Rape in the News

"Reporters viewing rape from the point of view of the rapists is a longstanding problem in corporate media." ~FAIR

It's been a persistent problem at the NYT.

Then there's the internal sexism at CNN in its reporting of the guilty verdict at the trial of the Steubenville, Pennsylvania high school football players.

They did know!

A chilling report from Radio Netherlands Worldwide. The RC church hierarchy knew about the sexual abuse of children in the late 1950s by priests and workers in church run homes and institutions which continued into the 1960s and 70s - and failed to act. The excuse has been that they didn't know anything about it.   New evidence - a letter  in the church archives, written in 1958, reveals that they did know.  And church authorities did act - they took a conscious decision not to do anything to remove the offending priests and workers in the homes.  It was more about protecting the clergy rather than the children!

Sullivan: "When will this Pope step down?"

Andrew Sullivan, via The Lead,

"...
The current moral authority for all Catholics personally put the interests of the hierarchy above the welfare of vulnerable children. He heard a case of a priest forcing an eleven-year-old to perform oral sex on him, and he did not take that priest to the police, as he should have, or removed him from his duties immediately. He sent him to therapy and allowed him to continue molesting children in future parishes, and never informed the parents of the priest's past. Would you have done that? Would anyone you know have done that? Would anyone you know who had done that be able to sleep at night?
...
"When will this Pope step down?"

What goes around, comes around

BURLINGTON FREE PRESS

The former St. Joseph’s Orphanage on North Avenue in Burlington, now headquarters of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Burlington, will be sold as part of a settlement with victims of priest sexual abuse going back decades.

The abuse was by parish priests throughout the state. I wonder what happened inside the building when it was an orphanage. It's a huge property, prime real estate for developers, overlooking Lake Champlain. There have been rumours in the past that some conservative (Republican) residents in the new north end of town want to secede from Burlington to create a separate town, making this property their town hall. Who knows what will happen.

YEE HAW

The Vancouver Sun

Texas hospitals charging sexual assault victims for rape detection kits

As if coming forth with an allegation of sexual assault wasn't demeaning enough in many parts of North America, Texas has quietly decided to allow hospitals to charge a fee as high as $1800 to victims for the rape kits used to prove an attack.

Despite Texas' crime victim compensation fund being flush with cash, and most parts of the United States seeking to lessen the stress involved in a sexual assault investigation rather than increase it, Texan women have to hand over a credit card before their investigation can commence - or face debt collectors afterwards.

The office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says the standard practice is for the state to cover the costs of the kit automatically, but "many follow-up or added costs are not covered." Staff added that the victims compensation fund only pays as a last resort, when police and the victim's health insurance company refuse to do so.

Texas isn't the first place where this rule is in place - the town of Wasilla, Alaska, home to former mayor and current state Governor Sarah Palin, also charged assault victims for their rape kits until the state government outlawed the practice.

During her campaign for the vice presidency, Palin told a reporter at the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman newspaper that such a rule was ridiculous, stating, "The entire notion of making a victim of a crime pay for anything is crazy. I do not believe, nor have I ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test."

And yet, when she was Mayor, Wasilla did just that, billing rape victims between $300 and $1200 after the fact for their test.

Wasilla is not alone. In North Carolina, the vast majority of rape victims were being asked to cover some or all of the cost of their rape kits, until the local Raleigh News & Observer newspaper brought the practice to light. A state victims compensation fund had reportedly run low on cash, meaning it could only cover around $1000 of the $1600 hospitals now charge in that state for the kit. Similar situations have been reported in Arkansas, Illinois, and Georgia.

Rape kits generally include bags for clothing, a comb to collect pubic hair, test tubes for blood collection, swabs for DNA checks and fluid, and a series of tests for sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy and DNA collection.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Help and Information in Burlington & Chittenden County: Women Helping Battered Women



Lamoille County: Clarina Howard Nichols Center



Burlington & Statewide: Women's Rape Crisis Center



Men Working to End Men's Violence Against Women: White Ribbon Campaign - Burlington, VT



UVM Women's Center: Campus Gender Violence Project




In St. Albans, VT: Voices Against Violence



Serving to end physical, sexual, and emotional violence in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQQ) people in Vermont: Safe Space



In Middlebury: WomenSafe



In Barre and Washington County: Battered Women Services Shelter



Another group for men in Burlington and Chittenden County: Lake Champlain Men's Resource Center



Further Information: Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault