Category Archives: Rape and sexual assault

‘Don’t betray women of Tigray’: calls grow for international action against rape in war

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Politicians among signatories of two open letters urging investigation into reports of sexual violence in Ethiopian conflict

The former prime minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, and Zimbabwean author and 2020 Booker prize nominee Tsitsi Dangarembga are among the signatories of two separate letters demanding international action after shocking reports of sexual violence in Tigray.

In one, more than 50 women of African descent call for an immediate ceasefire and express horror at reports that African women and girls are “once again the victims” of violence and rape in war.

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Harvey Weinstein to be extradited to California for sexual assault charges

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Judge said there was no reason to delay transfer any longer and denied lawyer’s request to keep him at a state prison in New York

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein will be extradited to California after a New York judge’s approval, where he faces additional sexual assault charges.

The extradition order ends a legal fight, prolonged by the pandemic, the defense’s concerns about Weinstein’s failing health, and a squabble over paperwork.

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The sexual assault of sleeping women: the hidden, horrifying rape crisis in Britain’s bedrooms

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A recent survey suggested a shockingly high proportion of women have been sexually assaulted by a partner as they slept. Now more and more are speaking out

Niamh Ní Dhomhnaill had been with her partner for almost a year when she discovered that he’d been raping her while she slept. At the time, she was 25, and a language teacher in a Dublin secondary school. Her partner, Magnus Meyer Hustveit, was Norwegian. The couple had moved in together within a few months of meeting, but things were tense. It wasn’t a happy relationship.

On that particular night, Ní Dhomhnaill had been out with Hustveit and other friends, but left early, alone, because she felt unwell. “I’d only drunk water but I’d gone to bed and was out for the count,” she says. “I didn’t hear Magnus come back, which is unusual because I’d always been a light sleeper.”

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Ex-pupils who compiled sexual abuse dossier accused of blocking inquiry

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Former students at Eltham college receive letter from school’s lawyers accusing them of obstructing investigation

Former pupils at a private school in south-east London who compiled a dossier of sexual harassment and misconduct allegations were shocked to receive a letter from the school’s lawyers accusing them of obstructing investigations into the incidents.

The students, who went to Eltham College in Bromley, said they expected to receive a compassionate response after they collected testimonies from pupils past and present alleging sexism, sexual harassment, abuse and assault, and forwarded them to the school, inspired by the Everyone’s Invited anti-rape movement.

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Student’s rape and murder puts India’s sexual violence under spotlight again

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Despite new laws to combat the problem, a rape is reported every 15 minutes, leaving victims and families crying out for justice

It was a historic day for women in India. Mamata Banerjee and her party won a spectacular election victory in West Bengal, defeating the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, defying many predictions. Securing a third term as chief minister, she was the only woman in such an important position in India.

The following day, 3 May, while TV anchors debated how Banerjee’s win represented not only a strong force against Modi but also made her a powerful woman in a patriarchal country, a 20-year-old student, known only as Jana (her identity cannot be revealed under Indian law), was cornered by two men in a village, about 70 miles west of Kolkata, West Bengal’s main city.

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‘None of the evidence was enough’: Czech women fight to criminalise all non-consensual sex

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In the Czech Republic, the legal definition of rape requires the threat of violence. Campaigners say it is failing victims

“I felt so lost when I heard the court verdict; as if the fact that he raped me was somehow not enough,” said Jana Novak.

Novak, from Prague, pressed charges against her attacker in 2019 and endured an 18-month-long court case. “I had all the evidence, the creepy messages, the medical notes,” said Novak, whose name has been changed to protect her identity. “But none of it was enough.” While the court found that there had been non-consensual sex, the defendant was acquitted on the basis that there was insufficient evidence it constituted rape.

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Ny Nourn: the woman convicted of murder and pardoned – who now fights for other battered women

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Nourn moved from Cambodia to the US as a child, and ended up in an abusive relationship that led to a man’s murder. After years in prison, she is now a powerful voice for those who face incarceration and deportation

When Ny Nourn entered Central California Women’s Facility, the largest women’s prison in the world, there was every reason to believe she would never walk free on American soil again.

She was just 21, and had been sentenced to “life without parole” for her part in a hauntingly brutal murder – a part she was forced into. Even if, at some distant date, a successful appeal commuted that sentence, her conviction made Nourn deportable – so when she had served her time, she was likely to be transported to another prison and ultimately to Cambodia, the country of her parents’ birth, a country she had never set foot in.

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Lady Gaga says rape as teenager left her pregnant and caused ‘psychotic break’

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Speaking on Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry show The Me You Can’t See, the singer outlined further details of attack she first disclosed in 2014

Lady Gaga has told new details about sexual assault she suffered when she was 19. Speaking on The Me You Can’t See, Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry’s new Apple TV+ series about mental health, she said the rape – that she first disclosed in 2014 – was by a music producer and left her pregnant.

“I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, ‘Take your clothes off,’” she said. “And I said no. And I left, and they told me they were going to burn all of my music. And they didn’t stop. They didn’t stop asking me, and I just froze and – I don’t even remember.” She said “the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner”.

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‘Bodies are being eaten by hyenas; girls of eight raped’: inside the Tigray conflict

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A nun working in war-torn Tigray has shared her harrowing testimony of the atrocities taking place

The Ethiopian nun, who has to remain anonymous for her own security, is working in Mekelle, Tigray’s capital, and surrounding areas, helping some of the tens of thousands of people displaced by the fighting who have been streaming into camps in the hope of finding shelter and food. Both are in short supply. Humanitarian aid is being largely blocked and a wholesale crackdown is seeing civilians being picked off in the countryside, either shot or rounded up and taken to overcrowded prisons. She spoke to Tracy McVeigh this week.

“After the last few months I’m happy to be alive. I have to be OK. Mostly we are going out to the IDP [internally displaced people] camps and the community centres where people are. They are in a bad way.

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Rape is being used as weapon of war in Ethiopia, say witnesses

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Ethiopian nun speaks of widespread horror she and colleagues are seeing on a daily basis inside the heavily isolated region of Tigray

Thousands of women and girls are being targeted by the deliberate tactic of using rape as a weapon in the civil war that has erupted in Ethiopia, according to eyewitnesses.

In a rare account from inside the heavily isolated region of Tigray, where communications with the outside world are being deliberately cut off, an Ethiopian nun has spoken of the widespread horror she and her colleagues are seeing on a daily basis since a savage war erupted six months ago.

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Ethiopian patriarch pleads for international help to stop rape and genocide by government troops

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Orthodox priest releases video statement on suppression of Tigray district

Ethiopian government forces and their allies are committing genocide in the country’s war-torn northern province of Tigray, the head of Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church has claimed in a videoed statement demanding urgent international intervention.

The appeal by Abuna [Patriarch] Mathias follows fresh allegations of ethnic cleansing, gang rapes, extrajudicial killings and other atrocities by soldiers loyal to Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who ordered an invasion of Tigray last November.

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Refugees and the Armenian genocide: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

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‘Stealthing is rape’: the Australian push to criminalise the removal of a condom during sex without consent

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ACT Liberal leader Elizabeth Lee is trying to change legislation to explicitly criminalise the act amid a rise in disturbing rhetoric

One in three women and one in five men globally have been the victim of “stealthing”, the non-consensual act of removing a condom during sex, yet the term has only recently entered public awareness – and courtrooms.

“Anecdotally, stealthing was something that felt yuck, confusing, violating and wrong,” the Australian Capital Territory’s Liberal opposition leader, Elizabeth Lee, says. “But victims of it didn’t even know it had a name, let alone that it negated their consent.”

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‘I am not my trauma’: survivors of sexual abuse at a Ugandan girls’ shelter – photo essay

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German national Bernhard ‘Bery’ Glaser took advantage of his ‘rich white foreigner’ status to systematically abuse girls in his care. Photographer DeLovie Kwagala captured the stories of 15 women

Eve was just eight years old and recently orphaned when she was taken to live at a girls’ shelter on Bugala island, in the Ugandan sector of Lake Victoria.

Bery’s Place had been set up in 2006 by Bernhard “Bery” Glaser, a German national living in Uganda, as a refuge for traumatised children and victims of sexual violence. Yet Eve and other girls living there at the time say that Glaser was hiding a dark secret. Taking advantage of his “rich white foreigner” status to entice parents to leave their daughters at the home, Glaser was using Bery’s Place as a cover for routine and systematic sexual and emotional abuse of the children in his care, the girls allege.

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Kenya debates lowering age of consent from 18 to 16

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While some point to the number of teenage boys jailed for consensual sex, others fear gender equality gains could be lost

Kenya’s judges and child welfare organisations are embroiled in a fresh debate on whether to lower the age of consent.

Some members of the judiciary believe the age of consent should be lowered from 18 to 16 for heterosexual acts (gay sex is criminalised at any age, punishable by up to 14 years in prison) because boys and girls have “reached the age of discretion and are able to make intelligent and informed decisions about their lives and their bodies”.

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The UK’s femicide epidemic: who’s killing our daughters?

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In the latest part of our End Femicide campaign, we examine how stalking, coercive control and pornography lie behind so many of the killings of 272 young women in 10 years. Will the domestic abuse bill, due to become law this week, do enough to keep women safe?

Alice Ruggles was described by her friends and family as vibrant, witty and “sharp as a tack”. She loved life. Then, in January 2016, aged 24, she met Lance Corporal Trimaan “Harry” Dhillon, who was 26. She didn’t know that he had a restraining order taken out on him by a previous girlfriend.

Dhillon began to coercively control Ruggles, isolating her from friends. In July, having learned that he was cheating on her, she ended their seven-month relationship. Dhillon turned into a stalker. He frequently drove 100 miles from his camp in Edinburgh to spy on her, leaving unwanted flowers and chocolates. He continually texted and threatened to post intimate photographs. He told her on voicemail that he didn’t want to kill her, he wouldn’t kill her.

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Rape victims in south Asia still face vaginal tests, report finds

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Unscientific ‘morality’ examination linked to low conviction rates and violates women’s rights, says Equality Now

Physical vaginal tests are still used to determine whether women and girls have been raped in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, according to a new report.

The practice remains widespread in all three countries and some courts refer to the test in judgments, despite it having no scientific basis and being banned in India.

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Escaped girls tell of insurgents’ mass abductions in Mozambique

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Interviews undermine the US state department claim that extremist group has links to Islamic State

Insurgents in Mozambique have abducted hundreds of women and girls, forcing many into sexual relations with fighters and possibly trafficking others elsewhere in Africa, interviews with some who have escaped the extremists reveal.

Most of the abducted women are under 18, with the youngest about 12 years old. They are being held in a series of camps and bases across insurgent-controlled territory in north-eastern Mozambique.

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‘Marry your rapist’ laws in 20 countries still allow perpetrators to escape justice

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Critical UN report says the legislation is ‘deeply wrong’, subjugates women and shifts the burden of guilt on to the victim

Twenty countries still allow rapists to marry their victims to escape criminal prosecution, according to the UN’s annual state of world population report.

Russia, Thailand and Venezuela are among the countries that allow men to have rape convictions overturned if they marry the women or girls they have assaulted.

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Harvey Weinstein indicted on sexual assault charges in California

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Former film producer, who is currently incarcerated in New York, faces possible extradition for alleged attacks on five women

Harvey Weinstein has been indicted in California on sexual assault charges, one of his lawyers said on Monday, as the former film producer appeared in a New York court proceeding over whether to extradite him.

The 69-year-old Weinstein appeared by video from the Wende correctional facility, near Buffalo, before a judge on the Erie county court.

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