Facing up to rape: Victim speaks out about the ‘faceless’ crime

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anxiety, attention-seeking, awareness, educate, embarrassment, fear, humiliation, powerlessness, rape, report, sexual assault, sexual harassment, Sexual Violence, shame, stigma, violated

Facing up to rape: Victim speaks out about the ‘faceless’ crime

Up until two weeks ago, Francesca Ebel had never told anyone in her family – or indeed most of her friends – that she had been raped. Yet she has now gone public, and the response has been overwhelming.

There were no dark alleys or threats of knives. There were no dodgy areas of town or even strangers involved. And that’s the whole point, explains the 20-year-old student, who is in her first year of studying Russian and French at Cambridge University.

“It happened three years ago. I was 17 and at a party. I got drunk and so friends helped me up the stairs and into bed. It was there that I was awoken by a crashing noise and burst of white light. I realised that someone was wrenching back the duvet and clambering on top of me, frantically pressing his lips to mine. Then my legs were pulled apart and I felt a sudden, tearing pain.”

Even in her drunken stupor, Francesca knew instinctively that something was very wrong and tried to shove him off. She even said “No”. More than once. “But he ignored me, breathing heavily in my ear.”

When it was over, Francesca stumbled outside, to find him smoking and laughing with his friends, and in the days afterwards, he boasted and joked about their sexual encounter.

Suspecting that she would be branded, at least by some, as an attention-seeker and a liar, she did not accuse him of rape. In fact, even when she confided in a close friend, it didn’t occur to her to use the word rape. “How could I claim to have been raped when ‘rape’ conjures up such violent images? How could my experience possibly parallel brutalities such as gang-rapes in India? It was unthinkable. Mine was not a violent rape; my rapist’s motives were not hateful or destructive. Furthermore, I felt embarrassed, ashamed and humiliated. So I put it behind me and got on with my life.”

And to a large extent, she succeeded. “Thankfully, my enjoyment of sex has not been affected and I’ve flourished in functional relationships. So how could I even begin to claim to identify with other victims’ experiences?” she says.

But about a year ago, when Francesca was in a relationship with a lawyer, she told him what had happened. “He stared at me and said: ‘You do realise that that is legally rape. You said no and that you didn’t want it to happen’. It was the first time I saw things clearly.”

Shortly afterwards, Francesca started university and was struck by how many other women, including a close friend, talked about similar experiences – something that certainly doesn’t surprise Rape Crisis, the charity, which claims that an estimated 90 per cent of those who experience sexual violence know the perpetrator in some way.

“There was a major survey that came out last month, which found that more than one in 13 women at Cambridge University had been sexually assaulted and that the vast majority – 88 per cent – did not report it,” Francesca says. “The study got people talking about their own experiences.”

According to the survey, women at the university are routinely groped, molested and raped. Like Francesca, one of the rape victims explained that she did not report her attacker because she thought that nothing would come of it. “I have no reason to believe that my report will be taken seriously, be investigated or result in a conviction. On the contrary, I have every reason to believe that he would be acquitted,” the woman stated. A couple of weeks later, an article appeared in the Cambridge Tab – of which Francesca is news editor – on what to do if you are raped. “We had run a few anonymous stories of sexual assault in our publication, but this one, which was written by the brother of a rape victim, really got to me, because it listed all of the things that I wish I’d done at the beginning. Suddenly, I just felt sick of this feeling of frustration, powerlessness and stigma about what had happened to me and so many others, and I felt a need to speak out. So I did.

“By storing the incident up inside me, I had let it gnaw away at me – the questions, anxieties and fury had built up to a level which was almost intolerable,” she explains. “And perhaps most critically of all, I wanted to turn a negative experience into something constructive.”

Francesca’s article appeared in the next issue, on 17 May, titled “There are people behind recent rape statistics and you must take their stories seriously”. What followed the headline was a candid, honest and brave account of her own experience, together with a plea for readers to recognise that behind stories of rape and sexual harassment, there are people who have to carry on with their lives and come to terms with what has happened, no matter how violent or “ordinary” their experience.

“Rape can happen to anyone at any time and I hoped that my story would demonstrate that,” she explains. “I also wanted to shed some light on why it is so hard to report an incident, and finally, I want to educate and initiate. Rape is not just confined to shady, impoverished corners of the globe; and it has to stop.”

It would have been far easier to write it anonymously, she admits. “Speaking out about rape has its consequences, not just for the person themselves, but for their family and friends. But there are too many faceless victims. I wanted to put a face to a story that has happened to so many people. I’m not disparaging anonymity in any way, but it does depersonalise the issue and I think that, as a result, people often don’t realise that rape is so common.”

Almost instantly, the article went viral, having had more than 28,000 views so far. Francesca has also been inundated with private letters and comments online, mostly from women who tell similar stories.

“It has been chilling to see the same story told again and again, and they all say the same thing – that they were full of self-doubt and fear of being labelled as an attention-seeker or that they wouldn’t be believed. Many, like me, don’t see themselves as a victim or the incident as defining them, but it has nonetheless affected them hugely.”

The responses also revealed just how frightened people are of reporting it. “Many of the women explained how they couldn’t face the trauma of the very system that is meant to protect us.”

Others wondered if it would even get to court – and with just 6 per cent of cases reported to police ultimately ending in a conviction, according to Rape Crisis, who can blame them?

“For reasons I can’t express even to myself, I have no current plans to report my case,” Francesca says. “But actually for me, what has been most empowering is to have gone public, to have helped raise awareness of both how ‘normal’ this is and how harmful it is.”

On reflection, Francesca’s original fear of attention-seeking has a certain irony: “I am certainly seeking attention now. That night, I was forced to share a level of intimacy which I usually reserve for the people I trust and care for. I was violated against my will, by a friend who unfortunately remains on the periphery of my life.

“Rape is incredibly complex and can have devastating consequences, whatever the situation. Right now, there is a critical and pressing need for us to broaden our understanding of the issues and educate future generations on the nature of consent.”

How would you react? Hard-hitting film suggests male victims of domestic abuse aren’t taken seriously

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domestic abuse, male victims

How would you react? Hard-hitting film suggests male victims of domestic abuse aren’t taken seriously

A revealing hidden camera stunt has shown how stranger’s reactions to domestic violence differs depending on the gender of the victim.

Charity ManKind set up hidden cameras in a London park, and filmed onlooker’s reactions to two different domestic violence scenarios.

In the first, a male actor attacks his ‘girlfriend’, prompting a swift reaction from shocked members of the public.

One woman threatens to call the police, telling the actress, “you don’t have to put up with that honey, he’s not worth it.”

Another man makes sure the woman is okay and even offers his office as a place to escape her attacker.

When the female actor attacks the man, not one person steps in to help the victim as he’s violently forced against the park railings.But the crowd’s reaction to the second scenario is very different.

In fact, many onlookers do nothing but stare and laugh.

Somerset-based charity ManKind Initiative claims the footage is important because society is failing to take male victims of domestic abuse seriously.

They claim that 40 per cent of domestic abuse victims are male, and that 720,000 men were victimised last year.

Mark Brooks from the ManKind Initiative insisted that male victims should be “supported in the same way that female victims rightly are”.

“The fact that in 2014 this is not the case shows the change that is still needed, especially as many men fear they won’t be believed if they come forward,” he added.

 

Nepal’s bogus orphan trade fuelled by rise in ‘voluntourism’

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child abduction, child trafficking, exploitation, orphanages, parents, tourists, volunteering, voluntourism

Nepal’s bogus orphan trade fuelled by rise in ‘voluntourism’

Like an increasing number of tourists visiting Nepal’s mountain peaks, colourful markets and lush national parks, Marina Argeisa wanted to experience the latest must-do activity on the tourist trail: a volunteering stint at an orphanage.

What the 26-year-old Spaniard did not know was that her good intentions were unwittingly feeding an industry that dupes poor parents into sending their children to bogus orphanages in order to extract money from well-meaning foreigners.

It is a business model built on a double deception: the exploitation of poor families in rural Nepal and the manipulation of wealthy foreigners. In the worst cases, tourists may be unwittingly complicit in child trafficking.

Nepal’s tourist sector comprises nearly 3% of its gross domestic product, and in 2012 more than 600,000 foreigners visited the tiny country.

Volunteering, or voluntourism as it is sometimes known, is a rapidly expanding industry. There are dozens of agencies offering the chance to spend weeks, or months, working at some of the country’s 800 orphanages.

More than 80% of these institutions are located in the most popular tourist hotspots: the ancient Kathmandu Valley; the trekking capital of Pokhara; and Chitwan, home to the largest national park. Child rights campaigners claim the country is also home to numerous unregistered orphanages.

Yet many of the occupants of these sites have at least one living parent. The latest investigation by Unicef, the UN’s children agency, found that 85% of children in the orphanages they visited had at least one living parent.

The trade in children begins in Nepal’s remote and impoverished countryside, where parents are tricked into sending their children to orphanages, often lured by the promise of an education.

Lojung Sherpa sent three of her children to the Happy Home orphanage in the capital after she was told that foreigners would educate them and raise money for one of her daughters, who has a serious medical condition. But when Sherpa spoke to her daughter some time later, she was told that all donations towards her treatment had been taken by the orphanage’s owner.

Sherpa travelled to Kathmandu to remove her children from the home but was repeatedly turned away. After an investigation, which resulted in the arrest of the orphanage owner on charges of child abduction and fraud, police officers discovered that Sherpa’s children were missing. The youngsters were later found at various locations across the city, where they had been hidden, and eventually reunited with their mother.

Philip Holmes, chief executive of Freedom Matters, the charity that instigated the inquiry into Happy Home, said that in the worst cases this practice constituted child trafficking.

“Once a child enters an orphanage, he or she seems to become the property of the orphanage owner … [In effect], they become prisoners of the orphanage,” he said. “[They] use the children as an income source, through the sponsorship of children who are presented as being orphans when they are not … and through the exploitation of overseas volunteers.”

When Dorota Nvotova, a young Slovakian, began volunteering at Happy Home in 2008, she was so moved by the children’s plight that she found a sponsor for every one of them. She raised about €150,000 (£122,000) for the home, but it was only later that she discovered the real reason its owner was so eager to attract foreign volunteers.

“It’s definitely about him making money. For him, it’s a business,” she said. “Whenever volunteers came he always tried to impress them and then they started fundraising for him.”

Argeisa admits that she too felt compelled to help the children of Nepal. During her search for a volunteering opportunity, it was the stories of the orphans profiled on the website of VolNepal, a Kathmandu-based agency, that attracted her attention.

She quickly signed up and paid $480 (£285) to spend four weeks looking after the children, but had no idea their profiles had been fabricated. “I couldn’t imagine there were people doing bad things to children and using the vulnerability of children to make money,” she said.

After strange behaviour at the orphanage aroused her suspicions about the home’s proprietor, Argeisa discovered that two sisters publicised as being orphans had living parents who had paid vast sums of money to a broker to send their children to the home to be educated.

And they were being educated, but at a cost far beyond anything her parents could imagine. The girls were being used to generate donations from tourists, with the orphanage claiming that their mother and father had abandoned them and no other relatives could be found.

“These little girls are very important for the owner of the home to get money. This is the only reason that they want these children,” Argeisa said. “They are [being] used.”

After one of the sisters confessed that she was being sexually abused by the owner, Argeisa reported the allegations to a local children’s organisation, Action for Child Rights (ACR). The owner of the orphanage was subsequently arrested for attempted rape.

“This was very, very hard … I couldn’t stop my feelings against that man,” Argeisa said. “I think his mission was making money … and abusing children … He wouldn’t have set up the home if there were no westerners coming and giving money and doing volunteering.

“The foreigners do not realise what is happening because they [orphanage owners] are specialists in stopping people from seeing the dark side. There are many people living for six months in an orphanage and they don’t realise this, because these children are scared … These houses are jails for these children.”

This is not an exceptional case, says Jürgen Conings, general director of ACR, who has spent 10 years in Nepal investigating the nexus between foreigners, adoption agencies and orphanages. “I’m 100% sure that the majority of these homes are built for reasons other than childcare,” he said. “Foreign volunteers give a home credibility … and they pay to volunteer, so it’s a strong business model.”

A report by Tourism Research and Marketing estimates that volunteer tourism attracts 1.6 million people a year, and that the market is worth up to £1.3bn.

While there are no reliable figures about the scale of voluntourism in Nepal, Martin Punaks, country director of Next Generation Nepal, which reunites orphanage-trafficked children with their families, believes it is a growing industry. “There is the potential for huge profits to be made for those who intentionally and unnecessarily displace children from their families, so they can be used as lucrative poverty commodities to raise funds from well-intentioned but ill-informed tourists,” he said.

The government recognises the problem but is struggling cope with the scale of it. “These children are a showpiece [for fundraising], but no one knows how much the owner gets and how much goes to the children,” said Tarak Dhital, executive director of the Central Child Welfare Board (CCWB). “We have introduced minimum standards for children’s homes and we need to strengthen our monitoring systems, but haven’t been able to till now … we lack financial and human resources.”

The CCWB is responsible for regulating orphanages in Nepal, but there are serious questions about its capacity to do so. According to its latest report, 90% of children’s homes failed to meet the government’s minimum operating standards.

However, Conings cautioned against the blanket condemnation of Nepalese orphanages. “A lot of good things are done; a lot of NGOs and social workers are doing an amazing job,” he said. “We would never say it’s not good [to volunteer], but we want to bring this to the public’s attention. There is a positive and negative, so be aware and make good decisions.”

But Nvotova questions the premise of volunteering at an orphanage. “[Foreigners] feel cool by doing this,” she said. “But I think it’s more selfish than useful. Very often [volunteers] don’t want to see the truth. They just want to feel needed and useful.”

• Some names have been changed

Misjudged counselling and therapy can be harmful, study reveals

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psychotherapy, therapists, Therapy

Misjudged counselling and therapy can be harmful, study reveals

Counselling and other psychological therapies can do more harm than good if they are of poor quality or the wrong type, according to a major new analysis of their outcomes.

Talking therapies are usually helpful to people who are distressed, but in a minority of cases where it goes wrong it can leave vulnerable people more depressed than when they first sought help, the authors say.

Prof Glenys Parry, chief investigator of the government-funded AdEPT (Adverse Effects of Psychological Therapies) study, said that there needs to be greater recognition of the potential for counselling to make people worse.

“Most people are helped by therapy, but … anything that has real effectiveness, that has transformative power to change your life, has also got the ability to make things worse if it is misapplied or it’s the wrong treatment or it’s not done correctly,” she said.

Very little research has been done on the negative impact of psychological therapies, even though they are increasingly prescribed in the NHS as well as being very widely available privately. Cognitive behaviour therapy is recommended in preference to pills for mild to moderate depression and anxiety.

Parry and her colleagues at Sheffield University’s School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) and the Department of Psychologyanalysed data routinely collected by therapists as well as the results of clinical trials. They included point scores of the levels of depression before and after courses of treatment and self-reported levels of wellbeing. They also interviewed therapists and clients to find out what goes wrong and when and how. The study was funded by the government’s National Institute for Health Research.

Although they say in general the results, which they have not yet published in detail, are positive, they found that they were variable across every type of psychological therapy. Some therapists had a lot more clients whose state of mind deteriorated than others although, Parry pointed out, that could be because they had more difficult cases. And some may have got worse whether they had therapy or not.

“Somebody could deteriorate during therapy but if they hadn’t had the therapy, they could have been dead,” she explained.

But, said Parry, both therapists and clients need to be more aware of the potential dangers and those who feel they are getting worse need more help. Her team have used the findings from the research project to set up a website to help people going through any form of psychological counselling called supporting safe therapy, which offers guidance on what to expect and advice if things go wrong.

“We have just got to be grownup about it – counselling treatments are effective but we need to understand more about the circumstances in which they can go wrong.”

There have been widespread reports of “transgressive behaviour” by therapists who abuse the trust of their clients, but less so about poor quality support. “There has always been the risk of a therapist misbehaving,” she said, “but we are talking about something much broader than that – not just a very, very small minority of people who fall into the hands of somebody who’s not practising properly.”

“I’m very keen that we grow up as a profession and start to look at these issues. If airline pilots said we get some people who crash, we’d all be worried about it. We have got to learn from when things go wrong and get much more scientific about it and much more careful about it, but not making out that it is a big drama,” she said.

Therapy does not work for everyone, says the website, which quotes the words of clients themselves. “I was coming out of therapy with no skills to deal with the emotions that it brought out,” said one. “I was starting to feel like I was at fault for not making it work,” said another. “The therapist verbally attacked my character and told me I was being over the top. The next week she said she was sorry for what she had said while also blaming me for provoking the outburst!” said a third. The website also advises people on how to make a complaint.

Usher syndrome: ‘Don’t define me by a condition I happen to have’

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blindness, deafness, Usher syndrome

Usher syndrome: ‘Don’t define me by a condition I happen to have’

Nick Sturley still recalls the train journey home from a hospital visit in London when he was 10 years old. His mother sat opposite him, reassuring him that she was fine, but even at that age he was a master at reading visual cues, and he could tell that something was wrong.

At the hospital, Sturley had been given eye drops and a range of tests. Afterwards, he sat in an office while his mother talked to the doctor. Being deaf, he had no idea what they were saying, and it was only later, through letters between home and his boarding school, that his mother explained that he had “tunnel vision”. He says that when he was “diagnosed as profoundly deaf when I was 10 months old [it] was a bad enough shock for my parents, but to be told I would also go blind was devastating”.

Sturley had been diagnosed with Usher syndrome, a genetic condition that affects hearing, vision and balance. Usually, the hearing loss is there from birth. The discovery of a gradual reduction in vision – people notice that they are finding it harder to see at night and that their peripheral vision is narrowing – often comes much later.

There is a debate that most people who are deaf or blind encounter at some stage – which is easier to deal with? For many who already have one condition, it is unthinkable to have both. Sturley’s sight decreased through his 20s, and he says his lowest point was a period of loneliness in the summer of 1999. He could barely see, and found himself alone in his flat while his friends were away. “I drank and smoked quite a lot and was very depressed.” But the growth of the internet helped him out of his “dark hole” and he set up UsherLife, which connects people with Ushers, in the virtual and real world.

Despite being forced to give up a full-time media career at 31, Sturley knew that he “wasn’t the sort who would sit in front of the telly all day”. He uses screen magnification on his computer: he has written three pantomimes starring deaf actors, two novels, and written and directed two sign-language films.

He now communicates using hands-on British Sign Language (BSL), feeling the signs people are making with his hands. He says that one of his biggest frustrations is that he cannot do things spontaneously any more: he needs a communicator guide in order to go out socially. But he has a positive attitude, and says he tries “to sweep it aside and get on with it until the next moment”.

Writer Cristina Hartmann, from San Francisco, knew she had Usher from a young age, but while she didn’t hide it, she “never talked about it either”. Then last year, she “came out” in a blog for an online community. She says the response “was huge and unexpected”. She describes it as a weight off her shoulders, but adds: “I didn’t want people to define me by a condition I happen to have.”

Impulsive by nature, Hartmann explains that having Usher has made her “a more careful and cautious person than I would be otherwise”. She makes sure she has a friend with her at parties, and memorises public transport schedules. And while having Usher can make her feel “unsure what is happening around me, which is bewildering and unsettling”, it has also made her “learn how to appreciate what I have when I have it … friends, family, and people who show kindness to me”.

For Emma Boswell, the biggest blow after her diagnosis was losing her driving licence. Twenty years on, she still misses driving in the countryside, but says that having Usher has made her “independent and tough”. She is married and has two young children. After being diagnosed with cancer two years ago, she decided to help other deaf people with the disease by setting up a support group in London. She is the chair of the International Usher Network and works for the charity Sense.

The support each person with Usher needs is different, she says. Some need help with communication, others with mobility. People with Usher can find their diagnosis “traumatic, devastating, upsetting and distressing … but many have a good life, some go to college and university, travel, have good jobs and have children, adjusting to their needs as their sight deteriorates”.

While diagnosis can be deeply distressing, it can also give people the opportunity to seek new goals: 36-year-old James Clarke aims to run 100 races and has done 59 so far.

“Accept the way you are. Be true,” reads an anonymous poem by a Manchester artist/photographer with Usher. The poem explains how people with Usher see the world through a different lens: “My fingers are my eyes, my hands are my ears,” the opening lines say. “I create my sense of space with my mind.”

Poll: nearly 50% of year 10 students feel addicted to the internet

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addiction, devices, internet, pupils, social media, social networks, students, young people

Poll: nearly 50% of year 10 students feel addicted to the internet

Almost half of all 14- and 15-year-olds feel they are addicted to the internet, with more than three-quarters of similarly aged pupils taking a web-enabled laptop, phone or tablet to bed at night, according to a survey.

Of those who take a device to bed, the bulk are communicating with friends using social media or watching videos or films, the study of more than 2,200 students in nine schools across England and Scotland found. More than four out 10 girls felt they used the internet on a compulsive basis for socialising, the survey found.

The poll was carried out on behalf of Tablets for Schools, a charity led by technology industry groups such as Carphone Warehouse and Dixons that campaigns for the increased use of iPad-like devices in education. Despite its remit the group has now published an advice guide for pupils and schools about internet devices, advising they be switched off before bed and during study times, with set times allocated for online activity.

The study said fewer than a third of students who used web devices in bed said this was connected to homework, with those more likely to use a computer, phone or laptop in bed also more likely to report feeling addicted to the internet. There were some gender distinctions, with 46% of girls saying they sometimes felt addicted to the internet, as against 36% of boys, but significantly more boys saying they felt a compulsion towards computer games.

The peak age for feelings of addiction was year 10, where pupils are aged 14 or 15, with 49% of those pupils reporting this. The greatest use of devices in bed comes a year later, with 77% of year-11 pupils. Aside from email the most commonly used sites at home were social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat.

While most students told researchers they were positive about the internet, a number expressed alarm at their apparent inability to disengage. “It’s the first thing I look at in the morning and the last thing at night. It seems I’m constantly on it,” a year-10 boy said. Another boy, a year older, said: “When I’m on YouTube one video leads to another and I cannot stop myself from watching loads of videos and sometimes I’m up till about 2 o’clock in the morning just because I’ve been watching YouTube videos.”

The issue of internet addiction is much debated, with some researchers questioning whether it can be classified as a formal addiction. There is evidence that British children spend more time online than many of their European peers. A 2012 EU-wide study of children aged 11-16 by the London School of Economics found the UK was among the worst nations for indicators of apparently excessive internet use, with more than a quarter saying they spent less time with family, friends or on schoolwork because of being on the web.

 

Britain’s elderly – lonelier than ever. Where do they all belong?

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elderly, isolation, loneliness, lonely, older adults, public health issue

Britain’s elderly – lonelier than ever. Where do they all belong?

Well over one million elderly people in the UK describe themselves as lonely often or all of the time, and many more consider their pet, or even the television, to be their most important form of company.

Age UK said that the findings from their latest loneliness survey revealed a significant increase in self-reported social isolation, with 10 per cent of people describing themselves as often or always lonely. This represents an increase of nearly 300,000 on last year’s survey.

The survey, conducted this month, consulted more than 2,000 people over the age of 65, of whom there are nearly 11 million in the UK.

Two in every five respondents said their main form of company was either their pet or the television. Nationally, this would be the equivalent of 4.3m people.

Loneliness has been identified as a key public health problem in recent years, as more people become cut off from society as they retire from work and lose their independence through disability.

Recent research in the US suggests that being lonely carried twice the health risk of obesity, with people who reported loneliness 14 per cent more likely than average to die in the course of the six-month study.

The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, highlighted loneliness in a speech last year, calling the plight of the “chronically lonely” a “national shame”. He said it was a problem which “in our busy lives we have utterly failed to confront as a society”.

However, Age UK’s director Caroline Abrahams said that funding cuts, which were brought in by the Coalition, were forcing many of the local services which help elderly people stay connected, such as lunch clubs, to close – increasing the work that the voluntary sector had to do.

“We know how devastating loneliness can be for older people and these figures are another reminder of the scale of the issue,” she said.

Kate Jopling, director for the Campaign to End Loneliness, added: “It should be a grave concern to health and social care managers that so many older people are now severely lonely. The evidence is clear that loneliness leads to avoidable ill health.

“If we fail to take this public health issue seriously now we may end up pushing already stretched services to breaking point.”