women's human rights: Canada & the world

TORONTO — A woman must remove her face-covering veil to testify against the men she is accusing of sexual assault, an Ontario judge ruled Wednesday.

TORONTO — A woman must remove her face-covering veil to testify against the men she is accusing of sexual assault, an Ontario judge ruled Wednesday.

The woman’s niqab “masks her demeanour and blocks both effective cross-examination by counsel for the accused and assessment of her credibility by the trier of fact,” Ontario Court Judge Norris Weisman ruled.

The 37-year-old woman, known only as N.S., alleges two men sexually assaulted her over five years, starting when she was six years old.

The question of whether she should be allowed to wear her niqab while testifying in the case went all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada, which issued a split decision that affirmed the importance of both the right to a fair trial and religious freedom.

The case of N.S. is now back in provincial court for the preliminary inquiry, five years after the challenge began. But N.S. isn’t done fighting to keep her niqab on, her lawyer said. They will ask the Ontario Superior Court to review the decision.

“The concern is the judge refused to consider a substantial body of scientific research which demonstrates that we as humans are actually quite faulty at detecting honesty by reading people’s faces,” David Butt said.

The long slog through the courts has already taken a “tremendous toll” on N.S., Butt said, all because she has sincerely held religious beliefs.

“Having said that, she is a very strong woman who understands that the first case through is in many respects the most important one,” he said.

“For the sake of other women who might find themselves in a similar position in the future, she’s somehow found the strength, and I admire her for it, she’s somehow found the strength to go the extra mile.”

Weisman used the test set out by the high court to reach his ruling.

Judges must ask themselves: Would requiring the witness to remove the niqab while testifying interfere with her religious freedom? Would permitting the witness to wear the niqab while testifying create a serious risk to trial fairness? Is there a way to accommodate both rights and avoid the conflict between them?

Weisman found that while the woman’s religious beliefs require her to cover her face in the presence of men who aren’t related to her, it would create a “real and substantial” risk to the accused men’s fair trial rights.

There is no way to accommodate both rights, Weisman found.

“The niqab is either worn or removed for the preliminary inquiry,” he wrote. “There is no middle ground.”

Weisman noted that the men face very lengthy prison sentences if convicted and pointed to a quote from the Supreme Court decision in reaching his conclusion.

“Where the liberty of the accused is at stake, the witness’s evidence is central to the case and her credibility vital, the possibility of a wrongful conviction must weigh heavily in the balance, favouring the removal of the niqab.”

(fully supportive of fair trials & not wrongly convicting people, but the fact that the accused rights are apparently taking precedence over hers is full on rape culture).

This is a new one.

Some of you may know that there is a wave of colleges and universities filing complaints with the Office for Civil Rights, claiming that their institutions are failing to protect women from sexual assault. This (first) wave includes Amherst, Yale, the University of North Carolina, Swarthmore, and Occidental among others.

Well, last night many of the details of the stories of the students whose cases have been mishandled — right down to exact quotes from their lives — found themselves in an episode of Law&Order SVU.  They didn’t ask for permission, offer a “consulting” fee, or even warn them that it was coming.

This just leaves a this-is-so-wrong-I-don’t-even-know icky feeling in the pit of my gut.   I know that Law & Order has been ripping stories from the headlines for three decades, but it stuns me that it can claim to be fiction and not compensate the real women who’s lives are clearly and unequivocally depicted in this show.

Let me put this in stark terms: Law & Order is brazenly capitalizing on the pain and trauma of young women and not only failing to compensate them for stealing their stories, but actually denying that they exist by claiming that the “story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event.”  Stunning.

Alexandra Brodsky, a survivor who filed the complaints against Yale, told Jezebel:

The SVU episode strikes me as an extreme example of the risk of going public as a survivor: your story is no longer your own.

I’ve not seen a more obvious example of this fact.

The teaser for the episode, plus a list of 15 ways the episode copied real life, collected by Katie J.M. Baker at Jezebel, is after the jump.

Here’s the entire list:

SVU: Lindsay is gang-raped by three frat guys who later claim she’s crying rape because she’s embarrassed about her slutty behavior.

Real Life: Four University of Montana football players allegedly gang-raped a drunk female student; charges were dropped because it was unclear whether she was “just embarrassed” about what happened.

SVU: Lindsay Snapchats her rapist the next day, leading students and administrative officials to doubt that she was actually raped.

Real Life: Woman allegedly raped by Mizzou basketball player Michael Dixon Jr. texts him the next day, leading students, officials and cops to doubt that she was actually raped.

SVU: ”I’m sorry that girl had a bad night, but why would Travis need to rape somebody?” a frat bro muses.

Real Life: Students at campuses all over the country don’t believe that Big Men on Campus can be rapists.

SVU: Students call Tau Omega the “Rape Factory.”

Real Life: A former Wesleyan student is suing the university for failing to “to supervise, discipline, warn or take other corrective action” against a frat which she says had a “reputation in the Wesleyan community as the ‘Rape Factory.’”

SVU: Renee is pressured to leave school and commit herself to a mental institution after she attempts to self-harm after the school ignores her rape report. Her rapist is set to graduate with honors.

Real Life: Former student Angie Epifano says Amherst abruptly decided to admit her into a psychiatric ward after she made suicidal comments spurred by the despair she felt when her allegations were repeatedly ignored. Her rapist graduated with honors.

SVU: Renee is penalized by her school’s Honor Court for “intimidating her rapist” by speaking out.

Real Life: UNC sophomore Landen Gambill says she was punished by the Office of Student Conduct for “intimidating” her rapist by speaking to the press about her sexual assault.

SVU: Renee is told that sex “is like a football game” by a school official.

Real Life: Former UNC student Annie Clark was told that rape “is like a football game” by an administrator.

SVU: The university’s mental health counselor says she was met with resistance when she tried to support rape survivors’ reports.

Real Life: UNC allegedly pressured former dean of students Melinda Manning to underreport sexual assault cases; Swarthmore and Occidental were recently accused of mishandling assaults.

SVU: Dean Reyerson says she couldn’t stop Tau Omega alumni from selling “We don’t take ‘no’ for an answer” rush t-shirts.

Real Life: Amherst’s administration came under fire for holding an ineffective closed-door discussion related to a similar frat t-shirt.

SVU: Dean Reyerson says students have the right to assemble, even if they want to chant, “No means yes, yes means anal.”

Real Life: Yale frat boys once gleefully ran around campus chanting exactly that.

SVU: Dean Reyerson says she can’t stop students from posting photos and rumors about rape survivors on an anonymous website because of “free speech.”

Real Life: Oberlin’s administration cites the First Amendment and does next to nothing about undergrads who are seriously harassed via its student-run anonymous message board.

SVU: Lindsaykills herself.

Real Life: Elizabeth “Lizzy” Seeberg committed suicide nine days after accusing a Notre Dame football player of sexually assaulting her in a dorm room; Notre Dame investigators failed to interview the student she accused until 15 days after Seeberg reported the attack and five days after she killed herself.

SVU: Frat boys are caught on video joking that they “raped [Lindsay] dead. (Also that they “raped her Gangnam Style,” which is one we haven’t heard before!)

Real Life: Anonymous leaked a video of former Steubenville High School baseball player Michael Nodianos cracking himself up as he calls a rape victim “deader than” JFK, OJ’s wife, Caylee Anthony, and Trayvon Martin, amongst others.

SVU: At the end of the episode, students hold up signs protesting rape culture using real quotes said to them by members of the community following their assaults.

Real Life: Amherst students put together a collection of photos of men and women who were sexually assaulted on campus, holding signs with words said to them by members of the community following their assaults.

SVU: “I was thinking about maybe starting a kind of support group on campus, so survivors know they’re not alone,” Renee says.

Real Life: A group of rape survivors includingDana Bolger (Amherst College ‘14), Alexandra Brodsky (Yale College ‘12, Yale Law School ‘16), Annie Clark (University of North Carolina — Chapel Hill ‘11), and Andrea Pino (UNC — CH ‘14), some of whom have filed complaint with the federal government against their universities, joined together to help students at colleges across the country stand up to administrations; they recently launched “Know Your IX,” a campaign that aims to educate every college student in the U.S. about his or her rights under Title IX by the start of the Fall 2013 academic term.

iflybikes:

When men talk of women and girls in terms of legal/not legal, what they’re really saying is “I already sexually objectify this child and would attempt to fuck her if there were no laws in the way.”

You can’t deny that is fucking scary.

Rehtaeh Parsons had a goofy sense of humour and loved playing with her little sisters. She wore glasses, had long, dark hair and was a straight-A student whose favourite subject was science.

On Sunday night, the 17-year-old’s family took her off life-support.

Three days earlier, on Thursday night, she hanged herself in the bathroom.

It was 17 months before that when “the person Rehtaeh once was all changed,” her mother wrote Monday on a Facebook memorial page.

“She went with a friend to another’s home. In that home, she was raped by four young boys,” wrote Leah Parsons.

“One of those boys took a photo of her being raped and decided it would be fun to distribute the photo to everyone in Rehtaeh’s school and community, where it quickly went viral.”

Rehtaeh, a 15-year-old Cole Harbour District High School student at the time, was shunned, wrote her mother.

“They all go to the same school. She couldn’t go back to the school,” Parsons said Monday in an interview.

Rehtaeh spent the past year and a half trying to handle the fallout from that night, said her mother, who runs a dog rescue.

Her daughter moved from Cole Harbour to Halifax to start anew and she checked into a hospital at one point to cope with anger, depression and thoughts of suicide.

Rehtaeh ultimately made some new, supportive friends and heard from some old friends who decided to stand by her, Parsons wrote on Facebook. Rehtaeh returned to Dartmouth, where she was attending Prince Andrew High School.

However, lately the girl had struggled with mood swings, and after an outburst on Thursday, she locked herself in the bathroom, Parsons said in the interview.

“She acted on an impulse, but I truly, in my heart of heart, do not feel she meant to kill herself,” her mother wrote on Facebook.

“By the time I broke into the bathroom, it was too late.”

There are things to be learned from the girl’s death, Parsons said in the interview. That is why she is talking about what happened, and why her daughter did the same.

“Rehtaeh would want her story out there,” she said.

For one thing, social media can be toxic, said the mother. After Rehtaeh left her school, other kids were relentless.

“People texted her all the time, saying ‘Will you have sex with me?’” she remembered. “Girls texting, saying ‘You’re such a slut.’”

But then there is the question of how the adults handled the alleged sexual assault that Rehtaeh described to her mother.

The RCMP investigation took a year, said Parsons.

RCMP spokesman Cpl. Scott MacRae confirmed the police are now investigating a sudden death involving a young person.

“An investigation into an earlier sexual assault was completed, and in consultation with the Crown, there was insufficient evidence to lay charges,” MacRae said.

Out of respect for the family, and because of privacy laws, he couldn’t discuss details of the investigation Monday, and the force sent its sympathy to Rehtaeh’s loved ones, he said.

Parsons said she was unhappy with what she saw of the investigation.

“They didn’t even interview the boys until much, much later. To me, I’d think you’d get the boys right away, separate them.”

When it came to the photo or photos taken that night, “nothing was done about that because they couldn’t prove who had pressed the photo button on the phone,” she said.

She was told that the distribution of the photos is “not really a criminal issue, it’s more of a community issue,” she said.

“Even though she was 15 at the time, which is child pornography.

“The whole case was full of things like that. We didn’t have a rape kit done because we didn’t even know (anything had happened) until several days later when she had a breakdown in my kitchen.

“She was trying to keep it to herself.”

Rehtaeh’s former classmates at Prince Andrew High were sent counsellors Monday to provide support, said Doug Hadley, spokesman for the Halifax regional school board.

“We’ve been working very closely with the family for several, several months to provide supports to her,” Hadley said.

“Right now, we’re very saddened by what has taken place.”

Rehtaeh always cared for the underdog and was interested in social issues, a girl who “read everything she could get her hands on,” said her mother.

On March 3, Rehtaeh posted a photo of herself on Facebook next to a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.:

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Sajjad Hussain/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Demonstrators shouting slogans in the wake of the Dec. 16 gang rape of a woman, at the India Gate, in New Delhi, in this Dec. 27, 2012 photo.

NEW DELHI — Less than three months after a New Delhi woman who was gang raped on a moving bus died from her injuries, India’s Parliament passed a comprehensive bill that imposes stronger penalties on men who attack women and criminalizes offenses like stalking and voyeurism.

The bill quickly cleared the upper house, or Rajya Sahba, of Parliament on Thursday, after being debated for seven hours in the lower house on Tuesday. President Pranab Mukherjee is expected to sign it into law shortly.

“I think this is an important moment,” said Vrinda Grover, a women’s rights activist and lawyer. “We have taken quite a few steps forward.”

The Dec. 16 gang rape and assault of a physiotherapy student, and her subsequent death, prompted widespread and sometimes violent protests in India.

Citizens, activists and many politicians demanded the government do more to protect women and impose harsher sentences on the men who molest them. Reported rapes in India have risen in recent years, and northern India has witnessed a series of highly publicized gang rapes.

The bill, which amends India’s criminal laws, is intended to deter and punish sexual offenders, including men who stalk and harass women, and to create a more responsive police and judicial system, which is widely criticized as being insensitive when dealing with crimes against women.

It expands the definition of rape, substantially increases the punishment for sex crimes like gang rape, introduces the death penalty for repeat offenders and criminalizes activities like disrobing and voyeurism.

India’s democracy has often been faulted for being so unruly and its Parliament so dysfunctional that fundamental, vital development issues, like malnutrition and education, are inadequately addressed.

The fact that the bill passed both houses of Parliament even as they adjourned unexpectedly several times this week, after a key ally of the governing Congress Party abandoned it, is a sign that the demands of thousands of protesters were heard, activists said.

“It is good that India still responds as a democracy when there is pressure from citizens,” Meenakshi Ganguly, the director of Human Rights Watch in South Asia, said. “The terrible attack in Delhi, and the protests that followed, ensured that both the opposition and the government cooperated in ensuring that this law was enacted.”

India’s cabinet ministers were quick to praise the bill’s passage. “The bill is significant as it aims to protect mothers and sisters of this country,” said India’s minister of home affairs, Sushil Kumar Shinde, on Thursday in the Rajya Sabha, according to the Press Trust of India. “Over years, such a stringent law has not been made,” he said.

Although opposition politicians were unsatisfied. Nirmala Sitharaman, the national spokeswoman for the Bharatiya Janata Party, the leading opposition party, said the government could have done more with this bill. “I wish the discussion around the bill would have been more substantive in both the houses,” she said. “This is a step forward, but the government could have done more homework to bring about a stronger legislation.”

In crafting the bill, the government included many of the recommendations of a report submitted in January by a panel headed by former Chief Justice J.S. Verma, which suggested far-reaching changes in the legal and justice system.

The three-member panel consulted hundreds of activists, laws of other countries and literature on criminal psychology to recommend changes that would help fight discrimination against women.

Among the report’s recommendations adopted by government were the creation of stalking, voyeurism and disrobing as separate offenses, provisions to punish police officers who failed to register complaints of sexual offenses and a broadening of the definition of rape to include the insertion of an object or any other body part into a woman’s vagina, urethra or anus.

The law went against the report’s suggestions by adopting the death penalty in some rape cases and raising the age of consent for sex to 18.

Many activists are encouraged by the bill, but say public debate and reforms for gender equality must continue. “The spectrum of change India requires is much, much broader than amendments to the criminal laws,” said Ms. Grover, the lawyer. “We need to really focus on enforcement and implementation.”

Others said the bill was a disappointment. Sandhya Valluripally, president of the Progressive Organization of Women, said that women’s organizations had been demanding for years a bill that offers complete protection for women from sexual harassment. She said she thought the bill that was passed Thursday has fallen short of that.

Many of the Verma committee recommendations were missing in the bill, she noted.

“There are so many recommendations that were rejected by the government of India,” she said, saying that her group is against the death penalty and wanted child trafficking to be considered rape.

She also was critical of the discussions that took place in Parliament on the bill. “The discussions were derogatory to women,” she said.

NEW DELHI - A Swiss female tourist was gang-raped in central India in front of her husband, police said Saturday, renewing the focus on the issue of sexual violence against women in the South Asian nation.

The woman was on a cycling trip with her husband in impoverished Madhya Pradesh state when seven to eight men attacked the couple late Friday while they were camping, sexually assaulting the woman and robbing the pair, police said.

The attackers “tied up the man and raped the woman in his presence”, local police official S.M. Afzal told AFP, adding that they stole 10,000 rupees ($185) and a mobile phone from the woman.

The attack comes just months after thousands took to the streets to protest against India’s treatment of women following the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student on a bus in New Delhi in December.

“We are deeply shocked by this tragic incident suffered by a Swiss citizen and her partner in India,” the Swiss foreign ministry in Bern said in a statement.

The Swiss ministry said its diplomats in India were in contact with local authorities and that it hoped the attackers would be “swiftly identified and would appear before a court to answer for their actions”.

The couple were on their way to the tourist destination of Agra, home to the iconic Taj Mahal monument, in northern India when they stopped to camp for the night.

“The victims, who belong to Switzerland, put up a tent to stay overnight” in a forested area near a village when the attack occurred, Afzal said.

Indian media reports said the men were wielding sticks when they attacked the couple around 50 kilometres (35 miles) from Orchha, a popular foreign tourist destination in Madhya Pradesh.

After the attack, the rape victim, aged about 40, was admitted to hospital in Gwalior city, 212 miles (342 kilometres) from state capital Bhopal, local police official M.S. Dhodee said.

The woman was released on Saturday from hospital, authorities said.

Swiss Ambassador Linus von Castelmur has spoken to the victim and assured her “of all possible help”, the Press Trust of India reported.

Some 20 people have been detained “on the basis of suspicion and are being questioned in connection with the incident”, senior local police officer D.K. Arya told the news agency.

Reacting to the attack, the state’s opposition leader Ajay Singh said it “had brought a bad name to Madhya Pradesh at the international level”.

In 2003, a 36-year-old female Swiss diplomat was abducted in the car park of a popular New Delhi auditorium, driven away by two men and raped. She was freed later nearby. No one has been convicted for that attack.

Concern remains high in India over the safety and status of women and girls in the country of 1.2 billion.

The national Congress-led government has been under heavy pressure to step up legal protection for India’s women following the December attack on the student who died from internal injuries after being savagely assaulted by six men.

Last Monday, Ram Singh, one of six accused on trial over the December assault was found hanged in his high-security jail cell in New Delhi. Police suspect he hanged himself, but his family says he was murdered.

Under a new bill approved by India’s cabinet earlier in the week, rapists face a minimum 20-year jail term and the death penalty if the victim dies from her injuries or is left in a persistent vegetative state.

Rape is one aspect of a wide range of violence, including domestic assaults, against women in India that claims many thousands of lives each year, according to rights workers.

According to government crime statistics, one woman is raped every 20 minutes in India, but most incidents go unreported, mainly due to the victims’ fear of being stigmatised in the sexually conservative nation.

A selection of tweets collected by Public Shaming:

A selection of tweets collected by Mommyish:

A selection of tweets collected by Persephone Magazine:

Tweets collected by The Inquisitr:

TRIGGER WARNING:

The following includes descriptions, photos, and video that may serve as a trigger for victims of sexual violence.
Please be advised. 

Someone asked me today, “What is ‘rape culture’ anyway? I’m tired of hearing about it.”

Yeah, I hear ya. I’m tired of talking about it. But I’m going to keep talking about it because people like you keep asking that question.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and though there are dozens of witnesses, no one says, “Stop.”

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and though there are dozens of witnesses, they can’t get anyone to come forward.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and adults are informed of it, but no consequences are doled out because the boys “said nothing happened.”

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and we later find out that their coaches were “joking about it” and “took care of it.” 

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and even though there is documentation of the coaching staff sweeping it under the rug, they get to keep their jobs.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and one of the coaches involved in the cover-up threatens a reporter - saying, “You’re going to get yours. And if you don’t get yours, somebody close to you will.” – but the town is more worried about keeping their coaching talent than his integrity.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, take pictures of the process, and it becomes a source of ridicule along social networks, whitewashing the crime with hashtags.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and then joke about it on video – saying, ““She is so raped,” “They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson!”, “They raped her more than the Duke lacrosse team!”, and she was “deader than Trayvon Martin.” – while everyone else laughs.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and the town is more concerned with preserving their football program than the fact that their children are attacking others without remorse.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and the mainstream media laments the fact that their “promising futures” have been dashed by their crimes – as though THEY are the victims.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and even though she’s been through enough, the 16 year old victim’s name is shared on national television.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, but because it happens at a party where both sexes were drinking, complete strangers on the internet argue ferociously that she is to blame for being attacked.

Click to zoom. Warning: it will make you sick.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and members of the community issue death threats against the victim.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and it is documented across social media channels, and the media informs us that the takeaway is to be more careful about what we post to social media.

Rape culture is when a group of athletes rape a young girl, and when a cover-up is exposed by a group of hackers, we call them “terrorists” and the culpable “victims.” 

Yeah, I’m talking about Steubenville. Tired of hearing about it? Ok, let’s talk about something else.

Rape culture is when the Steubenville is far from the first instance of athletic clubs covering up sexual violence allegations. See: Sandusky, Michigan State 2010, Arizona State 2008, University of Colarado 2006, University of Iowa 2008, Lincoln High School 2012, University of Montana 2012, Marquette 2011, plus this research (and there’s more to find if you dig)

Rape culture is when universities across the country do not report rape to the police, but handle the matter via “honor boards” - ultimately shielding perpetrators from criminal consequences.

Rape culture is when universities threaten to expel a student for speaking out about her rape (without ever identifying her attacker) because it’s harassment to talk about her suffering.

Rape culture is when a comedian has a long history of making jokes about rape and sexual assault, is defended from backlash by the comic community, and doesn’t lose his fan base.

Rape culture is when a journalist says this ….

I think that the entire conversation is wrong. I don’t want anybody to be telling women anything. I don’t want men to be telling me what to wear and how to act, not to drink. And I don’t, honestly, want you to tell me that I needed a gun in order to prevent my rape. In my case, don’t tell me if I’d only had a gun, I wouldn’t have been raped. Don’t put it on me to prevent the rape.

… and the public responds with this….

Rape culture is when politicians don’t understand how requiring a transvaginal ultrasound of a rape victim seeking an abortion is like raping her all over again.

Rape culture is when political candidates say that God sometimes intends rape, and that some girls just “rape easy,” and that “legitimate rape” does not result in pregnancy… and do not lose the backing of their party or party leaders.

Rape culture is when a speaker at a political convention makes a rape joke about a sexual violence victim advocate, and he brings the house down with laughter.

Rape culture is when we spend all our time telling women to avoid being raped by modifying their behavior, inferring blame back onto the victim.

Rape culture is when stunning displays of privilege and willful ignorance combine to create this:

and this:

Rape culture is when a woman speaks out about rape culture, and gets subjected to this.

Rape culture is when we see ads like these on a far too frequent basis:

Rape culture is when you’re tired of hearing about “rape culture” because it makes you uncomfortable, as your attempt to silence discourse on the subject means we never raise enough awareness to combat it – and that’s part of why it sticks around.

So yeah, I’m sorry you’re tired of hearing about it. But I wouldn’t expect us to shut up anytime soon. Nor should we.

UPDATE: I will no longer be publishing comments which caveat the discussion of rape culture with false rape accusation concerns. There is a reason for this, which you can read here.