A new study about the ongoing rape epidemic in the Congo has some rather terrifying statistics to offer. According to USA Today, 420,000 women are raped in the DRC every year.

Or, if you ask the Boston Globe, 1,152 women are raped every day. The Guardian reports that 48 women are raped every hour. And the Sydney Morning Herald ups the ante even further by putting the number at one rape every minute.

Even if all of the varying numbers did add up just so, I can’t be the only one wondering when exactly this ongoing campaign of sexual terrorism against women turned into a competition over which Western newspaper could write the most shocking headline. Nor can I refrain from asking what, exactly, is the magic number of rapes that will suddenly make us care? Would the headlines still be blaring if it were 30 rapes an hour? Is one rape every one and a half minutes just too few that the numbers needed to be fudged and made even more sensationalistic? Do we, as Western observers, care more now than we would if the number were actually one rape every five minutes?

Do we care now? Will the subject merit our true attention? Will we suddenly start listening to Congolese survivors? Are we ashamed for not having listened more closely before, for not believing the full magnitude when women were already telling us the truth? Do we feel better now that a U.S. organization has officially verified their lived experiences? Or will we remain indifferent until the numbers hit two rapes every minute? Five rapes every minute? One every second? Where precisely is the cut off point for compassion and a sense justice? How many women must be raped before we start to care enough to look at the causes? How high do the numbers have to be?

I am in no way trying to suggest that these numbers do not matter. Nor am I arguing that they are not horrific, that they do not deserve attention, or that headlines on the topic are unwarranted. What I’m condemning is the objectifying and imperialistic tendency towards disaster porn. What I’m criticizing is the refusal to engage with the issue of violence in the Congo in an in-depth and ongoing basis that puts these numbers in context, and the decision to instead resort to pearl-clutching headlines designed to shock Western readers with information we already had and will continue to ignore.

I’m also making clear that the response to this extremely extended crisis would look a lot different were it occurring somewhere other than sub-Sahara Africa. It’s not that the media takes most rape seriously, or that even the most privileged rape survivors are immune to rape apologism, victim-blaming, and indifference — this entire blog is a testament to these things not being true.

But on the one hand, that is precisely the point. These same newspapers that report these numbers with horror and very little background or analysis will tomorrow resort to shaming and casting doubt on rape victims from their own communities. Tomorrow, when it is no longer convenient to feign interest in rape, it will be back to business as usual. Tomorrow, lines will be drawn between the “date rape” that so many women needlessly whine and exaggerate about and the “real” rape that is downplayed by taking it seriously — after all, what about those women in the Congo?

Indeed, the part of this study that has been the most ignored and will continue to be pushed to the margins is the fact that this study shows higher numbers than others, in large part, because it includes rape by intimate partners instead of only rape committed as a tactic of war — a fact that makes the situation look a lot more similar to the one in countries where most don’t consider rape to be a big problem.

And, on the other hand, while the shaming and ridicule of rape victims is ubiquitous in the U.S. and other Western countries, some victims are indeed always more valued than others. We wouldn’t have to wait until the number of rapes hit “one every minute” before we started to care, if a large portion of those victims were white, cis, economically privileged women — at least, not if those rapes were in large part being committed within the context of war and with the level of violence we’re seeing against Congolese women. We wouldn’t have to wonder whether one every minute is actually going to be enough to cause real concern. We would know that there would be outrage.

But women who are black, who are poor, who are from countries labeled “third world” always fall towards the very bottom of hierarchy of rape victims who will gain Western attention. We in developed Western nations can and will ignore their plight because we have constructed them as less than women, less than human. We can simultaneously tut-tut at the atrocity and turn away from it because it is what we expect from those men we have culturally constructed as inherently barbaric, because it’s what we believe the women have come to expect, too.

And we can ignore our role — the role of industrialized nations and of consumers, especially in the U.S. We can look at the numbers and think it is “them” instead of “us.” We who aren’t living in the Congo can refuse to ask the question of why there is so much rape and assume that it has something to do with “lesser” cultures instead of so much to do with our own. We can side-step questions of rape culture and imperialism and colonialism and economic racism and consumer culture. We can forget to ask why we ignored earlier opportunities to ask hard questions and demand change.

We, we reading these headlines divorced from the context in which the news was created, can read “one rape every minute” and exclaim “those poor women!” without wondering why we didn’t care before someone made the headline sufficiently eye-grabbing, and without demanding accountability from ourselves now.

The Afghan government has drafted new rules which would severely harm women who are the victims of domestic violence and greatly impede their ability to leave their abusers. Local women’s shelters run by Afghan women would be turned over to the control of the government and subjected to new misogynistic rules. Women for Afghan Women writes:

The government of Afghanistan has recently introduced a bill that wrests control of women’s shelters in Afghanistan from the local Afghan women’s NGOs that have founded and run them, and transfers that control to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA).  This bill could become the law of the land ANY DAY NOW.

If this bill becomes law:

Women and girls seeking shelter will be required to plead their case before an eight-member Government panel, including conservative members of the Supreme Court and Ministry of Justice.  This panel will determine whether a woman needs to be in a shelter or should be sent to jail or returned to her home (and her abuser).

Women will have to undergo “forensic” exams (virginity tests) to determine whether they have had sex and therefore committed adultery. The tests are medically invalid.

Once admitted to a shelter, women will be forbidden to leave. Their shelter will become their prison. If any family member comes to claim her, even her abuser, she will be handed over to that person, in most cases to be subjected to the harshest retribution for shaming the family.

You can find more information through both the NY Times and the Ms. Magazine Blog.

I can’t add much more than what has already been said, but this is a horrifying assault on women’s rights, and it would result in making countless victims far less safe than they already are. It needs to be stopped, and women need to remain in control of their own organizations and their own lives.

Women for Afghan Women has a petition to save the women’s shelters. Please take a moment to click through and sign.

Thanks to Claire for the link

Trigger Warning for descriptions/discussions of sexual violence

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti. In the wake of this milestone, much reporting has appeared on the current status of the earthquake recovery, and how it is sorely lagging behind everyone’s hopes, as well as what the expectations would be for richer countries. Less frequently discussed is how women are being specifically impacted by the lack of reconstruction.

Last year, I wrote about the huge spike in sexual violence against women following the earthquake. Sadly if unsurprisingly, seeing the slow pace of other changes, this situation has seen little improvement. And since the same story every day doesn’t fit the model of the dominant news cycle, the dire circumstances are largely going ignored.

Last week, Amnesty International released a report on this very topic, titled Aftershocks: Women Speak Out Against Sexual Violence in Haiti’s Camps (.pdf). As implied by the title, the report consists largely of women sharing their stories of sexual violence. From the press release:

One 14 year old girl, Machou, lives in a makeshift camp for displaced people in Carrefour Feuilles, south-west Port-au-Prince. She was raped in March when she went to the toilet.

“A boy came in after me and opened the door. He gagged me with his hand and did what he wanted to do…He hit me. He punched me. I didn’t go to the police because I don’t know the boy, it wouldn’t help. I feel really sad all the time…I’m afraid it will happen again,” Machou told Amnesty International.

One woman, Suzie, recounted how she was living in a makeshift shelter with her two sons and a friend when they were attacked around 1am on 8 May.  Suzie and her friend were both blindfolded and raped in front of their children by a gang of men who forced their way into their shelter.

“After they left I didn’t do anything. I didn’t have any reaction…Women victims of rape should go to hospital but I didn’t because I didn’t have any money… I don’t know where there is a clinic offering treatment for victims of violence,” Suzie said.

Suzie lost her parents, brothers and husband in the January earthquake. Her home was also destroyed.

Many women in Haiti — those who are currently among the most marginalized and vulnerable across the board — are living multiple horrors at once. On top of the trauma of the earthquake itself and the many deaths and injuries it caused, on top of the trauma of homelessness or near-homelessness and fear for one’s ongoing ability to access food and water, on top of an epidemic of cholera, large numbers of women in Haiti’s camps are also facing the trauma of sexual violence. And virtually all women in the camps are living with the trauma of the daily, persistent, and very real threat of sexual violence.

A vast majority of the assaults are never reported, for various reasons: fear of retaliation from their attackers, lack of knowledge about how to report, lack of faith in the legal system, and even refusal by officers to accept their reports. Few also go to hospitals after the attacks — there are many barriers to access — and there is little emotional support to help survivors in the aftermath of their assaults. With infrastructure at a bare minimum, too many survivors are going it alone.

Though no level of economic, political, and/or social instability cause rape on its own — the cultural structures of kyriarchy must already be in place to make sexual violence exist as a viable and desirable option — there is no doubt that the increase in rates of rape are directly connected to the overall conditions presented by the earthquake’s aftermath. Creating greater stability and sustainability — adequate housing, working toilets, sufficient food, access to clean water, ongoing sources of income — won’t stop rape in Haiti anymore than it has stopped rape in any community that does have access to these basic necessities. But it would take the edge off of the current crisis. And the people of Haiti, women included, deserve these things whether they impact the prevalence of sexual violence or not, for the basic reason that they’re human rights.

I would also be extraordinarily remiss if I failed to note the historical background behind the devastation that the earthquake has wrought. Under different circumstances where Haiti had not been so poor prior to the earthquake, the damage would not have been nearly so severe. The ongoing recovery efforts would also not be lagging so far behind; the cholera outbreak would have most likely never happened. And Haiti’s poverty has direct roots in the history of colonization and economic racism by numerous rich Western countries, including the U.S. Those nations have a direct culpability for this tragedy, and therefore for the increase in rapes as well. It is hardly a stretch to say that we (as those culpable nations) have not done better in responding as a result of ongoing economic racism and colonialist attitudes towards poor nations made up mostly of black people. Every day, that culpability only increases, as women are raped and people die.

The one spark of good news is that local activists have been organizing. In their report, Amnesty International mentions two of them specifically: the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV) and Women Victims Arise (FAVILEK). These organizations are providing support to survivors of sexual violence and working to end the assaults. FAVILEK has a website, including an address to which you can send a check donation. KOFAVIV can be found on their Facebook page. They have not directly responded to requests for information about how to donate, but users have suggested giving to their partner IJDH and including a note requesting that the funds go to KOFAVIV. If you have the means to do so, please consider supporting the amazing work these women are doing.

Trigger Warning for descriptions of sexual violence, victim-blaming, and rape apologism

There were recently reports of a particularly horrific rape case out of South Africa, in which a 15-year-old Johannesburg girl alleged rape by two 16-year-old and 14-year-old classmates at Jules High School. The alleged rape was filmed by the two alleged perpetrators and a third boy. And, horrifically, when teachers found this film they didn’t report the rape, but rather found it “hilarious.”

The alleged attack, during school hours last Thursday, was reportedly filmed by three teenage boys on their phones.

The Commission for Gender Equality said the school was more worried about upsetting the boys during exams than the rights of the alleged victim. [...]

The alleged attack happened in a school east of Johannesburg on Thursday. The school girl was allegedly drugged with a spiked drink before the rape.

The failure of the school authorities to respond to the allegations was widely reported in the media and has sparked outrage.

“The three boys were not arrested as they alleged that they did not want to traumatise the school during the exams,” CGE spokesman Javu Baloyi said in a statement.

He said the clip of the rape was shown to teachers, who reportedly found it “hilarious”.

The two alleged perpetrators were only arrested after the public outrage began.

But after a couple of weeks of rumors, insults, and torment from community members, the accuser — who was allegedly told by her teacher that she deserved to be raped — recanted her allegations and said that the filmed encounter had been consensual.

Inconceivably making matters worse still, authorities then decided to charge not only the two boys but also the girl — who originally claimed to be the victim of assault — with a charge alternately being identified as “underage sex” and “statutory rape.”

South African rights groups have expressed shock at a decision to charge a 15-year-old alleged gang-rape victim with having underage sex.

The girl was charged with statutory rape along with her alleged rapists, who are aged 14 and 16.

The alleged rape happened earlier this month in a school east of Johannesburg in front of other pupils who filmed the incident on their phones.

Prosecutors said rape charges were dropped because of a lack of evidence.

However, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said it had decided all three could be charged under South Africa’s Sexual Offences Act, which outlaws consensual sex with a minor.

There’s all kinds of fucked up to go around here. So let’s take it piece by piece.

We cannot adequately look at this case outside of the context of rape culture. Most of the world has plenty of rape culture to spare, but the situation is particularly dire in South Africa, which has an extraordinarily high rape rate and where it’s estimated that a woman is raped every 17 seconds. (As a comparison, in the U.S. it’s estimated that someone of any gender is raped every two minutes.) Sexual violence and rape apologism both run rampant, though there are many magnificent local victims’ rights groups working hard and fighting back.

In countries like the U.S., steeped in a rape culture of their own, false reports of rape are rare, and no more common than false reports of other crimes. In South Africa, where sexual violence is even more of an epidemic and commonly taken even less seriously, I can only imagine that the rates of false rape reporting are even lower. There’s simply little to no incentive to make a false report, and little to no reason for a person seeking sympathy to expect to find it through this means. That’s not to say that it’s impossible for the girl to have been lying when she made her original allegation of rape. It’s to note the reality that while it’s possible, it’s very unlikely.

Which means that it’s extremely possible — I would argue probable — that she recanted her allegation out of humiliation, trauma, and/or pressure from the authorities. When pursuing a rape case has become too much to bear for a victim, recanting hir allegation, even when it was absolutely true, is often the only way out. And if this young woman did recant an honest allegation in attempt to get away from the media circus and public shaming and to recover from the ordeal privately, she has now just been charged with a crime for the act of reporting her own rape.

Think that’s too far-fetched? It just happened in the U.K. That woman is serving an eight-month jail sentence right now.

But while charges for filing a false report, which the U.K. woman was convicted on, are extraordinarily problematic on the basis that a recantation does not make an allegation false, the charge against the South African girl is quite possibly even more so. Rather than being charged with filing a false report, she’s being charged with statutory rape. Of her alleged rapists. And they are being charged with statutory rape of her. They are, in essence, all being accused of raping each other.

This is wrong for the reasons outlined above — if the girl was raped as she originally claimed, she has been charged with raping those who actually raped her. As local activists have already argued, charging a rape victim with a crime in the case of her own rape is unconscionable beyond belief, no matter what the circumstances, and no matter what the charges. It is an act of inflicting extraordinary trauma. But to make the charge one of raping her rapists is beyond the pale. I really cannot imagine a worse thing that one could do to a rape victim, nor do I want to try.

But even if the recantation was genuine and the original allegations of rape were false, these charges are still a travesty, and defy all sense of logic. I’ve written before about the injustice and insult of outlawing actually consensual teen sex, and framing that sex as “rape” on both sides. It’s a violation of human rights, a means of oppression against already marginalized individuals, and a huge trivialization of actual rape. It’s not very often you’ll hear the words “calling this rape trivializes real rape” come out of my mouth. You’re much more likely to witness me attacking the person saying them. But when you’ve got two equal individuals saying they mutually consented to a sexual act, I think we do have to draw the line at claiming they simultaneously perpetrated rape against each other just because we don’t like their ages.

As Laura Smith-Gary additionally points out over at Care2, this trivialization of rape is particularly stark within the context of general state apathy towards sexual violence, particularly in South Africa. It also has serious consequences when enormous amounts of work still needs to be done (and is currently being done) to educate the public about what rape is, and why it is wrong:

The NPA’s decision to prosecute consensual underage sex is telling the boys that the difference between raping someone and having consensual sex is…not much, since they’re charged with sexual assault anyway. Part of the senselessness of prosecuting mutual “statutory rape” is that it takes the presence or absence of consent out of the definition of what it means to rape. This is especially serious in a country where it’s reported that 16% of men who say though [sic] know a woman who has been raped say she “enjoyed” it and “asked for it.”

Exactly. Which is to say that the best case scenario here is that the same legal system which usually fails to prosecute actual rapists has just decided to call consensual sex rape, and prosecute it as a crime. The worst case scenario is that they’ve decided to blame a rape victim who was traumatized to the point of recanting for her own assault, and charge her with raping her own assailants. There’s no option here that is not guilty of retraumatizing victims and promoting sexual violence.

Trigger Warning for discussions of human rights violations against sex workers, as well as sex trafficking and sexual violence.

Tomorrow November 5, the United Nations will, for the first time under its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) system, review the human rights record of the United States. That’s a pretty big deal period, especially since the process is composed not just self-assessment by the nation being reviewed, but also reports by civil society organizations.

Undoubtedly, a lot of really important issues (such as prison rape) are going to be addressed by those organizations, and all kinds of human rights violations by the United States are going to be openly discussed. But one issue set for discussion will not only likely surprise observers, but also be considerably underrepresented in any media coverage that the review garners: that of sex worker rights, and the U.S.’s appalling record with regards to violating the human rights of sex workers.

The U.S. Sex Workers Outreach Projects (SWOP-USA) reports:

This Friday November 5, 2010, the United Nations Human Rights Council will review the human rights record of the United States as part of a new process – the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The UPR calls for a review of member nations’ human rights records every four years, and this is the first time the U.S. has participated. The Human Rights Council will base its review on the U.S. government’s own self-assessment, as well as reports submitted from civil society organizations. U.S. sex worker advocates are engaged in this process, working to highlight the appalling record that the United States has in regards to communities of people engaging in the sex trade.

A comprehensive national report on sex workers’ rights was prepared by the Best Practices Policy Project and the Desiree Alliance earlier this year. The report draws on the perspectives of networks, such as SWOP USA, and organizations working with sex workers, people in the sex trade and people who are affected by anti-prostitution policies in the United States more generally. Two representatives from the Best Practices Policy Project are currently in Geneva presenting summary recommendations to delegations and encouraging countries to ask the United States questions about it’s human rights record in regards to sex workers and to include issues pertaining to sex workers in the recommendations they will raise in Friday’s session.

The Best Practices Policy Project report (pdf) is a highly comprehensive and informative document that strongly centers intersectionality and emphasizes not only the generalized risks of violence and civil rights violations that sex workers face, but also how those risks are even more severe for those sex workers who are particularly marginalized on the basis of race, trans* status, immigration status, and perceived sexual orientation. It’s only 5 pages long and a really strong overview of the oppressions faced very day by sex workers in the U.S., so I urge you to read it.

Before the U.N., the Best Practices Policy Project representatives are presenting the three most key recommendations from the report, which are as follows:

The United States should implement comprehensive criminal justice reform that includes measures to stop human rights abuses committed in the name of anti-sex trade laws. This would include repealing laws, including laws against prostitution-related offenses, and eliminate policies, such as “prostitution free zones”, that erode legal protections barring law enforcement from detaining individuals on the basis of how they are perceived or the way they are dressed (ie racial and gender profiling). The application of felony-level charges against sex workers and people living with HIV should be halted as should sex offender registration requirements of those arrested for engaging in prostitution. Criminal justice reform must also address the frequency of abuse of sex workers, or those perceived as such, by law enforcement and other state actors. Similarly, reform must ensure that people involved in the sex trade or profiled as such receive appropriate responses from authorities when they are targeted for violence and other crimes.

The United States should ensure health rights for those engaged, or perceived to be engaged, in sex work and the sex trade. In many jurisdictions in the United States condoms are used as evidence of criminal activity in the enforcement of anti-prostitution laws. Individuals involved in street economies face tremendous stigmatization in health care settings. Sex workers urgently need access to health care services including harm reduction oriented programs, which often are prohibited from receiving federal funding.

The United Sates should reorient national anti-trafficking policy to a rights-based framework and repeal the US governments “anti-prostitution pledge” requirement on foreign aid. Migrants involved in the sex trade who experience exploitation require services and legal support, but the response to human trafficking in the U.S. currently focuses on law enforcement approaches that alienate and traumatize victims. U.S. anti-trafficking policies and practices undermine the health and rights of sex workers domestically and internationally, including requiring recipients of HIV and anti-trafficking funding to adopt a stance condemning sex work. These requirements should be repealed.

It’s my personal view that all of these recommendations should be seen as straight-up common sense. I wrote about the last recommendation much more comprehensively a few months ago, and I’m going to let that post on the issue stand on its own.

The first recommendation is one that I’ve also discussed before, but is most commonly placed in dispute, and the second relies heavily on the former. So let’s repeat it again: a large majority of sex workers agree that laws which make their work illegal do not help them. They criminalize an incredibly marginalized population specifically on the basis of their marginalization. They do not protect a group already incredibly vulnerable to violence from it, but rather make that violence easier for police officers, clients, and others to commit. They ensure that sex workers who want to leave the trade cannot, by giving them highly stigmatized criminal records. And they use laws intended to keep primarily women and children safe to label primarily women, including those who entered sex work as children, as sex offenders. They label them as those likely to commit sexual violence, when they are actually among those against whom sexual violence is most likely to be or have been committed.

We can and should fight human trafficking — including forms that are not sex trafficking, and which receive extremely little publicity — without fighting sex workers. We can and should fight violence without fighting the existence of marginalized populations. Just like we always can and should fight elements of rape culture without fighting either sex or victims of assault.

But this is a point that seems to be continually lost on governments all over the world, family values conservatives, and many feminists. An illustrative example rose at the end of last week, with yet another campaign to drive sex workers who advertise their services online underground:

SWOP-NYC in collaboration with SWOP-USA strongly opposes the misguided campaign against Backpage.com. This campaign is part of a trend of actions against adult services sections online including a recent action against Craigslist.

The campaign against Backpage.com has been framed as a way to “protect innocent women and children” (as per State Attorneys General, Letter to Attorneys for Backpage.com, September 21, 2010, available at: http://ago.mo.gov/pdf/Backpage.pdf). However, the forced closure of this site will not diminish the prevalence of trafficking and, worse, will substantially harm victims of trafficking and people in consensual sex work.

“This campaign purports to protect people, but it actually has the opposite effect,” explained Liz Coplen, Board Chair of SWOP-USA. “Criminalization and repression of consensual sex work drives sex workers underground, creating the conditions which lead to the exploitation and abuses of trafficking.” The models that have been internationally accepted as best practice for addressing sex trafficking center around working with sex workers to end exploitation and abuse, not further criminalizing and marginalizing the work.

…

“First they complain when they see us on the street, then when we are off the street they try to shut our work down by closing the advertising venues. And they claim it’s to protect us! It’s hypocritical, discriminatory and ultimately makes sex workers more vulnerable to the violence they are supposedly so concerned about,” said Michael Bottoms.

Looking at the letter itself (pdf), the paternalism just oozes off the page:

We are writing to request that you immediately take down the adult services portion of backpage.

We believe that ads for prostitution– including ads trafficking children– are rampant on the site and that the volume of these ads will grow in light of craigslist’s recent decision to eliminate the adult services section of its site. In our view, it is time for the company to follow craigslist’s lead and take immediate action to end the misery of the women and children who may be exploited and victimized by these ads. Because backpage cannot, or will not, adequately screen these ads, it should stop accepting them altogether.

…

We recognize that backpage may lose the considerable revenue generated by the adult services ads. Still, no amount of money can justify the scourge of illegal prostitution, and the misery of the women and children who will continue to be victimized, in the marketplace provided by backpage.

Call me naive, but I can’t quite bring myself to believe that this many state Attorney Generals are really so obtuse as to believe that the kind of people who sell the right to rape children will be dissuaded by a single website cutting off their ads and decide “Well, I guess that ends the child rape business for me.”

No, I’m sorry — that’s going to require not only some hardcore dismantling of rape culture, but also serious investigative work on behalf of law enforcement. I doubt that any trafficking victims have been spared rape as a result of campaigns like these — as I’ve pointed out time and time again, rapists will always find new ways to rape. (The goal, of course, is rather to stop people from being and becoming rapists.) Meanwhile, all sex workers trying to sell their services in the safest ways they know how have been pegged as “victimized … women and children” suffering “misery” — as supposedly well-meaning people actively create misery for them by preventing them from finding and screening clients from the safety of their own homes.

This bullshit needs to stop, both in the U.S. and everywhere else. Sex workers need to be treated like adults with agency, and their oppression as a marginalized group needs to be recognized for what it is and combated, rather than compounded by supposed anti-oppression efforts. The rights of two highly vulnerable and oppressed groups — trafficking victims and sex workers — shouldn’t be and don’t need to be placed in conflict with each other. And the fact that said groups sometimes do overlap and often are difficult to distinguish is indeed part of the reason why it makes absolutely no sense to punish one in attempt to support the other.

My hopes are realistically tempered, but I wish all luck to those activists preparing to go before the U.N. While I unfortunately doubt that a transcript will be made available, for those who can watch video, the Universal Periodic Review will be streamed live and available for archived viewing here.

Trigger Warning for descriptions of forcible sterilization and denied medical treatment, as well as discussion of other forms of discrimination against HIV-positive people and references to sexual violence.

A huge issue for women worldwide is the continued spread of HIV/AIDS. Globally, women make up about half of all people living with HIV or AIDS, and cis women both have been shown to be much more vulnerable to transmission during penis-in-vagina (PIV) intercourse than cis men, and are also believed to be much more likely to contract HIV through violence.

As HIV spreads, many human rights issues affect HIV-positive people around the world, from severe discrimination, attempts to criminalize HIV-positive status, inability to access needed health care, and for cis women especially, violations of reproductive rights. While these problems are prevalent to varying degrees of severity around the world, including the U.S., the Center for Reproductive Rights has just released a new report on the health care-related human rights violations faced by HIV-positive cis women in Chile.

While HIV prevalence is relatively low in Chile, the abuses of human and reproductive rights are horrific. The stories range from mistreatment and denial of treatment for pregnant HIV-positive women to coerced and forced sterilization. The full report, from which I’ve drawn all of the quotes and facts contained in this post, is available as a pdf file here.

A 2004 study of women living with HIV/AIDS documented widespread coercion around motherhood and HIV in the healthcare sector, and found coercive sterilization of HIV-positive women to be a systemic problem. Fifty-six percent of the women surveyed reported being pressured by health workers to prevent pregnancy, and of the women who had undergone surgical sterilization after learning of their HIV status, 50% were sterilized under pressure or by force. The experiences of the women we interviewed, along with anecdotal reports, indicate that the practice of coercive and forced sterilizations, as well as other discriminatory treatment in the healthcare sector, persists.

While the report focuses on Chile, it should be again emphasized that these violates are not unique to this one country. Coerced and forced sterilizations of women who have been deemed “undesirable” by society — whether based on race, poverty, physical disability, mental illness, a combination of these factors or some other one — have a long history, and continue to this day. Further, the report specifically notes that there have been reports of coerced and forced sterilizations of women who are HIV-positive in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Namibia, South Africa, and Venezuela, among other countries.

The story of Julia (the names of all the women in the report have been changed), who was denied treatment during the miscarriage of her wanted pregnancy, is just one illustrative example of what women are being subjected to:

In 2004, Julia received the good news that her viral load was undetectable. With this improvement in her health and after witnessing other HIV-positive women give birth to healthy, HIV-negative children, Julia and her partner decided to try for a child in consultation with a private physician. However, despite the low risk of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT), healthcare professionals repeatedly chided Julia after she became pregnant, telling her, “‘What were you thinking? Don’t you see that you are going to have a sick child?’”

During the first trimester of her pregnancy, Julia began experiencing an orange-colored vaginal discharge. Concerned, she went to the hospital to have it checked out. Instead of treating her, however, hospital workers turned her away and told her to return for her regularly scheduled check-up. She was admitted to the hospital three days later, hemorrhaging and with severe abdominal pain, but she still sat untreated while the hospital staff attended all the HIV-negative patients first, including those who arrived after Julia. Her pregnancy ended in a miscarriage shortly thereafter, and a paramedic told her, “‘It is because God knows, because you were going to have a sick child.’”

Julia still wonders whether she would have miscarried if she had received immediate medical attention, and the mistreatment she experienced deters her from seeking further healthcare services at the hospital.

This is misogyny, this is bigotry against people who are HIV-positive, this is ableism.

For those who don’t know, the risk of HIV transmission from a pregnant person to their child can be reduced to less than 2% for those who don’t breastfeed, and less than 5% for those who do, if the proper medical care is given. But while this is important information that is not disseminated nearly enough, including to those who need it to make informed reproductive decisions and to those who would discriminate against HIV-positive people, it is irrelevant to the question of whether or not Julia’s rights were cruelly and inhumanely violated. Agreeing with and supporting a woman’s decision is not necessary to defending her right to make it. And even those people who we’ve deemed — often through a prejudicial lens — to have made “irresponsible” decisions deserve the inalienable right to medical care. Always.

They also have the right to make informed decisions about the medical care they do receive, and to refuse any care which they do not wish to receive. This applies universally, but the situation becomes increasingly dire when it concerns major and often irreversible procedures like sterilization, which when done without informed consent impedes the additional right to make one’s own reproductive decisions.

Fracisca is one woman who was forcibly sterilized:

Francisca had checked in to the hospital for her scheduled cesarean delivery, but the night before the operation was scheduled to take place she went into labor. Francisca was brought into the operating room shortly after midnight. Without ever discussing family planning options or Francisca’s desires, the surgeon on duty decided to surgically sterilize her while he performed the cesarean section.

“I learned that they had sterilized me at the time of the cesarean when I awoke from anesthesia a few hours later. I was in the recovery room at the Hospital of Curicó when [the nurse] entered and, after asking me how I was feeling, told me that I was sterilized and that I would not be able to have any more children,” Francisca explained. “They treated me like I was less than a person. It was not my decision to end my fertility; they took it away from me.”

Francisca took all the necessary steps to reduce the risk of vertical transmission to her son, and he was born HIV negative. She and her husband both mourn the loss of her fertility and their inability to provide their son with younger siblings.

Additionally, some women are simply informed that they will be sterilized, without being told that it is their right to make their own decision. And despite the International Federation of Gynecologists and Obstetricians guideline that HIV-positive people should not be discouraged from becoming pregnant, they routinely are. All of this is to not even discuss, as the report does, the chronic verbal abuse, misinformation, and refusal to be treated by doctors for more routine care that women who are HIV-positive face.

It should also be noted that this form of reproductive violence against Chilean women is inextricable from the wider context of violence against women in Chile.

Violence against women is another factor contributing to Chilean women’s risk of HIV infection. A 2004 survey by Vivo Positivo of Chilean women living with HIV/AIDS found that 77% of the respondents had suffered some form of violence, including psychological or physical violence, sexual abuse, and rape. Attempts to negotiate condom use can also expose women to violence, given the strong stigma around male condoms.

In addition to the other forms of violence listed above, reproductive coercion is apparently exceedingly common in Chile. The refusal of cis men to use condoms puts cis women at high risk of transmission. And while likely making up a minority of cases, HIV is often transmitted through sexual violence — indeed, the abrasions likely to occur in a particularly violent PIV rape are believed to make contracting the virus much more likely. Which is to say that for many of these women experiencing denial of their reproductive and other medical rights, these violations are just part of a long line of acts of patriarchal and kyriarchal violence.

Clearly, more education about HIV is needed, but these violations are about a lot more than just misinformation. They’re about the systemic devaluation of women, a lack of respect for the fact that all people have a right to make decisions about their own bodies, and ableist and prejudicial attitudes that construe difference as grotesque and people with difference as somehow less human. Like all social problems, this one is not occurring in a vacuum, and will likely be impossible to address without also countering the more familiar, underlying issues.

In Canada in 2007, a woman who has been identified in the press as N.S. accused her uncle and cousin of molesting her as a child. The case was taken to a preliminary hearing, where N.S., a Muslim woman, was ordered to remove her niqab — a face veil that leaves the eyes visible — as a condition of testifying. Believing this to be a violation of her rights, N.S. took her case to the Ontario Court of Appeal. A few days ago, this court ruled that the order for N.S. to remove her niqab was wrong … sort of:

As long as it doesn’t prejudice a fair trial, the court ruled, Muslim women should have the religious right to wear their niqab when testifying.

But if a judge is convinced by the accused that he can’t properly defend himself if she’s testifying against him behind a veil, the witness must remove her niqab and allow the face-to-face confrontation that is the norm in Canadian courts.

“The criminal justice system as it presently operates, and as it has operated for centuries, places considerable value on the ability of lawyers and the trier of fact to see the full face of the witness as the witness testifies,” wrote Justice David Doherty in the ruling released Wednesday morning on behalf of the three-judge panel.

“There is no getting around the reality that in some cases, particularly those involving trial by jury where a witness’s credibility is central to the outcome, a judge will have a difficult decision to make.”

It was not a clear-cut victory for any side, but one cautiously applauded by all.

“It’s a real step forward,” said David Butt, lawyer for N.S., the Toronto woman who was ordered to remove her niqab at a preliminary hearing.

“This walks a middle ground that balances two very important, competing rights.”

N.S. came forward in 2007 and accused her uncle and cousin of sexually abusing her as a child. When the case went to a preliminary hearing in 2008, she said she wanted to testify while wearing her niqab.

When the judge ruled against her, she took her case to the Ontario Court of Appeal in June.

In their 54-page decision, the three-judge appeal panel ruled that there needs to be a “case by case assessment” and for the first time set out guidelines for judges in these previously “uncharted waters”.

For N.S., the appeal court overturned her niqab ban and said she must be given a proper hearing to show why her religion requires her to cover all but her eyes.

The notion of the woman’s niqab impeding “face to face confrontation” has come up in numerous articles I’ve read, to the point that it kind of amazes me. The woman will be right there, forced to sit in the same courtroom as the men she has accused of raping her. She will have to look at them; they will be able to look at her.

Where exactly do they think these people think that her face will be? The niqab is a piece of fabric — it is not a wall, and it does not magically transport a person’s body parts to another room. It does not cause the accused to be any less “face to face” with their accuser than would a pair of glasses or long loose hair, than a bandage or a prosthetic. In all cases, the person’s face may not be 100% visible, but it is 100% present.

While glad that the court did not rule against N.S., I am angered that they did not rule entirely with her, either, and have instead demanded that she adequately grovel before the judge in order to convince him or her that her reasons for wearing her niqab are good enough. Expecting an almost certainly non-Muslim individual to rule on the sincerity, significance, gravity of a Muslim woman’s personal and religious beliefs is nothing short of oppressive, Islamophobic, and misogynistic.

As a white, Western, non-religious woman who grew up steeped in Christian culture, I am far from an expert on the topic of the niqab and other forms of veiling, myself. So I want to be very careful to not make any inferences about what the niqab means generally to women who wear one, or to the victim N.S. specifically, as these are things I cannot claim to fully understand. (And please correct me on anything I do get wrong.)

But I do know a few basic things for sure, things that we should be able to apply across the board. I know that one should not have to violate a deeply held belief in order to be allowed access to their right and duty to testify in a court of law. I know that one should not face an interrogation about their religious conviction or lack thereof — to get you or me or some random judge to a place where they understand one’s religious conviction — in order to access that right and duty, either. I know that one should not be made deliberately and unnecessarily uncomfortable as a condition of participation in the legal system. I know that one should not be forced to remove the articles of clothing that one generally wears in public to sit in the witness stand — just imagine the uproar if this was expected of non-Muslim women. I know that people communicate differently — as a result of culture, language, disability, personality, and a whole host of other factors — and that whether one meets an arbitrary, dominant, normative expectation regarding communication should not be the marker of their credibility.

And I know that all of these simple truths become even more dire when we are talking about a woman who has reported sexual violence. I know that if all of the above is not taken as common sense, there is a whole class of women who will no longer feel entitled to seek justice for the violence committed against them, who will no longer possess that right. If a woman cannot wear a niqab and testify against her accused rapist at the same time, then women who wear the niqab no longer have the full legal right to not be raped.

I believe that the attempt to force N.S. to remove her niqab was little more than an intimidation tactic by the defense and an exercise in cultural superiority by the judge. And I agree with N.S.’s lawyer that claims about how her right to wear one supposedly impedes a jury’s ability to establish credibility are based on a wholly faulty premise:

N.S.’s lawyer, David Butt, argued that how a person looks when answering questions isn’t useful in determining whether the person is telling the truth, so nothing would be lost if N.S.’s face cannot be seen.

“Poker is an interesting game precisely because demeanour can be so misleading,” Butt said.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association agreed. Courts regularly accept testimony from witnesses whose demeanour can only be partially observed, said its lawyers, Bradley Berg and Rahat Godil.

“The right to make full answer and defence is not infringed when a witness is blind, or when a witness’s mouth occasionally twists into a grimace due to a congenital defect,” they say in their material.

In other words, strict universal standards are not only unrealistic and impossible to meet, they’re also naturally prejudiced, assuming a biased standard of “normal” and construing as difficult, disruptive, and abnormal all who cannot meet them. (And while people with disabilities are used as an example of how the same standards are not applied across the board, people with disabilities have many times been oppressed in legal systems on the basis of not meeting normative standards of communication and behavior.) Further, determining an individual’s guilt or innocence –  making the decision whether a person becomes incarcerated and has a permanent criminal record — based on a series of peoples’ facial expressions, is just a really scary way to do things, period.

I hope that N.S. is finally given her deserved fair day in court, and that a jury will decide her alleged rapists’ guilt based on the merits of the prosecution’s case, rather than either rape myths or the accuser’s religion.

Note: Islamophobic comments will not be published.

Trigger Warning for discussions of violence against women with disabilities, and discussions of sexual violence particularly within the context of psychiatric units.

Last week, news broke in the Australian state of Victoria that women who are patients in psychiatric wards are being routinely sexually harassed and assaulted by men who are patients in those same wards. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports:

The Victorian Women and Mental Health Network is calling for more wards to be segregated after reports of patient harassment and sexual assaults.

Victorian wards were de-segregated in the 1960s because of a perception that sharing spaces with women would help male patients.

The network’s chairwoman, Heather Clarke, says the assaults hinder the victim’s ability to cope with and recover from mental illness.

“Threats and intimidation, unwelcome sexual advances, sometimes males entering bedrooms and at times even sexual assault,” she said.

“This is very concerning when it’s recognised that a majority of women, 70 per cent of these women, already have past histories of physical or sexual abuse so these volatile environments are re-traumatising.”

Ms Clarke says while some facilities have female-only spaces, a lack of resources means it is not always enforced.

“Some wards have created women’s corridors, but there a number of issues with those corridors,” she said.

“There may not be enough beds in them for all women to be admitted and when they need extra beds for men they sometimes admit men to those those corridors.”

Well, it would have been nice if, when desegregating wards because of a perceived benefit to male patients, someone had bothered to ask what the impact might be on the women. That said, very few people with even a passing familiarity with these issues will be surprised by such revelations and accusations, and readers of this blog might recall that I’ve written about this very subject before. Unfortunately, a passing familiarity is much more than most people seem to have.

Julie Dempsey, a woman who has been a patient at various psychiatric units in Victoria spoke to the Age about her experience of being assaulted in a ward and witnessing other sexual assaults. Her comments offer invaluable insight:

”You’re told to go to hospital so you will be safe, but people are often put into vulnerable positions,” she says.

”I no longer feel comfortable even visiting someone in hospital, let alone voluntarily putting myself in as an inpatient to a psychiatric facility.

”Something needs to be done to make them safer.”

Like the rest of this story, what Dempsey has to say is not surprising, but it is devastating. It’s no secret that sexual violence almost always has a negative impact on the victim’s mental health, not infrequently going so far as to cause or otherwise trigger a mental illness (such as post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, to name only a couple of examples), or exacerbate one that’s already present. And, as the ABC articles note, 70% of women who are patients in Victoria psychiatric units already have a history of physical or sexual abuse, due both to the link between victimization and mental illness and women with disabilities’ particular likelihood of being chosen as victims by perpetrators of violence. That sexual violence is not good for women already struggling with mental illness is one hell of an understatement.

But clearly, this violence is not only having a direct negative impact on mental health, it’s also preventing women with mental illness(es) from seeking out treatment and services that they may otherwise feel would be beneficial to them. Inpatient psychiatric treatment is definitely not for everyone. But it certainly should be an option for those to whom it does look appealing. And if a woman feels that such treatment may be appropriate and helpful for her, but she is too afraid for her personal safety to seek it out, that is an enormous violation. I highly doubt that Dempsey is the only woman whose prior experiences with violence inside psychiatric facilities has caused this option to be taken entirely off the table for her.

Further, the fact is that not all patients in psychiatric units have freely chosen to be there. This is an issue that needs addressing outside the scope of this post and my knowledge base. But being forcibly placed in treatment against your will is usually traumatic and can be damaging enough to one’s sense of safety. Forcibly confining people in treatment against their will while placing them in an environment that subjects them to the constant threat of sexual violence is unconscionable on a whole new level.

I can’t claim to have the answers. While sex-segregated wards will strike many as an obvious and easy solution, they’re not without their problems, particularly as it concerns trans* patients. Wherever sex segregation is enforced, trans men and women are much too frequently placed by cis people in the units inappropriate for their genders, not only denying their identities but also placing them at risk of violence. Further, non-binary identifying trans patients are put between a rock and a hard place, and forcibly identified with a gender that does not belong with them as well as placed in an environment that may not be safe. While sex segregation almost certainly would reduce the rates of sexual violence by cis men against cis women, there’s a large possibility that it would come at the price of increased rates of violence (sexual and otherwise) against trans* people of all genders (or non-genders), when they likely face some of the highest rates of violence already. And that is a trade off that should be considered unsettling at the absolute least.

The fact of the matter is that gender integrated wards are also hardly the only cause of the problem here. Indifference and rape culture are also major issues:

Network chairwoman Heather Clarke said several sexual assaults had been reported to the network recently, including the rape of an 18-year-old woman by a male patient in an acute adult psychiatric unit.

”She had previously told staff that he was harassing her but they had dismissed her concerns,” Ms Clarke said.

Segregating by gender won’t ultimately have the full desired impact if abusers are still not being dealt with once they have been identified. Rather, the abusers will just get craftier or pick new victims. Further, in addition to failing to address violence at its roots, this strategy alone lets abuse enablers off the hook. Everyone deserves safety, no matter what their mental health or disability status. But there is an extra responsibility to keep safe those who have been placed in restrictive and vulnerable environments. That staff in many (quite possibly most) units are not up to the task, and indeed are sometimes abusers themselves, is a part of the problem and needs to be addressed if freedom from violence is actually to be accomplished.

Trigger Warning for rape apologism, brief descriptions of sexual violence.

This morning I was reading about a rape that was recently committed in Perth, Australia, by an assailant who accosted a nanny answering the front door at her employer’s home. The details of the attack itself are, of course, horrible and distressing. That the assailant followed up his attack by placing a call to the victim’s employers demanding that they not report the assault (as though they own their employee in the first place …) is additionally loathsome and likely acted as an extra trauma to an already highly traumatized victim.

But up to that point, the story was still an incredibly routine one — and I use the word “routine” here with the saddest of all tones. It’s not that these assaults don’t matter, not in the least. It’s that there’s only so much one can say over and over and over again about the fact that somewhere, someone decided to commit an act of sexual violence against another human being.

So it was not the grotesque act of violence that caught my attention, but the only slightly less routine commentary that went with it:

Det Snr Sgt Glynn said the attack was a timely reminder for women to be aware of their surroundings.

“Stranger attacks resulting in sex offences are unusual, they do happen but they are not common,” he said.

“I don’t expect people to change their habits because of this offence but at the same time they do need to be aware of their surroundings.”

“People”? I highly doubt that Sgt. Glynn is telling men that they need to be aware of their surroundings due to the threat of rape. And while I would absolutely love it if a detective being quoted in an article about rape was a gender activist purposely using inclusive language to acknowledge the incredibly real and highly prevalent threat of sexual violence faced by people of non-binary genders (or non-genders), given the context I’m going to go out on a limb and make an educated guess that this is very sadly not the case. I’m really pretty sure that Sgt. Glynn is referring entirely or almost entirely to women. The same people who are always told to keep an eye out on their surroundings and to try their damn hardest to not get themselves raped.

So a timely reminder to watch our surroundings and learn an incredibly valuable lesson about taking responsibility for our own safety? No. What this case is yet another a “reminder” of is not how important it is to be cautious, but that women aren’t safe in their own homes. That women aren’t safe at their places of employment. That women don’t just have to worry about being a potential target out at parties or bars or dates or other social events, or when we’re out at the store by ourselves at night or riding public transportation alone, but all the time. We also have to worry about answering the goddamn front door. Not to even mention who we might be sleeping next to at night.

But the very last thing we need is a reminder. Because a part of living as a woman in a rape culture is being reminded of that threat every day.

These reminders aren’t useful, they aren’t infrequent, and they certainly aren’t harmless. Women know to watch their drinks, they know to use the buddy system, and they know to check the peep holes in their doors. They’re told close to every time they switch on the news or open up a newspaper or think of stepping outside their front doors. They’re told just about every time someone wants to pretend to engage in “rape prevention.” They’re reminded every time they check the back seat of their cars before getting in or make sure to walk home before it gets dark out or fish the keys out of their purses well before they reach the door. (This is called a rape schedule.) They know.

So what this constant “advice” actually serves to remind women of is the fact that their bodies exist in a constant state of both perceived and actual vulnerability to those who do not see them as fully human. What these tips actually serve to remind women of is that they need to be kept in line and constantly sheltered by a society that really isn’t usually so eager to “protect” them once they talk about having already been assaulted. What these tips serve to remind women of is that if they don’t follow each and every one to the letter all the time and they are assaulted, they will probably be blamed for their own rape. What these tips serve to remind everyone of is that the victim really should have been more careful, and what a shame it is that she wasn’t, because this whole thing could have been avoided if she’d just read a list of safety tips in a pamphlet. What they serve to instill further into the social consciousness is that we can’t stop rapists, so it’s women’s permanent curse to just have to live with them and watch out for them at every turn.

And I can’t even imagine how awful it would be to have a man break into the private residence where you’re working and tie you up and rape you, only to then read in the papers about how your rape is a really good opportunity to remind women like you how important it is be aware of your surroundings and do a better job of making sure that you’re not raped, too. I can’t imagine the feelings of shame and self-blame it would likely inspire, nor the anger at having your trauma used to browbeat other women into taking responsibility for the actions of violent people and events they can’t control.

The people whose actual job it is to stop rape responding to rape not by telling victims how to come forward or where they can find resources, and not by discussing means of actual violence prevention through a focus on perpetrators, but by telling women how important it is to make sure they’re constantly on the lookout for assailants? That’s rape culture.

Trigger Warning for graphic descriptions of sexual assault and discussions of victim re-traumatization.

In a somewhat unusual case out of the UK, three men have just been convicted on various sexual assault charges after gang raping an unconscious woman — an unconscious woman who only became aware of the attack after one of the attackers, Nicholas Jones, saw fit to shock her with the footage he had taken of the rape on his cell phone.

Three men have been jailed over a rape which was only discovered by the victim after she was shown mobile phone footage of the attack.

Mohammed Shahjahan, 27, Nicholas Jones, 26, and Feizal Ali, 26, from Oxford, sexually assaulted the woman while she was unconscious in November.

The woman said she had passed out in a flat in east Oxford after drinking three vodka and Red Bull cocktails and did not remember the attack. She did not discover she had been raped and sexually assaulted until two weeks later when she was shown the footage by one of the perpetrators and described the moment as “a big shock”.

The woman told the BBC that all she remembered was having the three drinks and then waking up in a bed. The court was told that the woman had been “incapable of consent”.

On sentencing the three men, Judge Julian Hall said: “This was a disgraceful incident which would not have come to light but for the fact that Nicholas Jones filmed it, kept it and later showed it to the victim.”

Upon first reading Judge Hall’s words, I assumed that he meant them as an indictment of the horrific nature of the act. In other words, “This attack was terrible, and to compound the horrific nature of it, we never even would have known these three rapists were lurking out there if one of them hadn’t been so sadistic and arrogant as to film the assault and then later re-assault his victim with it.”

But further comments provide a rather disturbing context, and take this news report from being just yet another really terrible story about how rapists like to rape, and turn it into one about rape culture and how even in the face of every reason in the world not to, we like to give rapists the benefit of the doubt:

Hall said Shahjahan was “an arrogant young man who was heartless, shameless and had no consideration for the victim”. Jones, who pleaded guilty to the charges of sexual assault and voyeurism, was described as “a decent young man who did absolutely terrible things that night”.

Wait, the one who took the video and suddenly confronted his victim with it is the “decent young man”? Whose actions we should praise, as they made prosecution possible?

Now, hell. Maybe I’m just biased. But when I think about a man participating in the gang rape of an unconscious woman, filming the assault for posterity, and then later accosting that victim with the video as a means of telling her what he did, “Good Samaritan” isn’t exactly the term that comes to my mind.

Lest anyone else here get confused, while being sure to note that the recording of any such video would have been monstrous, let’s be clear on what exactly Jones shocked his victim with (trigger warning, see above):

Mr Moore said film shot on a mobile, filmed around 11pm, and a still image from 2.10am from Jones’s phone showed what happened.

He said the trio used “dominating sexual language directed at the victim who is unconscious” as she is seen to “whimper” and make “a couple of feeble attempts” to push them away.

Mr Moore added: “Shahjahan desists from it and can be heard saying ‘***** this, man. Nick, there you go, all there, what did I tell you, did I not keep my promise?’”

The still photo showed Shahjahan, of Slaymaker Close, Headington, lying on top of the victim on a bed.

Are we to assume that Jones made this film as evidence of the crime he was currently participating in, intending to hand it over to prosecutors rather than use it as a means of bragging and titillation? I have to say that I’m not buying it. And usually, we’d consider the rapists who think rape is just so fun that they want to have a record to allow them to relive the happy experience over and over again some of the worst of the bunch.

The Oxford Mail does report that Jones allegedly apologized to the victim as a part of showing her the clips of the rape. But while there is no more detailed description of the incident than that available, it’s quite clear from the fact that the victim reported the assault alone after her exchange with Jones that his confession was not along the lines of, “I understand that me telling you I raped you the other week is a lot to take in, but there’s more. I also took a film of it on my mobile. It’s of course your right to view it, but I know you might not want to, and you can take all the time you need to decide. I’m letting you know because the prosecutor can use this against the other rapists; unless you don’t want to report for some reason, I’m planning on going down to the police now and turning myself in.”

Because you’d think that would have been reported, and I’m not inclined towards giving convicted rapists the benefit of the doubt. And even then, Jones wouldn’t have deserved rewards and sympathy for doing the most decent thing he could have possibly done after acting in the least decent way imaginable. But even a “by the way, I raped you the other week, see, I’ve got a video of it–” is apparently grounds for leniency in the eyes of Jones’ defense attorney:

Richard Fisher, defending Jones, said: “Jones’s candour in interview and candour with the complainant are perhaps more indicative of his character than the despicable acts which took place.”

Oh yes, what a guy. What’s a shame is that the judge apparently bought it.