Category Archives: Acts of Violence

About 79 percent of human trafficking involves sex slavery while 18 percent covers forced or bonded labor, forced marriages and organ removal.

So says the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in a new report that is available here. A press release providing an overview of the report can be found here.

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“Domestic Violence and Black Women’s Powerful Literary Telling”

Long and amazing post here at Like a Whisper.

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Julie Stubbs and Julia Tolmie, “Battered Women Charged with Homicide: Advancing the Interests of Indigenous Women”

Abstract: This article examines legal responses to women charged with a homicide offence arising from killing an abusive partner and reviews Australian cases over the period 1991-2007. We focus on cases involving Indigenous women due to their very substantial over-representation … Continue reading

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Egypt Considering Tougher Sex-Harassment Law

From Women’s eNews: When Egypt’s new parliament convenes in early February, some members will be proposing a law to strengthen penalties against sexual offenders by increasing jail time and fines. The bill will also put more pressure on police to … Continue reading

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Europe’s modern slave trade

Law prof Suzanne Goldberg has a short article here explaining: A case recently filed in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), M. v the United Kingdom, shows just how vigorous and heinous the slave trade continues to be. But … Continue reading

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43 Alaskan Native Americans File Suit Against Jesuits for Rape, Sexual Assault

Heart has the story here.

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What Kind of Rule?: Rape Shield Ruling by the Court of Appeals of Minnesota Raises Question, What Kind of Rule is the Rape Shield Rule?

The recent opinion of the Court of Appeals of Minnesota in State v. Bauer, 2009 WL 112842 (Minn.App. 2009), raises an essential question:    What  kind of rule is the Rape Shield Rule?   And I think that Minnesota courts … Continue reading

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Posted in Acts of Violence, Coerced Sex | 2 Comments

Vital Juncture for Women’s Rights Policy at the State Department

In her confirmation hearing last week Hilary Clinton was asked by Barbara Boxer to talk about how she plans to use the office of the Secretary of State to better the”status of women in the world.”She was particularly interested in … Continue reading

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Posted in Acts of Violence, Coerced Sex, Feminism and Law, Feminism and Politics | 1 Comment

The Obameter: Tracking Obama’s Campaign Promises

From Politifact: PolitiFact has compiled about 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter. We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is … Continue reading

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Posted in Acts of Violence, Feminism and Politics, Feminism and Technology | 5 Comments

Benson on”Failure to Arrest: A Pilot Study of Police Response to Domestic Violence in Rural Illinois”

  Sara Benson (Illinois) has posted to SSRN her working paper entitled”Failure to Arrest:   A Pilot Study of Police Response to Domestic Violence in Rural Illinois.”   It is a qualitative research study conducted in rural Illinois regarding police … Continue reading

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Guatamalan girl testifies in federal court about being duped into coming to the U.S., forced to sell herself and kept captive.

It would be nice if human rights violations like this got more media attention. From the LA Times: When Sandra agreed to make the perilous trek from her native Guatemala to the United States in 2006, she said, she was … Continue reading

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Cinema Incubo: Tenth Circuit Finds In Dicta That Rape Shield Rule Applies At The Summary Judgment Stage In Former Projectionist’s Appeal

I remember going to Carmike Cinemas  while  attending college in Charlottesville and law school in Williamsburg.   And the memories are not fond.   Dimmed movie projector light bulbs.   Sticky floors.   Terrible sound. Cramped seating.   Now, according … Continue reading

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Carnival Against Sexual Violence 63

Here, at abyss2hope. Marcella Chester deserves so much credit for the attention she brings to this issue.

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“Condemned men are buried in sand up to their waists, and women up to their necks, and are pelted with stones until they die or manage to escape. Under the law, a condemned person’s life is spared if he can free himself.”

That’s a sentence from this WaPo article about stonings in Iran. Men have a lot better odds of escaping, obviously, though it’s still horrifying. The article also reports: In his weekly news conference, the judicial spokesman also said that Esha … Continue reading

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The Murders of Mexican Lawyers Linked to Murders of Women?

According to this blog: Two unidentified gunmen executed Mario Escobedo Salazar and his son Edgar Escobedo Anaya, also a lawyer, in their Juarez office on Tuesday, January 6. The double homicide comes nearly seven years after Chihuahua State Judicial Police … Continue reading

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What Happened to the Woman in “Iran’s Hottest Porn Video”?

The Daily Beast has a post up entitled “Iran’s Hottest Porn Video.” It is written by a male university student who is “pseudonymous for his own safety.” In it he crows about how great it is that the hypocrisy of … Continue reading

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Siddharth Kara, “Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery”

From the publisher’s website: Every year, millions of women and children are abducted, deceived, seduced, or sold into forced prostitution, made to service hundreds if not thousands of men before being discarded. Generating huge profits for their exploiters, sex slaves … Continue reading

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There Are Holocaust Deniers, There Are People Who Argue That Slavery Was Good For African-Americans And Many, Many Rape Victims Are Disbelieved.

So its no surprise that one response to Nicholas Kristof’s recent column in the NYT on sex trafficking was what he describes here in a follow up column as “skepticism.” He further responds to his critics here at his blog. … Continue reading

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Teenaged Girls and Dating Related Violence

An article in the NYT entitled “Killings Prompt Efforts to Spot and Reduce Abuse of Teenagers in Dating” [Note on January 4th: That WAS the title when I blogged this yesterday, but this morning the title has been changed to … Continue reading

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Thinking Critically About Sex Trafficking

That’s the title of this post at Sociological Images. It asserts that readers: … ought be critical consumers of stories about sex trafficking, the moving of girls and women across national borders in order to force them into prostitution.   … Continue reading

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A Suspect But Not A Suspect Class: Court Denies Equal Protection Challenge To California’s Domestic Violence Character Evidence Rule

I would like to thank Ann Bartow for extending me the invitation to post here.   I am in my second year at The John Marshall Law School, where I teach Evidence, Civil Procedure, and Criminal Procedure.   I do … Continue reading

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“Shocks fit well into the brothel business model because they cause agonizing pain and terrify the girls without damaging their looks or undermining their market value.”

That’s a quote from this Nicholas Kristof column in the NYT. The protagonist of the column was finally freed from the brothel in which she had been imprisoned by a police raid. There are many pimps who, under the guise … Continue reading

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Black Woman Walking: A Documentary By Tracey Rose

Via What About Our Daughters.

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Teenaged girls told to “wield power over boyfriends, brothers, and friends who may be tempted to use a gun.”

Because according to this article in the Boston Globe entitled “Girl Power,” they might be responsible for male violence. Here’s an excerpt: Some criminal law specialists praised the effort as a unique way to combat the causes of violence and … Continue reading

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Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee: Does Title IX preempt an Equal Protection claim brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983?

At the ACS Blog Dina Lassow writes: The Fitzgerald case began in 2001, when Jackie, who was then in kindergarten, told her parents that one of the boys on the school bus was forcing her to lift her skirt, pull … Continue reading

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More On Slave Trafficking

This article refers to the trafficked, enslaved people as “child maids” and focuses on children trafficked from Africa.

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“The National Crime Victimization Survey, based on projections from a national sample survey, says that at least 248,300 individuals were raped or sexually assaulted in 2007, up from 190,600 in 2005, the last year the survey was conducted.”

That’s a quote from Human Right’s Watch. The underlying DoJ survey is accessible here. The data shows that   domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault increased more than any other violent crimes. With the exception of simple assault, which increased … Continue reading

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How much ad revenue can various for profit blogs reap off the misery and misfortunes of a desperate and depressed law student?

A lot, apparently. I’m not going to link to any of them, because whether they are being disgustingly licentious or self-aggrandizingly professing great concern, at the end of the day they are all about the links and the clicks and … Continue reading

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Catharine MacKinnon, “The Recognition of Rape as an Act of Genocide – Prosecutor v. Akayesu”

Two related articles are accessible here. Via IntLawGrrls.

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A Bit More About Bettie Page

To follow up on the post here, a reader sent a link to this 1998 interview published at Nerve.com which of course includes the bondage photos.   Below is an excerpt: Are you flattered by any and all of the … Continue reading

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“A Crime Against Society” – Rape in the Congo

“A Crime Against Society” is the title of an article written by Ann Jones that appeared inthe 12/10/08 issue of The Nation. Below are the first two paragraphs: Late one afternoon seven years ago, in the village of Kamanyola in … Continue reading

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Bettie Page, and seeing only what you want to see.

In recent months I’ve read a number of posts at various feminist blogs discussing race and class issues with respect to wet nurses, nannies, maids, and natal surrogates.   There seems to be a rough consensus that exploiting the bodies … Continue reading

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William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 Passes House and Senate, But Offers Less Protection To Victims Compared with the 2007 House Version.

And the impetus for watering down the bill was of course Joe Biden, in collusion with Sam Brownback. The text of the 2008 version of the bill can be found here. The major changes in the 2008 version were in … Continue reading

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“Exploiting People, Stereotypes Is Not Exactly Sexy”

That’s the title of this post at Jezebel, in which blogger Megan Carpentier writes fairly critically about a “charity porn” initiative to “Save African Orphans” that seems pretty appalling at every level. I’m a little uncomfortable with the tone of … Continue reading

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FGM and Asylum

Useful overview here.

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Sex Trafficking Arrest in Nashville

From here: Arturo Perez and Jesus Garcia are charged with promoting prostitution and trafficking for sexual servitude after police said they would make the 22-year-old from Mexico City have sex with up to seven men a day. To make her … Continue reading

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Wear White on Monday in Support of Victims of Mumbai Attacks

Forwarded to me from one of my students: *In Remembrance of an event that has been called India’s *9/11:   ****Please wear WHITE on Monday, December 1st to memorial of all those affected. 10,000 strong and gaining more, let’s spread … Continue reading

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“Rape looms large over Haiti slums”

So reports this BBC article, which starts out: Human rights organisation Amnesty International is calling on the Haitian government to do more to tackle the widespread rape of girls, often by gangs of armed men. The Amnesty International report is … Continue reading

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Sheila Jeffreys, “The Industrial Vagina: The political economy of the global sex trade”

From the publisher’s website: The industrialization of prostitution and the sex trade has created a multibillion-dollar global market, involving millions of women, that makes a substantial contribution to national and global economies. The Industrial Vagina examines how prostitution and other … Continue reading

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Rights of domestic violence abusers to own guns being considered by the Supreme Court

The case is U.S. v. Hayes, and the Court has been asked to rule on a Justice Department appeal asking for clarification of the federal law that criminalizes gun possession for people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence. Via Sentencing Law … Continue reading

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More Coverage of the FBI Freeing Sex Trafficked Children, But Arresting Likely Victims Over 18

From CNN: … In the three-day operation, which began Thursday night, the FBI, along with local and state law enforcement agencies, took the 46 girls and one boy — all of them U.S. citizens ages 13 to 17 — into … Continue reading

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Robert Jensen, “Porn’s Dirty, Dangerous Secret”

Below are the first couple of paragraphs from his essay: There are a finite number of ways that human bodies can be placed together sexually, and as one pornography industry veteran lamented to me at the annual trade show, “they’ve … Continue reading

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Man-Lovin’ Shoes

From the October 21, 2008 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education: Sixty-three fraternity members from Centre College donned identical red pumps and hobbled en masse through downtown Danville, Ky., last week as part of “Walk a Mile in Her … Continue reading

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The Sexual Exploitation of Women Dramatized and Documented

Trade is a movie that dramatizes sex trafficking. The movie’s web site asserts: The practice of slavery in the US is something most people think ended with the 13th Amendment in 1865, but in recent years it has returned in … Continue reading

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“Female Fighters” – an account of a female battalion of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Here. Via Screaming Into the Void.

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“… if you’re going to talk about how far we’ve come when it comes to porn, if you’re going to posit Paul “Max Hardcore” Little as the latest victim of the Bush administration, if you’re going to lament one more strike against your First Amendment rights, you should bear witness as to what a porn star drenched in vomit looks like.”

That’s a quote from (link is to a NSFW site) Susannah Breslin, in her response to a Salon column by Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald sets up a false dichotomy between the DoJ’s prosecution of pornographer Max Hardcore, and governmental performance and … Continue reading

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Posted in Acts of Violence, Coerced Sex, Sexism in the Media, Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Unity Day and A Deepening Financial Crisis

Today is Unity Day, celebrated since 1981 it is the first Monday in October and was intended to provide an opportunity for connection among advocates supporting victims of domestic violence. October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month> (see the National … Continue reading

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Taina Bien-Aimé, “Still Time To Do The Right Thing” and pass the Wilberforce Act

Reposted from the Huffpo: As she poetically recounts her chilling life story in her recently published book, The Road of Lost Innocence, Somaly Mam was sold into sexual slavery as a young girl in Cambodia. The reader is confronted with … Continue reading

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“Paradigm shifts and paying for sex”

Brilliant essay by S. M Berg, below is an excerpt … The old prostitution paradigm sees prostitution as a women’s problem and thusly suggests fixing women as the solution. Identifiers of the old paradigm that circles around prostituted women are: … Continue reading

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“Adjudicating Sexual Violence in Fits & Starts”

That’s the title of a detailed post at IntLawGrrls that starts out as follows: When compared to the state of the law prior to their establishment, the ad hoc international criminal tribunals:namely the Yugoslavia (ICTY), Rwanda (ICTR) and Sierra Leone … Continue reading

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