Pentagon can play key role combatting sexual assault (6/5/13)
In 1948, President Truman ordered the armed services of the U.S. military to help lead the charge against racial discrimination in American society. The nation desperately needs the Pentagon to play a similar role in the fight against sexual assault.
The Pentagon faces many of the same personnel problems as other U.S. employers, including mental health woes, substance abuse and sexual assault. But a key difference is that the president and Congress can literally order and force the U.S. military to take effective action to address a problem, which is exactly what Truman did with Executive Order 9981 establishing equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services.
Truman's executive order was a historic turning point, providing a crucial building block for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. President Obama and Congress now have a similar opportunity to force change in the U.S. military that could help turn the tide against sexual assault throughout American society.
Congress took a huge step in the right direction on Tuesday, June 4, when members of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee grilled top Pentagon leaders on why they had not followed through on earlier pledges to address sexual assault in their ranks. Given the partisan bickering and gridlock that has often paralyzed Washington during the Obama adminstration, Tuesday's hearing was a rare opportunity for Americans to take pride in their federal lawmakers as Democratic and Republican senators excoriated the generals and admirals over their failure to curb sexual assault.
While the senators' anger and frustration over sexual assault in the U.S. military is thoroughly justified, all responsible American citizens should be angered and frustrated over the scourge of sexual assault, which is as pervasive across the country today as racism was when Truman signed Executive Order 9981. One particular passage in an Associated Press story about Tuesday's Senate hearing applies to far more than the Pentagon:
(U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.) said victims of sexual assault are reluctant to report the crimes to their commanders because they fear their allegations will be dismissed and they might face retaliation. Aggressive reforms in the military's legal code are needed to force cultural changes, she said. "You have lost the trust of the men and women who rely on you," Gillibrand said. "They're afraid to report. They think their careers will be over. They fear retaliation. They fear being blamed. That is our biggest challenge right there."
Gillibrand's comment succinctly describes the sexual assault challenge facing every employer in the United States.
Hope, dread and rape in Congo (2/19/13)
With a United Nations-brokered peace deal set to be signed this weekend to improve the security situation in eastern Congo, simmering violence in the southern part of the country is threatening to derail a surge of mining activity that is critically important to one of the most underdeveloped nations on Earth.
On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and about a dozen leaders of African nations and organizations are expected to sign a peace agreement that includes creation of a U.N.-commanded military force. The so-called intervention brigade significantly deepens the peacekeeping role of the international organization because U.N. troops will have authority to use deadly force against the M23 rebels who have been clashing with government troops in eastern Congo for nearly a year.
The peace pact had been set for final approval last month, but the three countries expected to supply the most troops for the intervention brigade (South Africa, Tanzania and Mozambique) apparently balked over the issue of who would control the new military force. Diplomats said the trio opposed having the existing U.N. peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO, in charge of the intervention brigade because of its checkered record in supporting the Congolese government's effort to stave off the M23 rebels. Those differences have been papered over and the intervention brigade will be commanded through MONUSCO.
/Image via bet.com
In late 2012, multiple journalism organizations reported a dramatic increase in rape associated with fighting in eastern Congo:
CNN
The Guardian
AFP
/Image via salon.com
While hope springs in eastern Congo, Mai Mai rebels in the southern part of the country have stepped up attacks against civilians and soldiers loyal to President Joseph Kabila.
The Katanga region has been a hotbed of Congo's mining industry since the country's colonial period under Belgian rule. Copper production in Katanga has increased steadily since a peace accord was signed in 2003, helping to fuel an increase in Congo's copper exports from 20,000 tons a decade ago to 600,000 tons last year, according to Congolese officials.
Katanga, which is about the size of Spain, has a long secessionist history, and the Mai Mai rebels appear to be trying to take advantage of growing discontent with the central government. The Mai Mai have been linked to massacres, rape and cannabalism in the northern part of Katanga, which has been dubbed the "Triangle of Death."
Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of the few aid organizations operating in the Triangle of Death, is reporting the Mai Mai are expanding their area of operation. "The Mai Mai are coming out of their normal zone within the triangle," Pascal Duchemin, an MSF official working in Katanga's provincial capital, recently told the Reuters news service. "Since December, we've seen an intensification of clashes with the army."
While officials in the country's national capital, Kinshasa, are putting a brave face on efforts to turn back the Mai Mai offensive, Katanga leaders are less optimistic. Gabriel Kyungu wa Kumwanza, president of the provincial assembly, told Reuters the spike in violence poses a threat to investment in the region's mining industry. "Yes, there's a risk," he said. "Money doesn't like noise. While there's the sound of tanks and boots, money will not come in."
HEALING CONGOLESE RAPE SURVIVORS:
Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and his colleagues have treated about 30,000 rape survivors over the past dozen years. The 2008 U.N. Human Rights Prize recipient and 2009 African of the Year shared his story with the BBC this week.
Here is an excerpt of the interview with this amazing healer of broken bodies and souls:
"When war broke out, 35 patients in my hospital in Lemera in Eastern DR Congo were killed in their beds.
"I fled to Bukavu, 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the north, and started a hospital made from tents. I built a maternity ward with an operating theatre. In 1998, everything was destroyed again. So, I started all over again in 1999.
"It was that year that our first rape victim was brought into the hospital. After being raped, bullets had been fired into her genitals and thighs.
"I thought that was a barbaric act of war, but the real shock came three months later. Forty-five women came to us with the same story, they were all saying: 'People came into my village and raped me, tortured me.'
"Other women came to us with burns. They said that after they had been raped, chemicals had been poured on their genitals.
"I started to ask myself what was going on. These weren't just violent acts of war, but part of a strategy. You had situations where multiple people were raped at the same time, publicly -- a whole village might be raped during the night. In doing this, they hurt not just the victims but the whole community, which they force to watch.
"The result of this strategy is that people are forced to flee their villages, abandon their fields, their resources, everything. It's very effective.
"We have a staged system of care for victims. Before I undertake a big operation, we start with a psychological examination. I need to know if they have enough resilience to withstand surgery.
"Then we move to the next stage, which might consist of an operation or just medical care. And the following stage is socio-economic care -- most of these patients arrive with nothing, no clothes even.
"We have to feed them, we have to take care of them. After we discharge them, they will be vulnerable again if they're not able to sustain their own lives. So we have to assist them on socio-economical level -- for example through helping women develop new skills and putting girls back in school.
"The fourth stage is to assist them on a legal level. Often the patients know who their assailants were and we have lawyers who help them bring their cases to court.
"In 2011, we witnessed a fall in the number of cases. We thought perhaps we were approaching the end of the terrible situation for women in the Congo. But since last year, when the war resumed, cases have increased again. It's a phenomenon which is linked entirely to the war situation.
"The conflict in DR Congo is not between groups of religious fanatics. Nor is it a conflict between states. This is a conflict caused by economic interests -- and it is being waged by destroying Congolese women."
India gang rape: 'The cruelty I saw should not be seen ever' (1/6/13)
Kashmiri Sikh students take part in a protest in Srinagar on Dec. 27, 1212, following the rape of a student in the Indian capital. The student died from injuries suffered in the attack. /Tauseef Mustafa photo via AFP
The Indian government has apparently been shamed into acting quickly in last month's fatal gang-rape attack on a New Delhi medical student and her boyfriend. Five men are facing murder charges in the Dec. 16 attack, and prosecutors say blood found on the suspects' clothing matches DNA from the victims.
On Jan. 6, AFP reported: "It normally takes months for the prosecution to assemble such a case, but the legal proceedings are getting underway barely a week after the 23-year-old medical student died of her injuries in a Singapore hospital."
The gang-rape victim's boyfriend told AFP that witnesses did nothing to help the couple for 30 minutes after their naked bodies were thrown from the bus on which the attack occurred. "The cruelty I saw should not be seen ever," the 28-year-old man said.
The suspects, who are also accused of kidnapping and robbery, face their first court hearing Jan. 7.
Gang rape nightmares in India (12/29/12)
The U.N. is targeting violence against women and girls. Earlier this month, survivors and policy makers met at U.N. Headquarters in New York for a two-day session to help prepare for the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women conclave in March. The host of the recent New York session, the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, reports that about 70 percent of women worldwide suffer physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetimes, and 603 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not a crime.
Sexual predators are stalking all of us (12/8/12)
In a heart-breaking reality of American life, millions of children, women and men in the United States bear the permanent scars of sexual assault and domestic violence. How many millions is hard to say because sexual assault and domestic violence have been taboo topics for generations of Americans. Based on personal experience and the 18-month long series of stories on sexual assault I supervised at the Cape Cod Times, I can say it's highly likely that the vast majority of U.S. families have been marred by these heinous crimes.
This week at the Seacoast Repertory Theatre in Portsmouth, one of my journalism colleagues had the extraordinary courage to lift the shroud off her darkest secrets for the whole world to see. Portsmouth Herald photo director Deb Cram survived years of domestic violence at the hands of her father then endured her foster mother's sexual abuse.
Cram's story, and the reaction to its telling, shines light on the many facets of this national tragedy.
The perpetrators who denied Cram any semblance of an innocent childhood were not strangers, they did not jump out from behind a bush, they did not flee the scene of their crimes. They lived in her home. In most cases, the perpetrators of sexual assault and domestic violence are known to their victims: they are relatives, boyfriends, girlfriends, co-workers, neighbors, priests, teachers, youth group leaders. They are all around us. The only way to stop them is to cast aside the veil of secrecy that our society has allowed them to hide behind. In previous generations, only the bravest victims dared to disclose these crimes and, far more often than not, the perpetrators escaped justice because their families and the authorities were ill-equipped to take action.
We all owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Cram and those like her who have found the strength to share their horrific stories of abuse. And we must encourage all of them, especially our young children, to step forward and ask for help.
Many of our fellow citizens are still in denial about the pervasiveness of sexual assault and domestic abuse, and their unwillingness to confront this scourge on American society is a major stumbling block to addressing the problem. In the days since Cram appeared on the Seacoast Repertory Theatre stage, dozens of people have reached out to her privately to share stories about abuse that have touched their families. The editor of the Portsmouth Herald has only received one comment from the public: a woman who called the newspaper to complain that the Page 1 story on Cram's stage appearance should have been replaced with the photo of Santa Claus that ran on Page 3. We obviously have only begun the process of coming to grips with sexual assault and domestic violence in a way that will turn the tide.
At least three of my family members have survived sexual assaults, all before they reached the age of 20. In all three cases, my loved ones knew their attacker. In all three cases, the perpetrator escaped justice. One of the monsters stood trial, twice, but is free to continue his sociopathic behavior because the court failed to put him behind bars.
Sexual assault cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute. Young children do not make good witnesses. The actions and even the attire of adult victims become key issues at trial: defense attorneys imply "she was asking for it." Members of the jury, like the hapless caller to the Portsmouth Herald editor this week, either can't be brought to understand the evidence or don't want to face the facts.
Momentum is building to curb this deadly epidemic. It is one of the great challenges of our generation. Just as Deb Cram found the courage to bear her soul on a theater stage, we must all be willing to expose and confront those who would inflict the torment of sexual abuse and domestic violence on our families.
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