THE UNITED NATIONS:

SOME UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPERS AROUND THE WORLD HAVE COMMITTED SEXUAL ASSAULTS

Investigations have led to the estimate that more than 2,000 young women and children allegedly have been sexually exploited and abused by UN peacekeepers since the early 1990s. Read about these serious charges here.

ARE AID WORKERS AROUND THE WORLD BEING UNFAIRLY SLANDERED?

Misleading statistics spread through shoddy journalism may have painted an unfair portrait of employees working for charitable organizations in the developing world as sexual predators. Crude estimates about the number of people they have sexually victimized are gross exaggerations, according to this article.

SHELTER IN PLACE POLICIES DURING THE PANDEMIC MIGHT ENDANGER WOMEN AND GIRLS, U.N. REPORT WARNS

The United Nations has issued a report that raises concerns about the dangers of stay-at-home orders on women and girls who are vulnerable targets of intimate partner violence and other forms of domestic violence. The report highlights several innovative responses and suggests helpful policies, as described here.

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UNITED KINGDOM:

NEW, SIMPLIFIED, YET EXPANDED “VICTIMS’ CODE” ISSUED

Connects to the review of victims’ rights in the United States, which is the focus of chapter 7 in the Ninth and Tenth editions.

The new code will improve victims’ rights in terms of notification about an offender’s release from custody, as well as assistance when the offender suffers from mental illness, among other provisions. The Victims Commissioner declared, “But we can only get it right if we hear from victims themselves, using their own lived experience to inform us on what works and what doesn’t,” as detailed here.

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AFGHANISTAN:

165 BOYS REPORTEDLY WERE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED BY THEIR TEACHERS IN 3 SCHOOLS

Connects to a discussion of sexual abuse in American schools in Chapter 8.

For generations, the traditional practice of “Bacha Bazi” has enabled powerful men to compel boys to serve as their “sex slaves:” to dance for them dressed in girl’s  clothes before being raped. Now, the rampant sexual abuse of boys by their teachers is being exposed at certain schools in the areas controlled by the government that the United States supports militarily.. The consequences for the abused boys can be horrific: 7 have been found dead, probably killed for humiliating their families. Three victimized boys were murdered by the Taliban insurgents for engaging in what they branded as an “anti-Islamic” practice;. 25 other families abandoned their homes to avoid the social stigma surrounding this form of sexual exploitation, according to this investigative report.

But shortly after the story broke, the source of this report retracted his claims after being harshly interrogated by the government’s security forces, raising concerns about an official cover-up and a political scandal, as revealed here.

AUSTRALIA:

VICTIMS OF SEX CRIMES DON’T FARE AS WELL AS IN SIMILAR COUNTRIES

Connects to the discussion of sexual assault victims in Chapter 10 of the Tenth Edition

An examination of the plight of victims of sexual misconduct and assault in Australia during the #MeToo era contends that plenty of reforms to alter a culture of silence and secrecy have been proposed that could improve the balance in the criminal justice process, as recounted here

FRANCE:

GOVERNMENT APPROVES OF MANY NEW INITIATIVES TO AID VICTIMS OF INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE

Connects to discussions in Chapter Nine.

France has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in Europe, according to homicide body counts and victimization surveys. Parliament has been pressured to take action against this persistent problem by a spirited social movement. The government has announced it will set up more domestic violence shelters, establish housing for perpetrators so that women do’t have to flee their homes, and train officers to use risk assessment instruments to estimate which individuals fave the gravest dangers, among many other measures that are described here.

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ITALY:

UN REPORT REVEALS SERIOUS NEGLECT OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Connects to discussions in Chapter Nine.

Women beaten or murdered by the boyfriends and husbands are not reporting the violence to the authorities in most cases, and the authorities are not acting to adequately protect them and quell the domestic abuse, according to a report by the United Nations. As a result, women in Italy are mobilizing to improve the societal and criminal justice response to intimate partner violence,  as discussed in this radio show.

RUSSIA:

PUTIN SIGNS NEW LAW LOWERING THE PENALTIES FOR CHILD ABUSE AND INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE

Connects to discussions about child abuse and spouse abuse in Chapters Eight and Nine.

Russia’s parliament overwhelmingly supported the new law that reduces penalties for first time offenders who assault their wives or children (unpremeditated battery not intended to inflict serious bodily harm) to merely an administrative fine. Repeat offenders can face criminal charges. Is this lowering of penalties really a “pro-family” measure or is it actually anti-victim, endangering women and children?

Listen to the arguments for and against the new approach to domestic violence here and here.

MEXICO: 

DID THE POLICE COOPERATE WITH DRUG GANGS TO GET RID OF 43 STUDENTS?

Forty-three college students have disappeared. They were undergraduates at Mexico’s Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos, a teachers college with a history of activism in Guerrero, one of poorest and most violent states, about 120 miles south of Mexico City. Those who disappeared were among about 100 students who headed out on the evening of Sept. 26, 2014. As part of a tradition, the students commandeered some buses to transport them to a march in Mexico City several days later to commemorate a massacre of students that took place in 1968.

Their parents vow to move heaven and earth to find them. Normally, the police would be given this assignment – but in this case, the police appear to have been responsible for the abductions. A year and a half after the disappearance, 123 people, including 73 municipal police officials, have been detained on organized-crime charges in relation to the night’s events, and the Iguala police force has been exposed as being in cahoots  with a powerful drug gang, as detailed in this article and in this interview. The Mexican government’s investigation has been condemned by an international panel of experts.

But some parents still cling to the belief that the activist students might still be captives, as this video explains. Large protest rallies have been held and the parents of the disappeared students are taking their grievances to the United Nations, as depicted here.

 

During the Fall of 2106, protesters demonstrated in Mexico, Texas, and outside the U.N. in New York City, They demanded that the Mexican government tell the truth about what happned

 

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A STIRRING EXAMPLE TO INSPIRE RESEARCH INTO SURVIVOROLOGY:  HER NAME IS MALALA

A movie reviews the life of a teenager who won a Nobel Prize; survivorology studies would focus on individuals like her who show such impressive resiliency and recover so completely, as described on pp. 36-37  of Ch. 1 of the 9th edition, and pp. 48-50 of Ch. 2 in the 10th edition.

She was singled out and shot by the Taliban in Pakistan for daring to advocate that girls be educated. Undeterred, after her wounds healed, she became a campaigner for human rights around the world, and the right for girls to go to school in particular. View a trailer of a film about Malala’s suffering that led to her many accomplishments here, and a review of this movie that summarizes her travels and life in Britain here.

 

 

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SYRIA AND IRAQ: WOMEN KIDNAPPED, RAPED, SOLD OFF TO FORCED “MARRIAGES” BY ISIS

Illustrates a longstanding problem where sexual violence is unleashed by conquering troops against civilians, as mentioned on p. 291.

Fighters with the extremist terrorist movement called ISIS reportedly are capturing women and “enjoying” them as the spoils of victory. These reports about atrocities like sex trafficking and sexual slavery probably aren’t being circulated to build support for greater military intervention and outright war since the young women who are coming forward to tell of their harrowing experiences suffer victim-blaming and deep shame. Listen to the details and an interpretation  of the facts in this deeply disturbing radio program here.

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NIGERIA:

EXTREMIST GROUP KIDNAPS OVER 200 GIRLS WHOM THEY CONDEMN FOR ATTENDING SCHOOL

An Islamic extremist group fighting the government in Nigeria dragged away over 200 teenage students from a boarding school and proclaimed that it would sell them off as “wives.” A small number of the victims escaped from their captors. Distraught parents searched for the rest of them but were thwarted, and the government appeared unable to rescue them, as reported here. The mass abduction raised issues of human trafficking and sexual slavery, as explained here and here.

A young woman who escaped the clutches of the Boko Harum kidnappers reports that she was held with two dozen of the young captives in this interview.

After about 2 years of captivity, the terrorists allowed 21 girls to leave, but about 190 school girls still remained in the clutches of the Boko Harum movement and its followers, as explained here.

 

Also illustrates how victimologists are interested in the social reaction to the victims’ plight, as noted in Chapter One.

The worldwide call for action gathered momentum as celebrities, artists, and political figures – including Michelle Obama – tweeted  their endorsements. Adding the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls to any message on twitter triggered waves of positive responses, as indicated by the number of news stories appearing in Lexis-Nexis – but the compelling pictures were inaccurate. In fact, this online campaign of “keyboard activism” urging military intervention has its limits and shortcomings, according to this commentator. Parents in nearby countries whose children have suffered the same fate have organized support groups, as described here.

Muslim leaders across the globe have condemned the kidnapping as a distortion of their religious beliefs, as summarized here.

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INDIA: 

GANG RAPE DRAWS ATTENTION TO HOW VICTIMS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT ARE TREATED

Also illustrates how victimologists are interested in the social reaction to the victims’ plight, as noted in Chapter One on p.20.

A beating with a metal pipe and a gang rape by five men and one juvenile against a student and her male friend on a bus in New Delhi brought nationwide attention to the shortcomings of India’s criminal justice system’s response to sexual assaults. After the 23 year-old victim declared that they should be executed for what they did to her, she died from her injuries. The judge sentenced four of her assailants to death; her family welcomed the verdict but capital punishment is rarely imposed in India. Read about the plight of rape victims in India here, and view a news video here.

A second gang rape in Mumbai fits a familiar narrative: young women usually don’t go to the police to file complaints against the young men who gang rape them. But this victim did and had the men arrested; one suspect’s mother spewed victim-blaming accusations. Read about the victims’ plight in India and see a video here.

Despite rising concerns, the situation got worse. More girls and women were raped – and then hanged from a tree. The inter-related problems of a low reporting rate,  a rising tide of sexual violence, an entrenched “rape culture,” ineffective police investigations, a decrease in prosecutions and convictions, and dismissive remarks by politicians are explored here.

When a teenager was raped by 2 policemen (whose conviction was overturned) in the early 1970s, the public outrage sparked a women’s movement for reform of the rape laws. Decades letter, a journalist revisits this case and locates the victim, as recounted in this article and video.

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PAKISTAN: EFFORTS TO PAY A RANSOM FOR A HOSTAGE FAIL

An American AID worker was captured by kidnapped in Pakistan. His wife,  helped the FBI, tried to negotiate with the hostage-takers to win his release. She paid a ransom – a controversial practice – but her husband was handed over to a terrorist group, who held him until a U.S. drone strike put an end to the situation. View the tragic story here.

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ASIA: SEXUAL VIOLENCE A BIGGER PROBLEM IN SOME COUNTRIES THAN OTHERS

A survey of men in six Asian countries found very high rates of sexual violence in New Guinea, but lower rates in Bangladesh and Indonesia, against female strangers and acquaintances but especially against intimate partners. The men were asked if they had ever forced a woman to have sex when she wasn’t willing, or if they had ever forced sex on someone who was too drunk or drugged to consent. The word “rape” was avoided in the study, which was sponsored by the World Health Organization., and is summarized here.

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ACROSS EUROPE: HATE CRIMES UNLEASHED AGAINST “GYPSIES” BECAUSE OF FALSE ALLEGATIONS ABOUT KIDNAPPINGS

For centuries, the Roma have been negatively stereotyped as thieves and even kidnappers. Many were murdered in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps when Hitler was in power during the 1930s and 1940s. Now, a new outbreak of hate-fueled violence and political oppression directed at this much-maligned ethnic group has broken out in a number of financially-strapped European countries. An incident in Greece triggered the latest round of scapegoating: a Roma couple was falsely accused of kidnapping a little blond-haired fair-skinned girl. Read about anti-Gypsy incidents across Europe here.

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A FAMOUS ATHLETE KILLS HIS GIRLFRIEND: DID HE INTEND TO MURDER HER AFTER A HEATED ARGUMENT OR WAS IT A TRAGIC MISTAKE?

The Olympic athlete is charged with murder. His defense is that he lives in a high crime society, post-apartheid South Africa  (but in a very safe community) and that he thought he was shooting at an intruder who had invaded his home when he fired a number of shots through a bathroom door and killed his sweetheart on Valentine’s Day. Read about this high profile case here and view a video here. Ironically, she had tweeted that she was living in a safe and happy home just four days before she was shot to death. Read about this girlfriend, a law school graduate and model who was about to appear in a reality TV show here and here. After a closely watched trial, her death was not intentional, the judge decided, but he should be imprisoned for up to five years for his recklessness. At first, her parents said they were satisfied with the outcome of the trial, but as her mother writes her memoir, she expresses concerns here.

Because a judge found him negligent but said he did not commit murder nor did he intend to kill her, prosecutors are appealing the verdict in her family’s behalf, as recounted here.

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AMERICANS KILLED IN TERRORIST ATTACKS IN OTHER COUNTRIES

An American woman working on an international development project was killed by terrorists who launched an attack on a Radisson Hotel in the African country of Mali.

A senior at Cal State University in Long Beach was gunned down by terrorists while spending a year abroad in Paris.