subject of a BBC documentary, “India’s Daughter.”

NARRATOR:  According to the latest government figures, a woman is raped in India every 20 minutes.  But most rapes are unreported.  This rape led to unprecedented protests erupting across India.  The silence has been broken.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The documentary had its U.S. premiere in New York last night, and is already airing in Britain, but not in India.

The Indian government has banned the film, saying the producers never got permission to interview one of the suspects in prison, and that his statements are — quote — “an affront to the dignity of women.”

The suspect, Mukesh Singh, was driving the bus, and is one of four men currently on death row for the crime.  In the documentary, he appears unrepentant and unaffected.

MUKESH SINGH, Convicted Rapist (through interpreter):  A decent girl won’t roam around at 9:00 at night.  A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy.

And we hear from anther true male chauvinist pig.

WAR ON ISIS - Women, Use of Sexual Violence

COMMENT:  Considering the many instances in the past on Islamic fanatics and their treatment of women (example, fathers murdering their daughters for disobedience), this should not be a surprise.  These people are male chauvinists who believe they own women.

"How Islamic State uses systematic sexual violence against women" PBS NewsHour 10/7/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  We return now to the Islamic State group and its brutal tactics.

Much is known now about the group, also known as ISIL, and its high-profile beheadings of Westerners, mass executions of civilians and forced conversions.  Less well-known is the extremist group’s horrific treatment of women and girls.

Last week, the United Nations reported thousands of women had been abducted by the group, some handed over to fighters as a reward or sold as sex slaves.

The NewsHour sent a crew to meet a 15-year-old girl, a member of the Yazidi sect, who was captured and held by the Islamic State before managing to escape.  She now lives at a camp with others who’ve been displaced.

We withheld her identity for her and her family’s safety.

GIRL (through interpreter):  They kept us in a house, the girls and the women.  And then they killed all the men, including my brother.

GWEN IFILL:  She and the abducted women were taken by truck east to a house in Mosul.  There, they were ordered to convert to Islam.  More kidnapped girls joined them.

GIRL (through interpreter):  They separated the women and the girls.  Some of the girls were taken by ISIL.  They gave some of us to the guards and they sold some of us, too.  And some were given as a gift.

If we didn’t do what they asked, they would have hit us.  We did everything because we were threatened.  We had to.  They were very bad to the girls.  They were doing bad things to the women, illegal things.

GWEN IFILL:  That’s only one story.

To help us understand the depth and scale of the Islamic State’s treatment of women and girls, we turn to Manal Omar, acting vice president for the Middle East and Africa Center at the United States Institute of Peace, and David Jacobson, professor of sociology and founding director of the Citizenship Initiative on Civil Society and Conflict at the University of South Florida.

NEW YORK - Anniversary of the 'Baby Hope' Case

"$12K Reward in 1991 'Baby Hope' Case" from AP, ABC News 7/24/2013

More than two decades after the body of a young girl was found inside a cooler, the New York Police Department is seeking help identifying the victim dubbed "Baby Hope."

On Tuesday, the 22nd anniversary of the discovery, police offered a $12,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest and conviction in the unsolved crime.
Baby Hope.JPEG

Officers put up posters and handed out fliers with sketches of how the victim might have looked.

The cooler was found in Washington Heights, on an embankment off the Henry Hudson Parkway.

The girl was believed to be between 3 and 5 years old.  Tests showed she was malnourished and had been sexually abused.

DNA testing has yielded no matches with databases of convicted felons or active missing person cases.

EGYPT - Women in Tahrir Square

From a male dominated, chauvinistic, society.  Men that are afraid and bullies, who think women are possessions.

"In Tahrir Square, Recent Protests Have Been Scene of Rampant Sexual Assault" PBS Newshour 7/11/2013

Excerpt

HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour):  Now to Egypt.

Among the demonstrators who jam Tahrir Square every day are hundreds of women.  They face a very disturbing threat from gangs of men who sexually assault female protesters.

Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News reports from Cairo.

And a warning:  You may find some of the details and the images in her story distressing.

LINDSEY HILSUM:  Such sweet boys full of energy and fun.  They have just been chasing a young woman up the street.  The interviewer asks them why.

"If a lady is respectable, no one will harass her," says a kid in red.  The others pile in.  Why do they wear short skirts or tight trousers?"

"Some young women, when we flirt with them, they smile."

That's how it starts.  This is how it ends.  A mob attacks a young woman on the corner of Tahrir Square.  We have disguised her identity.

This is one of more than a hundred assaults in Tahrir Square during last week's demonstrations.  This is the very place.  Women still come to the square, but it's dangerous.

This corner of Tahrir Square has become notorious for attacks on women.  I can only come here tonight because it's almost empty because of Ramadan and people are praying.  And I have got a whistle to protect me and an alarm and a whole crew of people around me.  That's not the case for many women who come here.

And the most horrific thing I have heard is that these attacks are planned, and, sometimes, women think that the men coming for them are trying to save them from being assaulted, but in fact they take them away and attack them again.

A long darning needle.  Janet Abdel Aleem and her group of activists distribute the needles to women for self-defense.  She and her colleague Nada were assaulted in Tahrir Square last November.

INDIA - Rape Charges and Treatment of Women

"After Brutal Gang Rape in India, Six Men Charged With Murder, Kidnapping" (Part-1) PBS Newshour 1/3/2013

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Five men accused of the brutal gang rape of a university student for hours on a bus in India were charged today. This incident has sparked massive protests.

We begin with this report by Geraint Vincent of Independent Television News.

GERAINT VINCENT: The judicial process has begun in Delhi, but even for the professionals, it's not moving quickly enough. While lawyers here call for the courts to better protect India's women, the father of one murdered woman whose anonymity must still be protected called for her killers to be put to death.

WOMAN (through translator): Laws are made by the government, but all I ask is that the law be as tough as it can be. The death penalty is compulsory for a crime so great. The assailants must be hanged. The courts must give these men the death penalty.

GERAINT VINCENT: In a country of more than a billion people, there are dozens of news channels delivering constant coverage of the case of a gang of men who lured a young couple onto a bus with the promise that they would take them home.

According to charges filed today, the men beat them both and then subjected the 23-year-old woman to a sex attack so brutal, she died of her injuries two weeks later. The assault lasted for about an hour, and it took place behind the closed curtains of the bus as it made its way around the streets of South Delhi.

When the gang had finished, they dumped the couple by the side of this road. And police reports say that they tried to finish the woman off here by running her over.

But her boyfriend managed to pull her out of the way. His testimony will now form the basis of the prosecution case, together with what information his girlfriend managed to pass on before she died.

Elsewhere on the streets of the capital, shock has awakened old resentments. One group of protesters told me that they had been brought up to regard sexual harassment as something that had to be endured. They don't want the same for their daughters.

WOMAN: Nothing has changed. People keep on telling that mind-sets should be changed. It will take another 100 years to change the mind-set. The women of India cannot allow men to keep on raping until the mind-set is changed. That is one issue.

But the -- I think it should be a capital punishment. Nothing less than they should be hanged.

GERAINT VINCENT: Horror at what happened on these roads has stretched across India. The legacy of the woman who was raped and beaten and thrown from the bus may yet be just as great.

"Gang Rape in New Delhi Sparks 'Soul Searching' for Treatment of Women" (Part-2) PBS Newshour 1/3/2013

Excerpt

SUMMARY: Margaret Warner talks to New York Times reporter Heather Timmons about the details of the rape and murder charges over the death of 23-year-old medical student in New Delhi, plus a spreading national discussion and fury over the treatment of women in India.

INDIA - Paying the Consequences of Gang Rape

"In India, a Fatal Gang Rape Sparks Violent Protests, Demands for More Protection" (Part-1) PBS Newshour 12/28/2012

Excerpt

SUMMARY: Sexual assaults are common in India, but a brutal gang attack that killed a 23-year-old medical student has outraged the public over what is seen as a lack of basic protection and justice for women. Ray Suarez talks to Julie McCarthy from NPR about the spontaneous demonstrations and greater protest movement against such attacks.

"Across Caste and Religion, Indian Women Share Sense of Powerlessness Over Rape" (Part-2) PBS Newshour 12/28/2012

Excerpt

SUMMARY: A brutal gang rape in New Delhi may help force a sea change in India, a thriving democracy that is also a very conservative society based on a diversity of old traditions. Ray Suarez talks to Miranda Kennedy, author of "Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India," about the taboos of coming forward as a rape victim.