Tag Archives: Rape

When good people do nothing: UK’s Grooming Gangs continue as if there’s no law and no one in charge of keeping people safe

Easy Meat CBN News Screenshot

Important Takeaways:

  • Billionaire Elon Musk says British Prime Minister Starmer should resign for being “complicit in the rape of Britain,” for failing to investigate the grooming gangs sufficiently when he was a prosecutor or to launch a full inquiry as Prime Minister.
  • Starmer has accused Musk of “lies and misinformation.”
  • CBN News was among the first news organizations in America to expose Britain’s Grooming Gang scandal eight years ago.
  • Here Is Our Story from 2016 – Warning: Graphic Content
    • Some scandals are so massive that they’re simply hard to believe. As many as one million white English children may have been the victims of Muslim rape gangs, better known as grooming gangs, in towns up and down Great Britain.
    • Policy analyst George Igler says, “When you encounter an issue that is just so unbelievable, just so outside your frame of reference and understanding, the immediate human reaction is just, one, to not believe it at all.”
    • Perhaps even harder to believe is that while there have been prosecutions, the British government has still not stopped this criminal activity.
    • Former Home Secretary and Parliament member Jack Straw once said, “There’s a particular problem involving Pakistani heritage men who target young, vulnerable, white English girls. He also said these Pakistani-heritage men view white English girls as “easy meat.”
    • This is when some shout “racism.” However, here are the facts: calculations based on convictions show that a British Muslim male is 170 times more likely to be a part of a sex grooming gang than a non-Muslim. And there are no recorded instances of non-Muslims doing this to Muslim girls as part of a criminal enterprise. In one local jurisdiction, it was estimated that 6 out of 7 Muslim males either knew about or were part of a grooming gang.
    • Igler says, “What you do not have is any example of non-Muslim men targeting Muslim girls for this organized form of abuse. So, the argument that this crime exists everywhere is not only false, but is being deliberately cultivated by the media and by the government inquiry that is kicking the can down the road.”
    • The grooming gangs have been traced back as far as the late 1980s. At-risk white English girls, often from broken homes and some as young as 9 years old, were wooed or “groomed” by teenage Muslim boys called ‘Romeos’ and even by groups of Muslim men who hung around school gates. The girl would be made to feel important; given gifts and drugs. She was being groomed to be a drug-addicted prostitute. Then came the gang rapes. They were threatened with death if they tried to flee.
    • Igler says, “The thing you have to understand about this rape of children is it’s not just sexual abuse. It is unspeakable levels of violence, victims being raped with knives, victims being raped with bottles, victims having their tongues nailed to tables. These are sometimes girls who are picked up from a children’s home on a Friday, are being raped during the course of a weekend by hundreds of men and returned with bleeding groins back to the children’s’ home on a Monday morning and they don’t do anything about it at all.”
    • In northern England, Christine’s god-daughter was preyed on by a grooming gang…She said authorities often make it sound like it was the girl’s or her parents’ fault, “because you don’t have control of your child.”
    • Igler says, “If you are young English girl, particularly between the ages of 9 and 14, and you find yourself subject to the perversions of Muslim men, you effectively exist in a country where the forces of law and order don’t exist at all.”
    • The definitive book on this scandal is “Easy Meat” by Peter McLoughlin who declined an on-camera interview for safety reasons. He told us, “Journalists would not speak about it, because the perpetrators were mostly dark-skinned and Muslim. Childcare professionals used Political Correctness as an ‘omerta,’ a code of silence concerning what the public was allowed to know.”
  • Meanwhile, Prime Minister Starmer claims that when he led the Crown Prosecution Service it had the highest number of child sex abuse prosecutions on record.
  • And while there were indeed prosecutions, the grooming gangs were never effectively stopped, and the abuse continues to this day.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Content warning: Where’s the outrage? UN Report confirms Hamas committed rape of hostages and it’s ongoing

UN-women-Israeli-protest-Getty-640x480

Important Takeaways:

  • UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten visited Israel to collect evidence and reported that there was “clear and convincing” evidence corroborating Israeli accusations of rape by Hamas in three locations.
  • At the Nova music festival and its surroundings, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped. Credible sources described finding murdered individuals, mostly women, whose bodies were naked from their waist down – and some totally naked – tied with their hands behind their backs, many of whom were shot in the head.
  • The mission team also found a pattern of bound naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down, in some cases tied to structures including trees and poles, along Road 232.
  • In kibbutz Re’im, the mission team further verified an incident of the rape of a woman outside of a bomb shelter
  • With respect to hostages, the mission team found clear and convincing information that some have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and it also has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Women’s movement sweeps Latin America to loosen abortion restrictions

By Daina Beth Solomon and Cassandra Garrison

MEXICO CITY/BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Several weeks pregnant and about to start a job away from home, Lupita Ruiz had no doubts about wanting to end her pregnancy, despite knowing she could face jail time for having an abortion under a law in her state of Chiapas in southern Mexico.

She asked friends for help until she found a doctor two hours from her town who agreed to do it in secret.

Five years later, lawmakers in Chiapas are set to consider an initiative to halt prosecutions of women who terminate their pregnancies, part of a movement sweeping Latin America to loosen some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws.

Several out of more than 20 Latin American nations ban abortion outright, including El Salvador, which has sentenced some women to up to 40 years in prison. Most countries, including Brazil, the region’s most populous, allow abortion only in specific circumstances, such as rape or health risk to the mother.

Just Uruguay and Cuba allow elective abortions.

In Mexico, a patchwork of state restrictions apply, but the debate is shifting, Ruiz said.

“When someone talked about abortion, they were shushed,” said the 27-year-old activist, who helped draft the Chiapas initiative. “Now I can sit down to eat a tamale and have a coffee and talk with my mom and my grandma about abortion, without anyone telling me to be quiet.”

Change is palpable across the predominantly Roman Catholic region. A new Argentine president proposed legalization last month, Chilean activists are aiming to write broader reproductive rights into a new constitution, and female lawmakers in Mexico are resisting abortion bans.

The push can be traced to Argentina’s pro-abortion protests in 2018 by as many as one million women to back a legalization bill that only narrowly failed to pass – in Pope Francis’s home country.

Catalina Martinez, director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy organization, said Argentina’s example inspired protests across Latin America.

“It was an awakening,” she said.

Outrage at worsening gender violence in Latin America, where the number of femicides has doubled in five years, has also spread awareness of the abortion rights movement and fueled demands for recognition of women’s rights in a conservative, male-dominated society.

“Women are finally understanding that they are not separate issues,” said Catalina Calderon, director for campaigns and advocacy programs at the Women’s Equality Center. “It’s the fact that you agree that we women are in control of our bodies, our decisions, our lives.”

The rise of social media has afforded women opportunities to bypass establishment-controlled media and bring attention to their stories, Calderon said.

“Now they’re out there for the public to discuss and for the women to react, and say: ‘This does not work. We need to do something’,” Calderon said.

As in the United States, where conservatives have made gains in restricting a woman’s right to an abortion, there is pushback in Latin America against the calls for greater liberalization.

Brazil, under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, is making it even harder for women to abort.

The Argentine Episcopal Conference has said it does not want to debate abortion during the coronavirus crisis, and alluded to comments by the Pope urging respect for those who are “not yet useful,” including fetuses.

Yet trust in the Catholic Church, which believes life begins at conception, is fading, with many Latin Americans questioning its moral legitimacy because of sexual abuse by priests.

SPREADING ‘GREEN WAVE’

Argentina could be first up for sweeping change, with a bill submitted to Congress by center-left President Alberto Fernandez seeking to legalize elective abortions.

Approval for legalization has risen eight percentage points since 2014, according to an August Ipsos poll, with support split nearly evenly between those who favor elective abortion and those who are for it only in certain circumstances.

“The dilemma we must overcome is whether abortions are performed clandestinely or in the Argentine health system,” Fernandez said.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a U.S.-based reproductive health research organization, an estimated 29% of pregnancies in Latin America and the Caribbean from 2015 to 2019 ended in abortion, encompassing 5.4 million women. The abortions are often clandestine, so figures are hard to determine.

The mass demonstrations in Argentina two years ago, known as the “green wave” protests, have reverberated.

Since mid-2018, lawmakers in Mexico have filed more than 40 proposals to end punishment for abortion, according to Mexican reproductive rights group GIRE.

In Chiapas, the de-criminalization effort is the first of its kind since a brief period in the 1990s when abortion was legalized during the left-wing Zapatista rebellion.

Although Chiapas does not on paper punish abortion with prison, it can jail women for the “killing” of their infants.

With Mexico’s first leftist government in a century in power, national lawmakers are considering two initiatives to open up restrictions and strip away criminal punishments from places like Sonora state, where abortion can be punished by up to six years in prison.

Only two federal entities, Mexico City and Oaxaca, allow elective abortions.

Wendy Briceno, a Sonoran lawmaker who has backed a nationwide legalization bill, said the initiatives have a good chance to pass if the debate centers on women’s health, especially given rising outrage over femicides.

In Chile, activists are celebrating a vote in October to write a new constitution as a chance to expand a 2017 law that permitted abortion to save a mother’s life, in cases of rape, or if the fetus is not viable.

Colombia, where the constitutional court has agreed to consider a petition to remove abortion from the penal code, could set an example, said Anita Pena, director of Chilean reproductive rights group Corporacion Miles.

Activists agree there is still a long way to go, with restrictive laws entrenched in many countries.

To Briceno, Brazil’s shift to the right under Bolsonaro, who has vowed to veto any pro-abortion bills, was a reminder to push even harder for abortion rights.

“No fight is ever finished,” she said.

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon in Mexico City, Cassandra Garrison in Buenos Aires, Natalia Ramos in Santiago; Additional reporting by Philip Pullella in Vatican City; editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Grant McCool)

Former Hollywood producer Weinstein convicted of sexual assault, rape, held in custody

By Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former movie producer Harvey Weinstein was convicted of sexual assault and rape by a New York jury on Monday and handcuffed in court, a milestone verdict for the #MeToo movement that inspired women to go public with misconduct allegations against powerful men.

Once one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, Weinstein, 67, was convicted of sexually assaulting former production assistant Mimi Haleyi in 2006 and raping Jessica Mann, a onetime aspiring actress, in 2013.

Weinstein was acquitted on the most serious charges that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life. In the minutes after the verdict was read in court, Weinstein was seen talking to his lead lawyer Donna Rotunno. He appeared expressionless.

Justice James Burke ordered Weinstein to be held in custody and he was put in handcuffs by officers in court.

He faces up to 25 years in prison on the sexual assault conviction.

The jury acquitted Weinstein on two counts of predatory sexual assault, which carried a potential life sentence, and first degree rape of Mann. A conviction on predatory sexual assault would have meant the jury had concluded he was a repeat sexual offender.

He was convicted of third degree rape which carries a sentence of up to four years in prison.

Elizabeth L. Jeglic, a Professor of Psychology at John Jay College in New York said, “I think this verdict is definitely a vindication of all the women who have come forward and not been able to get a prosecution.”

During his trial, Weinstein often appeared feeble, entering the courthouse using a walker. He sometimes leaned on Rotunno for support. Critics had accused Weinstein of playing up medical problems to win sympathy but Weinstein said he had back injuries.

“He’s taken some good acting tips,” actress Rose McGowan said at the start of the trial on Jan. 6 while staging a protest near the courthouse along with actress Rosanna Arquette and other Weinstein accusers.

Weinstein made his mark with critically acclaimed films such as “The English Patient” and “Shakespeare in Love.”

More than 80 women, including famous actresses, had accused him of sexual misconduct stretching back decades. He had denied the allegations and said any sexual encounters were consensual.

Paul Callan, a former New York prosecutor who is not involved in the case, said Weinstein had strong grounds to argue the verdict should be overturned on appeal because of bias, noting that one of the jurors was the author of a forthcoming book on teenage girls and “predatory” older men.

During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Weinstein as a serial predator who had manipulated women with promises to open doors in Hollywood, coaxing them to hotel rooms or private apartments and then overpowering and violently attacking them.

“The man seated right there was not just a titan in Hollywood, he was a rapist,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Meghan Hast said during opening arguments.

Seated at the defense table, Weinstein often appeared impassive, though at times he looked intently at his attorneys when they cross-examined his accusers.

‘JEKYLL AND HYDE’

During the many weeks of trial, the prosecution methodically elicited graphic testimony from several accusers, including Haleyi, who said Weinstein invited her to his SoHo home after she had worked on one of his television productions.

After she arrived, Weinstein backed her into a bedroom, held her down on the bed and forced himself on her orally, yanking out her tampon, Haleyi told jurors.

Mann said that soon after meeting Weinstein she entered into an “extremely degrading” relationship with him that never included intercourse until, she alleged, he raped her in 2013.

She described Weinstein as a “Jekyll and Hyde” character: He was charming in public but often showed terrifying anger when they were alone, Mann said.

At one point, she started sobbing uncontrollably on the stand, prompting the judge to end testimony early for the day.

Weinstein was charged with assaulting Haleyi and Mann, but prosecutors bolstered their case by calling several other accusers as witnesses.

One of these women, “Sopranos” actress Annabella Sciorra, told jurors Weinstein came into her apartment one winter night in 1993 or 1994 and raped her.

Though the accusation was too old to be charged as a separate crime, prosecutors offered it to show Weinstein was a repeat sexual offender.

Three other women – costume designer Dawn Dunning, model Tarale Wulff and actress Lauren Young – testified that they were enticed into meeting Weinstein for professional reasons and then groped or raped.

Testimony of “prior bad acts” is generally not allowed in criminal trials, but an exception to the law allowed prosecutors to call these women to show Weinstein had a particular intention or a signature pattern of behavior.

Legal experts said the women provided powerful evidence that was difficult for the defense to overcome.

Dunning testified that the producer groped her in 2004 and offered her movie roles in exchange for three-way sex with him and his assistant, which she refused.

Young, a model and actress, testified that the producer trapped her in a hotel bathroom in 2013, masturbated in front of her while groping her breasts, and told her: “This is what all the actresses do to make it.”

‘LAST LINE OF DEFENSE’

Throughout the case, the defense said regret drove the accusers to take consensual incidents and reframe them as crimes.

Weinstein’s lawyers zeroed in on friendly messages and ongoing contact between the women and Weinstein.

During cross-examination of Haleyi, for example, the defense showed her a message she sent Weinstein signed “lots of love” after her alleged attack.

Defense lawyers repeatedly suggested that Mann willingly had sex with Weinstein to advance her career.

Weinstein never testified in his defense, although he told reporters he had wanted to. One of his lawyers said the case was too weak to warrant putting him on the stand.

Weinstein’s lawyer Rotunno told jurors during closing arguments that they were “the last line of defense” against an “overzealous” prosecution and that women were “responsible” for the “choices they make to further their own careers.”

Prosecutors pushed back against claims that his accusers were not credible and the notion that they were responsible for the alleged attacks.

Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi said it was irrelevant whether they had ongoing contact with Weinstein after the alleged attacks.

Illuzzi rejected a defense claim that Mann had a loving relationship with Weinstein, but said it would not matter if she had been “head over heels in love with him.”

“He still wouldn’t be allowed to rape her on March 18 of 2013,” she said.

Weinstein still faces sexual assault charges in California, which were announced just hours after his New York rape trial began, and dozens of women have filed civil lawsuits against him.

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson; Additional reporting by Tom Hals; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Howard Goller and Jonathan Oatis, Grant McCool)

Weinstein jury renews deliberations after deadlock on most serious charges

By Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Jurors in the sexual assault trial of former movie producer Harvey Weinstein began their fifth day of deliberations on Monday, after suggesting last week they were deadlocked on the most serious charges in the case.

Weinstein arrived at court after breakfast at the Four Seasons New York Downtown hotel, wearing a navy blue suit and leaning on a walker. He appeared to be in an upbeat mood.

“Good morning everyone,” he said as he passed journalists in the courthouse hallway and paused for photos.

Weinstein, 67, pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting former production assistant Mimi Haleyi and raping Jessica Mann, a onetime aspiring actress.

On Friday, the jury of seven men and five women asked the judge whether they could be hung on two counts of predatory sexual assault and unanimous on the others, which include first-degree rape.

Conviction on the predatory assault charges, which carry a potential life sentence, would indicate that Weinstein is a repeat sexual offender. Two of the other three charges carry prison terms of up to 25 years; a third carries a sentence of up to 4 years.

Legal experts said the jury’s questions suggested they were nearing a guilty verdict on at least one of the five counts against the producer of movies including “The English Patient” and “Shakespeare in Love.”

Weinstein has denied the charges. A source within Weinstein’s defense team said speculation about the verdict would be “premature and a mistake.”

Paul Callan, a former prosecutor, said an acquittal is still possible and “anything can happen after a weekend of reflection.” The jury began its deliberations last Tuesday.

During the weeks-long trial Haleyi testified that Weinstein invited her to his Manhattan home in 2006 and then backed her into a bedroom and forcibly performed oral sex on her.

Mann said that soon after meeting Weinstein she began an “extremely degrading” relationship with him that never included intercourse until, she alleged, he raped her in March 2013.

Another accuser, Annabella Sciorra, best known for her role in HBO’s “The Sopranos,” testified that Weinstein came to her New York apartment one winter night in 1993 or 1994, raped her and then forced oral sex on her.

That accusation is too old to be charged as a separate crime, but was introduced by prosecutors as an aggravating factor for the predatory sexual assault charges.

Jurors appeared to focus on Sciorra’s allegations on Thursday and Friday, asking to review extensive evidence related to her.

Jurors can convict Weinstein of predatory sexual assault if they find that he committed the alleged assault against Sciorra and at least one of the alleged crimes against Haleyi or Mann.

Defense lawyer Michael Bachner, who is not involved in the case, said it seemed the jury had decided to convict Weinstein on the counts related to the individual complainants.

“Otherwise there really would be no reason for them to be considering the testimony of Ms. Sciorra,” Bachner said on Friday.

However, legal experts cautioned that the jurors could be confused by the complexity of the predatory sexual assault charges and the verdict sheet.

Since 2017, more than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct. He has said any sexual encounters were consensual.

The allegations fueled the #MeToo movement, in which women have accused powerful men in business, entertainment, media and politics of sexual misconduct.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Additional reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, and Maria Caspani in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Grant McCool)

Cover up or be censored: Cambodia orders women not look sexy on Facebook

By Matt Blomberg

PHNOM PENH (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A crackdown in Cambodia on women who wear provocative clothing while selling goods via Facebook live streams was slammed by women’s rights groups on Wednesday as dangerous and baseless.

Prime Minister Hun Sen said low cut tops were an affront to Cambodian culture and ordered authorities to track down Facebook vendors who wear them to sell items like clothes and beauty products – a popular trend in the conservative country.

“Go to their places and order them to stop live-streaming until they change to proper clothes,” the prime minister told the government’s Cambodian National Council for Women on Monday.

“This is a violation of our culture and tradition,” he said, adding that such behaviour contributed to sexual abuse and violence against women.

While Cambodia’s young population is increasingly educated, many expect women to be submissive and quiet, a legacy of Chbap Srey, an oppressive code of conduct for women in the form of a poem that was on primary school curricula until 2007.

The national police posted a video to Facebook on Wednesday, in which a Cambodian woman makes a public apology for sullying the “tradition and honour of Cambodian women” by wearing “extremely short and sexy clothes” in her online sales pitches.

Facebook was not immediately available to comment.

Interior ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak confirmed on Wednesday that authorities were “taking action” in line with the prime minister’s orders. He referred further questions to a police spokesman who could not be reached immediately.

Amnesty International regional director Nicholas Bequelin said the prime minister’s comments were a “dangerous instance of victim blaming”.

“This rhetoric only serves to perpetuate violence against women and stigmatise survivors of gender-based violence,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

One in five Cambodian men said they had raped a woman in a 2013 United Nations survey.

Ros Sopheap, head of the charity Gender and Development for Cambodia, said the government should look at the reasons why women sell goods online instead of dictating what they wear.

“They always talk about culture, culture, culture,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “What about jobs? What about education? These things are broken in Cambodia. And what about people’s right to make a living?”

Seven Cambodian women’s rights groups pointed out that the women vendors had breached no law.

“There is no evidence-based research that affirms that women’s clothing choice is the root cause of degradation of social morality,” they said in an open letter.

(Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)

Migrants raped and trafficked as U.S. and Mexico tighten borders, charity says

By Christine Murray

MEXICO CITY (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Central American migrants are being kidnapped, raped and trafficked in Mexico as they seek to enter the United States amid a migration crackdown, a medical charity said on Tuesday.

In Mexico’s Nuevo Laredo city – separated from the United States by the Rio Grande – almost 80% of migrants treated by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the first nine months of 2019 said they had been victims of violence, including kidnapping.

“They’re treated as if they aren’t really people,” Sergio Martin, Mexico coordinator for MSF, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “They’ve suffered violence … and what they find on their journey is more violence.”

Mexico has ramped up efforts to stop Central American migrants, often fleeing violent crime and poverty, reaching the U.S. border under pressure from President Donald Trump who threatened to put import tariffs on its goods.

It has deployed the National Guard to stop migrants crossing northwards and increased detentions and deportations.

Mexico’s immigration authority and interior ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said he wants to apply immigration laws while respecting migrants’ human rights.

The United States has sent 57,000 non-Mexican migrants back to Mexico to await their U.S. asylum hearings, restricted asylum criteria and limited the number of claims it receives daily at each port of entry.

In September, 18 of 41 patients in Nuevo Laredo who had been sent back to Mexico to wait for U.S. asylum processing told MSF they had recently been kidnapped.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We think that as a direct result of many of these policies there are people who are suffering more violence,” said Martin.

“It’s easier for them to fall into human trafficking networks or into extortion networks, and no one look for them.”

MSF found 78% of almost 3,700 patients in Mexico who sought mental health care in 2018 and 2019 showed signs of exposure to violence, including assault, sexual violence and torture.

Some patients said they had been kidnapped in Mexico for long periods for forced labour, sexual exploitation or recruitment to work for criminal groups.

Almost one in four female migrants told MSF they had experienced sexual violence on their journeys.

The MSF data was based on some 26,000 health consultations with migrants in 2018 and 2019, testimonials and a survey.

(Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Judge threatens Harvey Weinstein with jail for texting in court

Judge threatens Harvey Weinstein with jail for texting in court
By Gabriella Borter and Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial took a dramatic turn on Tuesday as the judge threatened to revoke his bail and jail the former film producer after catching him using his cellphone just as jury selection got underway.

“Is this really the way you want to end up in jail for the rest of your life, by texting and violating a court order?” state Judge James Burke asked the 67-year-old defendant, visibly angry.

“I’m not looking for apologies; I’m looking for compliance,” Burke said.

The once-powerful producer has been released on bail, but is required to wear an electronic-tracking device that was visible on his ankle when he arrived at court on Tuesday.

Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to charges of assaulting two women in New York. He faces life in prison if convicted on the most serious charge, predatory sexual assault.

Jury selection began with Burke speaking to 120 potential jurors in the courtroom about the importance of jury service and telling them the identity of the defendant.

“Having heard of him, or even having heard the allegations made against him in the press, does not disqualify you,” he told them.

Burke read to jurors a list of dozens of names that might come up at the trial, including actresses Salma Hayek and Charlize Theron, who have accused Weinstein of misconduct.

He also mentioned actress Alyssa Milano. Days after reports of Weinstein’s alleged misconduct was first reported in October 2017, Milano wrote on Twitter “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.”

That message propelled the #MeToo movement, which prompted women to lodge misconduct allegations against powerful men in politics and business.

Burke did not say if the people he mentioned would be called as witnesses.

Prosecutors have said they may call three women to testify about encounters with Weinstein, even though he is not formally charged with crimes against them. Their testimony is intended to bolster the charges by showing that Weinstein had a consistent pattern of behavior.

Michelle Gelernt, a public defender who briefly represented Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, raised her had when asked if anyone knew the legal teams. She said she knew the judge and lead prosecutor but it would not prevent her from being impartial.

Forty potential jurors were excused after saying they could not be impartial, and a small number said their health prevented them from serving.

Those who said they believed serving on the jury would be a hardship were called one by one to speak with the judge and lawyers privately.

The remaining jurors were told to take a written questionnaire and return on Jan. 16 for further selection if they believed they were able to serve.

On Monday, hours after Weinstein’s trial in New York started, Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey charged Weinstein with the sexual assault of two unidentified women in 2013.

More than 80 women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct dating back decades.

Weinstein has denied the allegations, saying any sexual encounters he had were consensual.

Burke denied a request by one of Weinstein’s lawyers, Arthur Aidala, to delay the trial or at least allow more time for jury selection because Monday’s charges would make it impossible to choose a fair and impartial jury this week.

“I cannot think of one time, one case where the day of jury selection this type of prejudice is being cast against a criminal defendant,” said Aidala, who held up copies of the New York Times, Daily News and New York Post with articles about the Los Angeles charges.

“I don’t see how anyone could answer honestly that they’re fair and impartial after this stuff is drilled into their brains,” he said.

Legal experts said the #MeToo movement and Monday’s charges would make jury selection challenging in the trial of Weinstein, who made his mark with low-budget, critically acclaimed films such as “The English Patient” and “Shakespeare in Love.”

“The defendant, Harvey Weinstein is a film producer,” stated the form with 55 questions potential jurors were asked to answer. “Can you assure all parties that you will determine this case based only on the evidence you will hear in Court?”

Jurors were also asked if they had read about the case or Weinstein, if they or a family member was ever a victim of sexual abuse or if they or a family member ever worked in the entertainment business.

Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration, said the 2,000 jurors summoned for the Weinstein case is roughly five times the number for a typical trial. Based on past experience, about 500 were likely to show up for jury duty.

Prosecutors need all 12 jurors to back a conviction, while Weinstein needs just one holdout for a hung jury.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter in New York; Additional reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, and Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Jonathan Oatis)

Rape map and murdered women – welcome to South Africa’s Republic of Sexual Abuse

By Kim Harrisberg

JOHANNESBURG (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – It has its own currency, passports and a blood-stained map, but this is no ordinary country. Welcome to the Republic of Sexual Abuse, the creation of a group of campaigners in South Africa, where a woman is murdered every three hours.

The fictional country is the centrepiece of an exhibition held in a Johannesburg mall that seeks to raise awareness of South Africa’s high levels of violence against women – and inspire action against it.

It was thought up by Roanna Williams, executive creative director of the advertising agency Black River FC, after she saw women protesting against the violence from her office window.

“Most women in South Africa have a story of sexual abuse,” said Williams at the exhibition, which opened on Nov. 26 to coincide with the United Nations’ 16 days of activism campaign against gender-based violence.

“We are not just trying to shock, we are showing that this is everyone’s problem and we all need to act, not just during 16 Days of Activism, but 365 days of the year.”

Recent murders, rapes and kidnappings of South African women sparked mass protests in September where women called for justice for rape survivors.

Soon after, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a five-point plan to tackle violence against women, including media campaigns, strengthening the criminal justice system, and providing training for healthcare workers and counsellors.

The exhibition, run together with women’s rights group People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA), includes a huge red map painted in fake blood with all the excuses men use to rape women – including “I was drunk”.

At the back of the exhibition, a warning sign marks the entrance to a bedroom where blood stained sheets hide behind a curtain. Recordings of cries and slaps fill the room.

“This room is where reality kicks in for people in the exhibition,” said Patricia Naha, a volunteer and counsellor with POWA, adding it showed women were not safe anywhere.

About 3,000 women in South Africa were murdered in 2018 – one every three hours and more than five times higher than the global average, according to the World Health Organization.

The number of recorded murders of women went up 11% between 2017 and 2018.

A video advertising South Africa as a tourist destination is played on repeat, with images of the country overlaid with jarring narration about sexual violence.

“Retreat to the spectacular bushveld,” a voice is heard saying over a video of zebra running through a national park. “Where women are dumped after being murdered,” the sentence continues.

Some men visiting the exhibition get defensive, said Clayton Swartz, Black River FC’s art director, but many leave taking pamphlets and asking how they can help.

“I am proud to be South African, but not with these rape stats,” said Swartz. “We want to encourage everyone to speak out.”

The exhibition, which has so far attracted thousands of visitors, is open until Dec. 10 at Rosebank Mall and the organisers are seeking corporate sponsors to help them take it across the country.

(Reporting by Kim Harrisberg @kimharrisberg; Editing by Claire Cozens. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Anger erupts in Spain as five men acquitted of gang-raping teenager

Anger erupts in Spain as five men acquitted of gang-raping teenager
By Sophie Davies

BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Women’s rights campaigners in Spain called for a change in the law on Friday after a court in Barcelona cleared five men of raping a 14-year-old girl and jailed them for the lesser charge of sexual abuse, ruling that they did not use violence.

The men, who denied the charges, took turns to have sex with the teenager after a party in Manresa, a town to the north of Barcelona, in October 2016, the court heard.

On Thursday they were sentenced to between 10 and 12 years in jail for sexual abuse, avoiding more serious charges of rape or sexual assault because the court said the girl was drunk and unconscious, did not fight back and the men were not violent.

Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, took to social media to express her anger at the verdict, saying it was “outrageous” and the result of a patriarchal judicial system.

“I’m not a judge and I don’t know how many years in prison they deserve, but what I do know is that this is not abuse, it is rape!” she wrote on Twitter.

The verdict has reignited a debate over the Spanish judiciary’s treatment of women, which intensified with the 2016 “Wolf Pack” case, in which an 18-year-old woman was gang-raped during the running of the bulls festival in Pamplona.

The men, who included a former policeman and a former soldier, had shared videos of the incident in a WhatsApp group and joked about it afterwards.

In June, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled the five accused were guilty of rape not the lesser crime of sexual abuse, increasing their sentence to 15 years rather than the nine years they had been given for sexual abuse by a regional court.

Outrage and protests over the initial verdict prompted a government promise to change the law, but critics say the Manresa case shows how the penal code is still outdated.

“It makes no sense that the law continues to distinguish between abuse and sexual assault,” Nuria Gonzalez, a Barcelona-based human rights lawyer, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Everything that happens after a woman says no, or says nothing at all, or which happens through violence and intimidation, goes against the will of the victim and is a sexual assault in which there is no room for mitigating or lower grades,” she added.

Spanish law requires that the plaintiff in a rape case must present evidence of intimidation or specific violence.

“Any attack on sexual liberty should be considered violence,” Graciela Atencio, a women’s rights activist and director of the website Feminicidio.net, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“It’s important that they introduce the term rape into the penal code for all attacks that involve penetration and that any sexual behaviour without consent be considered sexual violence.”

(Editing by Ros Russell ((Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)