Second reading of bill to ban marriage for under-18s receives cross-party support
A ban on child marriage in England and Wales came a step closer Friday with cross-party support for a new bill in the House of Commons.
The marriage and civil partnership (minimum age) bill had its second reading in parliament, with government and opposition MPs supporting the private member’s bill brought by Conservative MP Pauline Latham.
Continue reading...When the Kenyan woman died nine years ago, the army closed ranks – it’s time to find out what happened and why
The last time 21-year-old Agnes Wanjiru was seen alive in public, she was leaving a hotel bar with two soldiers.
Her body was found by a hotel worker two months later, stuffed into a nearby septic tank, naked but for her bra. The mother of a five-month-old baby, Agnes was a hairdresser who turned to sex work to support herself and her daughter, and had gone to the hotel expecting it to be full of partying British soldiers. An inquest later concluded that one or more of them must have killed her.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...In a memoir coming out next week, Wood’s younger sister identifies the actor’s long-suspected assailant
For decades, it’s been one of Hollywood’s darkest rumors: Natalie Wood was sexually assaulted by a top movie star more than twice her age when she met with him at a hotel in Los Angeles as a teenager.
In a memoir coming out next week, Wood’s younger sister identifies the long-suspected assailant: Kirk Douglas.
Continue reading...Company reveals figures, promised in 2019, as ride-hailing companies face growing safety scrutiny
The ride-hailing app Lyft received more than 4,000 reports of sexual assaults during rides from 2017 to 2019, the company revealed in a new report, including 1,800 reports in 2019 alone.
Lyft revealed the numbers on Thursday, after having pledged in 2019 to do so. In its report, the company said the number of sexual assault reports collected through its app had risen from 1,096 in 2017 to 1,255 in 2018 and 1,807 in 2019.
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 802 9999. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
Continue reading...Revealed: documents released after six years of legal tussles uncover over 160 cases of misconduct and abuse
Shocking instances of sexual and physical abuse of asylum seekers at the southern US border by federal officers have been uncovered by Human Rights Watch, after a years-long battle to wrestle the information from the Department of Homeland Security under freedom of information laws.
A stash of redacted documents released to the human rights group after six years of legal tussles uncover more than 160 cases of misconduct and abuse by leading government agencies, notably Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Border Patrol. The papers record events between 2016 and 2021 that range from child sexual assault to enforced hunger, threats of rape and brutal detention conditions.
Continue reading...Flashing is a sexual offence, victims say it can have a lifelong impact and experts say it can lead to escalating crimes against women. Why is the police response so often dismissive?
Cathkin Braes country park, in south Glasgow, is beautiful. You can see the city and, behind it, the mountains. Clara (not her real name), a 35-year-old community worker from Glasgow, went there in March to enjoy the view from her campervan. As she relaxed, she looked over and saw a car parked beside her, with the passenger window rolled down. A man was staring at her, and masturbating. He clearly relished her visible fright. “That is what was turning him on,” Clara said. “His head was nearly out of the passenger window, staring at me.”
Because she was in a campervan, it wasn’t easy to get away quickly: Clara had to get out to fold away some seats. “I decided to jump out,” she says, “and when I looked at him, he was wiping ejaculation off his dashboard and looking at me.” She took a photograph of his car numberplate and drove away. But the man realised what she had done and gave chase. For 15 minutes, he tailed her through the streets of Glasgow. Frightened for her life, Clara drove to a police station, but the man turned off before she arrived.
Continue reading...Drea Kelly puts focus on what happens outside courtroom after singer’s racketeering and sex trafficking conviction
The culture around victim shaming stopped women coming forward sooner about the abuse they experienced at the hands of R Kelly, the singer’s ex-wife Drea Kelly has said.
A New York jury on Monday found R Kelly guilty of being the ringleader of a decades-long racketeering and sex trafficking scheme that preyed on women and children.
Continue reading...Canadian music star says in new documentary: ‘I would always say I was consenting, and then I’d be reminded … you’re not consenting at 15’
Speaking in a new documentary, Alanis Morissette has said she was the victim of multiple statutory rapes as a teenager.
The documentary, Jagged, is screening at the Toronto film festival this week. The Washington Post has reported that Morissette describes the attacks during the film. “It took me years in therapy to even admit there had been any kind of victimisation on my part,” she says. “I would always say I was consenting, and then I’d be reminded like ‘Hey, you were 15, you’re not consenting at 15.’ Now I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, they’re all paedophiles. It’s all statutory rape.’”
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms from Thailand to Texas
Continue reading...At least 12,000 women are still abducted and forced into marriage every year in Kyrgyzstan. But pressure is growing to finally end the medieval custom
Aisuluu was returning home after spending the afternoon with her aunt in the village of At-Bashy, not far from the Torugart crossing into China. “It was 5 o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday. I had a paper bag full of samsa [a dough dumpling stuffed with lamb, parsley and onion]. My aunt always prepared them on weekends,” she said.
“A car with four men inside comes in the opposite direction to mine. And all of a sudden it … turns around and, within a few seconds, comes up beside me. One of the guys in the back gets out, yanks me and pushes me inside the car. I drop all the samsa on the pavement. I scream, I squirm, I cry, but there is nothing I can do.”
Continue reading...Death has caused outrage in country where one in three girls are likely to be married by 18, despite ban
Zimbabwean police have charged a man after a 15-year-old girl died while giving birth at a church shrine last month.
Hatirarami Momberume, 26, has been charged with raping Anna Machaya, whose death provoked outrage in the country and was condemned by the UN.
Continue reading...A lawsuit, filed Friday, alleges the Nobel laureate plied a girl with drugs and alcohol and abused her over six weeks in 1965
A new lawsuit alleges that Bob Dylan, the Nobel-winning folk singer-songwriter, plied a 12-year-old girl with drugs and alcohol before sexually abusing her in 1965.
The lawsuit alleges that the Times They Are A-Changin’ singer “befriended and established an emotional connection with the plaintiff”, identified in Manhattan supreme court papers, obtained by the Guardian, only as “JC” and groomed her over the course of six weeks in April and May 1965.
Continue reading...Jane Ghosh thinks we have left behind devastation and despair, Trevor Curnow looks at parallels with Vietnam, while Daniel Peacock expresses concern for a generation of women and girls. Plus letters from Martin Harris and Caroline Willcocks
The history of western interference after the second world war in countries throughout the world has been one of unmitigated failure for which we all bear a share of shame (UK and US send troops to aid evacuation from Afghanistan as Taliban advance, 13 August).
Western powers have invaded countries thousands of miles away in the name of “democracy” and achieved a vacuum of power that has swiftly been filled by the very forces they went to evict. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. We have left behind devastation and despair while never learning the lessons of each disaster. If people want a one-party state, why does the US and its poodles think it has a duty or right to impose a very flawed system of democracy on other nations? Hubris followed inevitably by nemesis.
Jane Ghosh
Bristol
Hundreds of sexual assaults reported in south-east Tanganyika province as armed groups fight over goldmines
The UN has raised the alarm over widespread, systematic sexual violence in the south-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), saying women were reporting armed groups carrying out mass rape.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN refugee agency, said its staff have heard horrific testimonies from forcibly displaced persons in Tanganyika province.
Continue reading...Lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, says Sutton was ‘trafficked’ by ex-Elite Model boss to ‘wealthy men across Europe’
Ex-model Carré Sutton has filed a lawsuit alleging that Gérald Marie, the French former modeling agency boss, repeatedly raped her at his Paris apartment when she was just 17 years old.
The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in Manhattan federal court, also maintains that Sutton was “trafficked by Marie to other wealthy men around Europe”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Front Line Defenders report says rights defenders working in sex industry face ‘targeted attacks’ around the world
Sex worker activists are among the most at risk defenders of human rights in the world, facing multiple threats and violent attacks, an extensive investigation has found.
The research, published today by human rights organisation Front Line Defenders, found that their visibility as sex workers who are advocates for their communities’ rights makes them more vulnerable to the violations routinely suffered by sex workers. In addition, they face unique, targeted abuse for their human rights work.
Continue reading...The New York governor’s self-defense follows the playbook of powerful men accused of sexual misconduct – but it’s shocking given his history of advocacy
On 12 August, 2019 Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, held a glitzy bill ceremony in his executive mansion in Albany to mark the signing into law of new legislation designed to beef up sexual harassment protections for women in the workplace.
With a flourish of a pen, Cuomo sought to seal his reputation within the Democratic party as a champion of gender-based rights.
Continue reading...As two women are rescued in Syria after being kidnapped by Isis years earlier, Yazidis renew calls for international help to find the thousands still unaccounted for
For seven years, their families waited and hoped for news. In July, they finally received it. Two young women, kidnapped by Islamic State as teenagers, had been found alive in Syria.
Salma*, now 25, was located in Deir el-Zour province, in the east of the country. She had “suffered all kinds of injustice”, said the Yazidi House in the Al-Jazira region, an organisation that assisted with the rescue of both women.
Continue reading...Kidnapped by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels as a girl, Victoria Nyanjura has pushed through major reforms for victims of abduction and rape
When Victoria Nyanjura was abducted from her Catholic boarding school in northern Uganda by members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, she prayed to God asking to die.
She was 14 when she was taken, along with 29 others, in the middle of the night. During the next eight years in captivity she was subjected to beatings, starvation, rape and other horrors that she cannot talk about even 18 years later. Five of the girls who were taken prisoner with her died, and Nyanjura gave birth to two children.
Continue reading...As TV revisits the scandal, the author of an acclaimed play about it asks what the media and key institutions have learned – and whether survivors are now treated any better
Journalistic parlour game question: what are the most significant news stories of the past decade? Few would argue with the pandemic and Brexit. Not far behind, perhaps, is the Jimmy Savile scandal.
Not many stories change our world. This one did. It transformed how we deal with allegations of sexual assault. We reassessed our attitude to celebrity. We saw more clearly than ever how morally corrupt institutions could be. It was the harbinger of the #MeToo movement.
Continue reading...