** EAST BETHLEHEM TOWNSHIP, Pa. — April 18, 2013 

http://www.wpxi.com/news/news/local/state-trooper-accused-holding-knife-wifes-neck-dur/nXP7n/

  April 23, 2013  Lake City, IA asst chief,  Lukas McCollough, allegedly harassed woman w 100s of texts, sent photos; bribed someone to take the blame

http://www.carrollspaper.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=15087

  April 19, 2013 Delcambre, Louisiana (First reported 12-12-12): A now former police officer,Ernest Billiot,   has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for second-degree kidnapping and sexual battery. He committed the crimes, while on duty, after pulling over a woman during a traffic stop.

http://www.katc.com/news/former-delcambre-police-officer-sentenced/#_

** April 22, 2013, Orange County, Florida: A sheriff’s deputy,  31-year-old James Knepper, was arrested on charges of domestic battery. Officers said they observed him scream obscenities and push a woman while they were facing each other.

http://www.wesh.com/news/central-florida/orange-county/Orange-County-deputy-arrested-on-domestic-battery-charges/-/12978032/19846866/-/bi2iqpz/-/index.html

**  April 22, 2013, Minneapolis, Minnesota (First reported 04-22-13): An officer, Bradley Schnicke, 32,  already facing allegations that he raped a juvenile girl was arrested again as new charges came up. He sent explicit messages and photos of his genitalia to an 11-year-old girl.

April 19, 2013, Twin Falls County, Idaho: A deputy,Sgt. Michael Cooper, a 15-year member of the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office,   has been arrested on charges of felony domestic battery. He was arraigned on three counts, including inflicting traumatic injury.

http://magicvalley.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/twin-falls-county-sheriff-s-deputy-arrested-on-charges-of/article_5e476ea8-a88e-11e2-bf0c-0019bb2963f4.html

 April 18, 2013, Tuscaloosa, Alabama: A former police sergeant,  Jason Glenn Thomas,  pleaded guilty to a criminal civil rights charge for using his authority as a law enforcement officer to sexually assault a woman. “This former officer did the unimaginable when he used his police powers to sexually assault this victim,” said the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/April/13-crt-447.html

ETC., ETC, ETC, ad nauseum

SEE ALSO: 

One Week in the Hidden Epidemic of Police Violence Against Women

and Increasing Women's Numbers and Influence in Policing

La jueza Graciela Jofre consideró el Síndrome de Alienación Parental como “una siniestra creación pseudocientífica” y rechazó la argumentación del padre, que había sido denunciado por la madre. El caso en el fuero penal había sido archivado.

La Justicia rechazó la existencia del llamado Síndrome de Alienación Parental (conocido como SAP), esgrimido por padres denunciados por incesto y por sus abogados para descalificar la voz del niño o la niña víctima del abuso sexual con el argumento de que la imputación sería producto de la manipulación de la madre, en el marco de divorcios conflictivos. En un fallo muy elogiado por referentes que trabajan contra el abuso sexual infantil, la jueza de paz de Villa Gesell, Graciela Jofre, señaló que el SAP “es una siniestra creación pseudocientífica” descalificada “por la comunidad científica internacional”, que “instala la sospecha sobre la víctima, devalúa la palabra del testimonio infantil y de todo aquel adulto que le cree y busca protegerlo, cuando en la casi totalidad de los abusos sexuales en la infancia, la palabra de los niños es la única prueba para iniciar la investigación”. Al mismo tiempo, la magistrada sentenció que la resolución en un juicio penal en casos de abuso sexual infantil “no hacen cosa juzgada en el fuero civil”, al rechazar un pedido de revinculación con su hijo de un hombre denunciado por incesto, cuya causa penal fue archivada, sin tomar en cuenta pericias donde se validaba la existencia del abuso.

CONTINUA

Children with disabilities are three times more likely than children without them to be victims of sexual abuse, and the likelihood is even higher for children with intellectual or mental health disabilities. These children face many challenges in reporting the abuse and receiving vital services designed to meet their needs. Without receiving support, these children suffer long-term aftereffects, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression, as well as an increased risk of victimization in adulthood. Vera’s Center on Victimization and Safety partnered with the Ms. Foundation for Women in 2012 to examine the prevalence of this abuse and existing responses and to recommend next steps for a national strategy to respond to this epidemic. This issues brief summarizes the study, its findings and its recommendations

A new digital outreach tool in Spanish for SAAM! Dichos or popular sayings can be used for discussing & dismantling rape culture assumptions with Spanish-speaking populations. Male entitlement, consent, and victim blaming are among the issues that these dichos address. Feel free to forward and post, and please invite colleagues/friends to "Like" this page to access Arte Sana's outreach materials and information throughout the year.....from Arte Sana   More from Arte Sana here

Protesters converged at Swami Dayanand Hospital in New Delhi on Friday as shock spread in the Indian capital over the alleged rape and abduction of a 5-year-old girl by a neighbor. The girl, said to be in critical condition, was being taken to a larger facility.

EXCERPT:

Anger at the authorities began to build after the parents of the 5-year-old said that the police had failed to take their complaint seriously, failed to carry out an adequate search and then offered them 2,000 rupees — about $37 — if they would keep quiet about the case. Then on Friday, television news channels showed a large mustachioed police officer slapping a small female protester in the face.

CONTINUES

See Also:

** 20 min VIDEO: Indian Feminists' Analysis and Outrage, Call for Decriminalizing Police

** April 20,2013 Delhi Rape Protest in Pics

** Police offered me bribe, advised to thank God: rape survivor's father

Y ha sido terrible no sólo por las dos mujeres asesinadas por terrorismo machista que ha habido en el Estado Español, sino también por la sarta de estupideces que se han escrito como consecuencia de estos asesinatos

AmecoPress.- Estamos acabando la semana santa y para las mujeres ha resultado terrible. Y ha sido terrible no sólo por las dos mujeres asesinadas por terrorismo machista que ha habido en el Estado Español, sino también por la sarta de estupideces que se han escrito como consecuencia de estos asesinatos.

Los medios de comunicación, los más potentes, como si se hubieran contagiado por la marea de regresión general se han apuntado a un retroceso en sus formas de redactar las noticias haciendo caso omiso a las recomendaciones que, desde algunas organizaciones de periodistas y comunicadoras, se han hecho al respecto y se ha apuntado al carro de que este tipo de noticias aparezcan en el apartado de “sucesos”. Así y al parecer volvemos a estar a un paso de que se vuelva a hablar de ”crímenes pasionales”, cuando en realidad se trata de asesinatos machistas consecuencia de eso que poca gente quiere llamar por su nombre y que se llama Terrorismo Machista.

CONTINUA

MUST SEE! 20 minute outstanding passionate discussion among Indian feminists. april 19, 2013

Discussion of incidents of brutal police violence against women amid gang-rape cases that continue to surface - the latest rape being reported of a 5-year-old girl in Delhi.  Indian women debate: even before sensitizing the force, do we urgently need to first decriminalize the police?

To get the embed code of this video you have to right click on the video as it plays.  PASS IT AROUND!!!!! Put this important video on your social media.

SEE VIDEO HERE

SEE ALSO:

http://Justice Verma Committee Report Summary

  U.S.A, One Week in the Hidden Epidemic of Police Violence Against Women     

INew Delhi: The father of a five-year-old girl who was held captive and raped allegedly by her neighbour in the national capital, has alleged that the police had offered him R 2,000 "to keep quiet", and advised him to "thank god that your daughter is alive". s.

In March of 2013, the National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project (NIWAP) at American University Washington College of Law conducted a nationwide survey of immigrant victim’s advocates and attorneys to learn about the experiences immigrant and LEP victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and other crimes have in their interactions with law enforcement.

SEE FULL REPORT

Picture this. A man, armored in tattoos, bursts into a living room not his own. He confronts an enemy. He barks orders. He throws that enemy into a chair. Then against a wall. He plants himself in the middle of the room, feet widespread, fists clenched, muscles straining, face contorted in a scream of rage. The tendons in his neck are taut with the intensity of his terrifying performance. He chases the enemy to the next room, stopping escape with a quick grab and thrust and body block that pins the enemy, bent back, against a counter. He shouts more orders: his enemy can go with him to the basement for a "private talk," or be beaten to a pulp right here. Then he wraps his fingers around the neck of his enemy and begins to choke her.

No, that invader isn't an American soldier leading a night raid on an Afghan village, nor is the enemy an anonymous Afghan householder. This combat warrior is just a guy in Ohio named Shane. He's doing what so many men find exhilarating: disciplining his girlfriend with a heavy dose of the violence we render harmless by calling it "domestic."

CONTINUES

Some fears are convenient: terrorism has devoured money and civil rights and government surveillance at a rate that is itself terrifying. And it's made "security" into doublespeak. In terms of actual American deaths, terrorists are right down there with sharks. (Zero domestic shark deaths in 2011, 12 worldwide.) Some fears are inconvenient: if you look at leading causes of death and injury for women, the terms "terrorist" and "husband" should perhaps be interchangeable. Male violence, much of it by partners and former partners, is the second highest cause of death for women between 15 and 44, worldwide. And in the U.S., suicide kills more of us than homicide, as Erika Eichelberger points out in a timely piece on violence in the home.

To acknowledge what really threatens us is to upset two of the most guarded citadels in this country: the military and masculinity. They are perhaps the same force on different scales. Armed intervention is imperial machismo in the same way a raging husband or father is the military dictator of a household. Maybe "domestic terrorist" should be twinned with "domestic violence." After all, the seldom acknowledged main form of such terrorism in this country in recent decades, anti-abortion violence, fits in comfortably, being an assault on women's rights to bodily autonomy and self-determination.

CONTINUES

It was getting late, the student center all but deserted. My old friend and I had a table to ourselves, awkwardly wedged among the chairs that had been set in a circle for an invited talk I had just given to some undergraduates about issues for women in science.

My friend alluded to having a challenging field site. Her face, which was usually open and bright, with a smile so infectious and delighted and thoroughly optimistic you couldn’t help but love her, was subdued, careful. She talked around it for a while. Then she told me of her sexual assault in the field.

CONTINUES

Misogynists in the men’s and fathers’ rights movements have developed a set of claims about women to support their depictions of them as violent liars and manipulators of men. Some suggest that women attack men, even sexually, just as much as men attack women. Others claim that vast numbers of reported rapes of women, as much as half or even more, are fabrications designed to destroy men they don’t like or to gain the upper hand in contested custody cases. What follows is a brief look at some of these claims and what the best science really shows.

THE CLAIM Men’s rights activists often insist that men are victimized by sex crimes and abuse just as much as women are, if not more. This assertion is meant to support their contention that the courts and laws outrageously favor women.

THE REALITY A major 2010 study by the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control thoroughly debunks such claims. Nearly one in five American women (18.3%), the study found, have been raped; the comparable number for men is one in 71 (1.4%). Not only that, but more than half (51.1%) of female victims reported that their rapist was an intimate partner — a current or former spouse or boyfriend, or a date. According to a 2000 study by the Department of Justice, female rape victims were also about twice as likely as male rape victims to be injured during an assault (31.5% versus 16.5%), even though many women do not physically resist their attackers for fear of injury. Overall, the studies found, most violence of all kinds against women (64%) came from current or former intimate partners, while that is true for only about one-sixth (16.2%) of men. Women were also far more likely to be stalked than men (16.2% versus 5.2%), and two-thirds of women’s stalkers (66.2%) were current or former intimate partners, compared to four in 10 for men (41.4%). A 2005 Department of Justice study also found that between 1998 and 2002, 84% of spousal abuse victims were female, as were 86% of victims of abuse at the hands of a dating partner. Males made up 83% of all spouse murderers and 75% of dating partner murderers.

CONTINUES

* Most immigrants deported are not serious criminals- report

* ICE defends Secure Communities program

By David Adams

MIAMI, April 15 (Reuters) - Federal immigration officials in South Florida are failing to abide by an Obama administration directive to focus deportation efforts on dangerous criminals, according to a report Monday by a Miami-based immigration advocacy group and researchers from a Florida university.

A majority of undocumented immigrants detained for deportation in Miami-Dade County under a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiative known as the Secure Communities program were not serious criminals, the report by Americans for Immigrant Justice (AIJ) and researchers at Florida International University said.

CONTINUES

Meet a woman who’s undocumented and extremely unafraid.

Claudia Muñoz, an activist that works with the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, turned herself in to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in order to fact-check the Obama administration’s assertion that it isn’t deporting low-level offenders.

Muñoz has been held in detention at Calhoun County Jail on April 4, according to DREAM Activist. The National Immigrant Youth Alliance coordinated “infiltrations” of ICE facilities in Florida last year.

Now 27, Muñoz arrived in the United States from Monterrey, Mexico at age 16 -- making her ineligible for the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, according to The Nation.

In a video recording she made and uploaded to YouTube before turning herself into ICE, Muñoz says:

"I used to be afraid at some point but I’m not anymore. I know there’s going to be people on the outside who have my back, and who have done this before, and they have given me the power as a community to be unafraid. And I will go in there and I will find every single person that’s in my situation that’s not supposed to be there in the first place.

Muñoz accuses ICE of not following prosecutorial discretion guidelines, saying there are 10 mothers in detention without criminal records. She spoke to Aura Blogado about other allegations of abuse detailed in an article at The Nation.

SEE PDF

UPDATE: We have just heard that the RCMP is now reopening the investigation into Rehtaeh's case. I think that is a great step, however, if we don't want this to happen again - if we want real justice - we need to find out why the RCMP did not lay charges in the first place. The Minister must call for an independent inquiry into the police investigation. Please continue to ask all of your friends to sign the petition.

I am horrified at what happened to Rehtaeh. She was a beautiful, caring person. She was a amazing artist. She loved animals.

CONTINUES

WATCH this amazing five hour film HERE

review by indiewire

"Kind Hearted Woman" is a long documentary, running in total five hours and spanning years in the life of Robin Charboneau, a divorced Oglala Sioux mother of two trying to find footing for herself and her family after a lifetime of abuse, alcoholism and financial distress. When the film begins, Charboneau is trudging through the snow on the side of a road in the Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota where she lives, fresh from rehab. Her kids, the almost teenage Darien and the younger Anthony, are living with their father and, though they love their mother, choose to stay with him when she moves away to Fargo to escape the temptations to backslide at the rez.

"Kind Hearted Woman" is a translation of Robin's Native American name, but it also recalls the title of a Robert Johnson song -- and Robin seems like someone who understands the blues. Taken from her alcoholic mother at a young age and put into foster care, she was repeatedly raped and molested growing up. The man she married was also abusive, and she's struggled with drinking herself. But Robin methodically perseveres through endless setbacks and situations that seem heavy and hopeless, including Darien's reveal that her father, Robin's ex, had molested her. The court case that follows becomes one of the film's dramatic centers, but also reveals the incredible complexity of the situation, because so bad had it gotten when Robin was drinking that Darien would still choose to stay with her father, permitting he leave her alone.

"Kind Hearted Woman" is patient in its observations, and has the time to let them unfold, which is why its reveals about how cyclical abuse and addiction can be are so powerful -- Robin has to earn back the trust of her children, and has to face a tendency of victims of abuse to take blame on themselves. It's a battle she's overcome but that still has to be fought by her cousin and former foster child, who too was molested by Robin's ex, and by Darien. Shame is another part of the struggle, as the accused's family seem more worried about what people will think of the case than the terrible wrongs inflicted on two children.

Like the recent "The Invisible War" and "Mea Maxima Culpa," the film also provides an example of the failures of closed groups to regulate themselves, particularly in cases of sexual assault. Despite Robin's ex-husband getting convicted for molesting two girls, one his own daughter, he retained shared custody of the kids, and Robin tries unsuccessfully to change this in a tribal court system in which those making the decisions are frequently related to or friends with the plaintiffs and defendants. (On its website, Frontline has chronicled a story related to but taking place outside the film in which reports of child abuse cases being covered up on the Spirit Lake Reservation led to the tribe’s social services agency being taken over by the Bureau of Indian Affairs last fall.)

Robin's misfortunes and afflictions aren't unique to the Native American community, but are more common (to an alarming degree) within it, and "Kind Hearted Woman" presents how complicated a role Robin's culture plays in her existence  -- it's something from which she draws strength and identity, but its also something, in the form of the reservation, she has to leave in order to maintain her sobriety, to study and to find work, as much as that means taking her kids away from everything they knew. Her path is very rocky, and she's a highly imperfect heroine, but there's a quiet, stunning nobility to her endurance, to her devotion to her children and to the way she's embraced the power of telling her story, both in person and in opening her life to Sutherland's cameras.

La Agencia Pagará $1 Millón de Dólares y Tendrá que Cambiar Procedimientos a Nivel Nacional

Veintidós personas Latinas que fueron víctimas de redadas ilegales efectuadas sin autorización judicial por agentes de inmigración, hoy lograron un acuerdo legal requiriendo que el Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE) pague $1 millón de dólares por daños y perjuicios e implemente nuevas regulaciones a nivel nacional para agentes de ICE que entren a domicilios sin orden judicial. Además, ocho hombres y mujeres que fueron arrestados durante las redadas recibieron acción diferida o cierre de sus casos de inmigración. 

 Twenty-two Latino victims of unlawful warrantless home raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) obtained a settlement today requiring new national policies for ICE agents conducting warrantless home operations and $1 million in damages and fees. In addition, eight men and women who were arrested during the raids have received either deferred action or termination of their immigration cases. 

"Immigrants across the country can stand up and cheer for what has been accomplished by this settlement. No longer will ICE agents have free rein to invade the homes of immigrants, especially Latino immigrants, and be as abusive as they want without any worry that they might be reprimanded," said Juan Cartagena, President of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, who, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights and Winston & Strawn, represented the plaintiffs. "The message today is loud and clear. ICE agents have to follow the law." 

UNWomen, UNICEF, and the UNDP commissioned a report from the Danish Institute for Human Rights on the role that Informal Justice Systems (IJS) play in developing countries. An informal justice system is a non-governmental system that effects and adjudicates the law.  In developing countries, these systems adjudicate up to 80% of disputes, according to UNWomen. Accordingly, this report examined the effect that informal justice systems have on the rights of women in a community, and the ways in which policy developers can engage with these systems for the purpose of furthering international human rights.

The report indicates that women are affected by informal justice systems in a variety of ways. First, depending on the structure of the system, women may not have access to legal remedies, and even if a woman can seek legal recourse, she may not be able to use a female advocate or female witnesses. Moreover, informal justice systems generally dictate a woman’s rights within the social structure—including the right to a divorce, right to own property, and rights to personal integrity and physical security. 

Given the significant impact that informal justice systems play in perpetuating the cultural and legal status of women in a community, the report encourages advocates to engage these systems in order to promote compliance with international human rights standards. Doing so requires that informal justice systems be included in sector-level programming that promotes the education of adjudicators, accountability mechanisms, and enforced procedural regulations. Currently, in Zambia, there is a pilot program designed to connect paralegals with informal justice systems for the purpose of providing legal advice and counseling.

Compiled from: Amy Lieberman, “Rural Women Poised to Get More From Tribal Justice,”Women E-News (March 7, 2013); Danish Institute for Human Rights, “A Study of Informal Justice Systems: Charting a Course for Human-Rights Based Engagement” (January 9, 2013).

SEE REPORT PDF

Children under the age of 18 make up the vast majority of sexual violence victims in war zones or countries recovering from conflict.

Madeleine, 16, and her older sister were forced to walk for four hours after they were kidnapped from their home in a small village in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The two soldiers who took them were armed and Madeleine’s parents were too scared to defend them.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday cracked down on generals who now possess the power to overturn sex assault sentences, ordering the first substantive shift of his tenure in how the military handles rape convictions in the ranks.

But victims’ advocates quickly lashed the move as merely a meager tweak that fails to meet mounting calls to remove all sex-assault investigations from the chain of command and to inject civilian oversight into a controversial system of justice further exposed by the recent Aviano case. 

CONTINUES

04.10.13 - Jackson Women’s Health Organization—Mississippi’s last abortion clinic—could be just weeks away from closing its doors. Governor Phil Bryant and the overwhelmingly anti-choice state legislature have passed a law that could make Mississippi the first “abortion free” state with no consideration for the health, rights, or safety of women.

 Post your protest photo on our March on Miss Tumblr page >
 

 

 Send a letter of solidarity to Jackson Women's Health Organization >
 

 Download posters to display your support >
 

 Update your Facebook status with a March on Miss image >
 

 Change your Twitter and Facebook avatar >