International protocol launched to deal with sexual violence in conflict

Tags

asylum seekers, best practice, conflict, crime, guidelines, international protocol, protection, rape, Refugees, Sexual Violence, survivors, template, testimony

International protocol launched to deal with sexual violence in conflict

An international protocol for dealing with rape and sexual violence in conflict was launched on Wednesday at a historic London summit on the issue, providing guidelines on the investigation of sex crimes and the collection of evidence for future prosecutions.

“For decades – if not centuries – there has been a near-total absence of justice for survivors of rape and sexual violence in conflict. We hope this protocol will be part of a new global effort to shatter this culture of impunity, helping survivors and deterring people from committing these crimes in the first place,” the UK foreign secretary, William Hague – who is co-hosting the summit with film star Angelina Jolie – wrote in a foreword to the 140-page protocol.

The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict opened on Wednesday with 117 countries formally represented, plus scores of UN and aid agencies, civil society organisations, survivors and nearly 2,000 delegates from around the world.

Zainab Bangura, the UN’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, said conflict-related rape was no longer considered “a marginal issue, an inevitable by-product of war or mere collateral damage. It can no longer be amnestied or pardoned as the price of peace. It cannot be dismissed … as a private matter. And the countless women, girls, men and boys affected can no longer be deemed second-class victims of a second-class crime.”

Bangura had witnessed the enduring effects of sexual violence in the civil war of Sierra Leone. “The scars that remain beneath the surface of society make peace less possible. We’re here today to write the last chapter in the history of wartime rape and to close the book once and for all on humanity’s tolerance for such inhumanity.”

To survivors, she said: “Your voices are being heard. Wartime rape is now among the greatest global security priorities of our time.” To perpetrators: “We will pursue with every means at our disposal. There will no hiding place and no safe haven. Sooner or later, we will get you … This is not mission impossible.”

In a video message, Hillary Clinton paid tribute to Hague and Jolie as “formidable champions of this cause”. The summit was a historic opportunity to effect change, she added.

The protocol, funded by the UK government and the result of two years’ work, aims to provide best practice on the documentation of sexual violence. It includes practical advice, checklists and sample questions for fieldworkers.

For example, it provides a template for personal data to be collected from survivors and witnesses, tips on carrying out interviews and gathering testimonies, and guidance on photographing, filming and sketching crime scenes, and on the collection of physical evidence.

About 25 experts were involved in compiling the protocol, whose contents were “field tested” in countries such as Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo before publication.

Humanitarian agencies at the London summit have documented the long-term physical and psychological effects of sexual violence in conflict, including the rejection of victims by their communities and the birth of children conceived during rape.

Government troops and peacekeeping forces have not only failed to protect women from sexual violence, but have also been among the perpetrators, they say.

Jolie and Hague arrived together at the summit at the ExCel conference centre in Docklands, London, on Wednesday morning. The pair were later due to co-host a screening of Jolie’s 2012 film about rape in Bosnia, In the Land of Blood and Honey, which led to the foreign secretary’s espousal of the issue.

However, criticism has been levelled at the UK government for failing to give protection to victims of sexual violence when they arrive as war refugees. Women were not being believed when recounting their experiences, and were being further traumatised by the asylum process, according to the Refugee Council.

“It’s critical that the government tackles this issue with the same gusto at home as it’s doing abroad and protects the survivors of sexual violence,” said Anna Musgrave, of the Refugee Council, who said the UK government was guilty of hypocrisy.

At the opening session, UK foreign minister Lady Warsi described “harrowing moments” as a lawyer hearing the testimonies of women from Bosnia-Herzegovina, who were seeking asylum in the UK. “Having spent sometimes many, many hours with these women in preparing for their cases, we would find out only at the 11th hour the most horrific aspect of their experience – the rape and the sexual violence.

“And what was even more heartbreaking for me was when those women wouldn’t just tell you that at the last moment, but it would also be with a caveat – ‘But I don’t want you to tell anybody else this. I don’t want it to be part of my case’,” she said.

Angela Atim, who is speaking at the conference, was kidnapped at the age of 14 by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.

“These people who are accountable for the sexual violence in armed conflict, they have to be brought to justice,” she told the BBC.

“It’s part of our healing because it’s really painful to see that they are still walking around, they are still doing the same thing.”

Thousands of children sexually exploited each year, inquiry says

Tags

abortion, abuse, alcohol, child sexual exploitation, Children, control, crime, drugs, gangs, humiliation, mental health issues, miscarriage, perpetrators, power, pregnancy, punish, rape, sexual assault, smartphones, social networks, STDs, support, threaten

Thousands of children sexually exploited each year, inquiry says

Thousands of children are raped and abused each year, with many more cases going unreported by victims and unrecorded by the authorities, according to an official study presented as the most comprehensive inquiry to date of the scale and prevalence of child sexual exploitation in England.

The disturbing and at times horrific study, which describes a range of traumatic and violent sexual crimes perpetrated mainly against girls, by male teenage gang members and groups of older men, was described as a “wake-up call” for safeguarding professionals by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England (OCCE).

It draws an alarming picture of serious sexual crimes against children: girls groomed, then drugged and raped at seedy “parties” in private homes and warehouses organised by groups of men, for profit or pleasure; assaults in public parks, schools and alleyways by gang members influenced by violent pornography, and intent on threatening, punishing or controlling young women by means of forced oral sex, and anal and vaginal rape.

The report says that victims commonly suffer serious physical and emotional harm as a result of their experiences, including severe mental illness, and drug and alcohol problems. Some victims contract sexually transmitted diseases, become pregnant, have terminations or suffer miscarriages.

“The reality is that each year thousands of children in England are raped and abused by people seeking to humiliate, violate and control them. The impact on their lives is devastating,” said the inquiry chair, deputy children’s commissioner Sue Berelowitz.

The inquiry was established in 2011 to investigate what it saw as mounting concern about child sexual exploitation. The inquiry team, comprising academics and senior safeguarding professionals from the police, NHS and charities, collected data and evidence from local authorities, police forces and primary care trusts. It took oral evidence from 68 professionals and 20 sexually exploited children across the country.

It concluded that too often police, local authorities and other safeguarding agencies have failed to spot or act on the warning signs of sexual exploitation, despite what it says is 20 years of evidence that large numbers of children are being sexually exploited in the UK. “Too many child victims are not getting the protection and support they need,” writes Berelowitz in the foreword to the report.

It criticises safeguarding professionals who labelled victims as “promiscuous” or “asking for it”. This “worrying perspective” suggested officials too often assumed that sexually exploited children, many of whom exhibited disruptive or aggressive behaviour, were “complicit in, and responsible for, their own abuse”.

Debbie Jones, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said: “It is clear that we cannot make assumptions about victims or perpetrators based on their age, ethnicity or whether they are in care. Making such assumptions will risk some children not being identified as being sexually exploited and not receiving the protection that they so desperately need.”

The inquiry’s interim report published by the OCCE says that despite media attention surrounding a number of high-profile court cases involving groups of Pakistani men and white British female victims, sexual exploitation was widespread. There was no evidence that perpetrators belonged disproportionately to a particular ethnic group.

“The vast majority of the perpetrators of this terrible crime are male. They range in age from as young as 14 to old men. They come from all ethnic groups and so do their victims – contrary to what some may wish to believe,” writes Berelowitz.

The study found the largest group of perpetrators were classed as “white” males, but because there were gaps in official data recording, and because many victims found it hard to identify their attackers, it was impossible to estimate accurately who and how many people were sexually exploiting children.

“What all perpetrators have in common – regardless of the differences in age, ethnicity, or social background (information on disability or sexual orientation was rarely available) – was their abuse of power in relation to their victims, and that the vast majority were male,” the report said.

Although it identified 2,409 children and young people as “confirmed victims” of sexual exploitation in gangs or groups over a 14-month period, and estimated that 16,500 children were at “high risk” of sexual exploitation during a 12-month period, the report said this was an undercounting of the true scale of the problem. The report did not consider cases of sexual exploitation by “lone perpetrators”.

Anne Marie Carrie, chief executive of Barnardo’s, which works with 1,000 victims of child sexual exploitation each year, agreed that the figures were undercounted: “We agree with the OCCE that it is likely that the figures of both confirmed victims and those at high risk only show us the tip of the iceberg.

All kinds of children and young people, both male and female and across a range of ethnic backgrounds, were sexually exploited, the report found. Although vulnerable youngsters in care or from dysfunctional families were most at risk, children “from loving and secure homes” were also abused by gangs and groups.

“The characteristics common to all victims are not their age, ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation, rather their powerlessness and vulnerability,” the report states.

The study found that 28% of the victims reported to the inquiry were from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. The report says: “This information is significant, given that the general perception appears to be that sexual exploitation by groups, in particular, is primarily a crime against white children.”

Technology was used widely to initiate, organise and maintain child sexual exploitation. Victims reported being harassed through text messages, and perpetrators would often film and distribute incidents of rape via smartphones and social networking. Younger perpetrators had in many cases been exposed to violent pornography, the inquiry found, and it speculated that this informed abusers’ understanding of sexual relationships.

Berelowitz writes: “We need to ask why so many males, both young and old, think it is acceptable to treat both girls and boys as objects to be used and abused. We need to know why so many adults in positions of responsibility persist in not believing these children when they try to tell someone what they have endured.”

Rape in the military: exposing the shocking truth

Tags

abuse, armed forces, blame, crime, documentary, film, Military, rape, sexual assault

Rape in the military: exposing the shocking truth

He hit me across the left side of my face … and my face hurt so bad. He screamed at me and he grabbed my arm and he raped me.” Kori Cioca’s heartbreaking account of her rape by a commanding officer while serving in the US Coast Guard is not the most shocking part of her testimony. Following the attack, Cioca was told by her superiors that if she went forward with her case she would be court-martialed for lying; her assailant, who admitted the attack but denied rape, then received just 30 days of base restriction and loss of pay and the US Department of Defense continues to refuse to pay for the surgery she needs for the nerve damage to her face.

Cioca is just one of the women interviewed in The Invisible War, a feature-length documentary that lifts the lid on the abuse of women in the US military and which got its first UK screening in the Frontline Club in London last week.

The film has raised similar concerns this side of the Atlantic that rape is a hidden scourge in the military. According to figures released to Labour MP Madeleine Moon, a rape or sexual assault is reported by a member of the armed forces every week. Over the past two and a half years, there have been 53 reported rapes and 86 reported sexual assaults in the army, the navy and the air force, but Moon believes the figure is an underestimation and could be as many as an attack a day.

Between 2001-2011, Ministry of Defence figures show 56 members of the armed forces were court-martialed for sexual offences – of these, just 16 resulted in a conviction.

UK screenings of The Invisible War are in the pipeline, as is its release on iTunes in the UK, while its makers are urging UK viewers to host their own screenings.

Lifting the lid on the extent of the abuse is vital to tackling the problem of rape in the military, says Amy Ziering, producer of the film, which was directed and written by Kirby Dick. “There is a perfect storm of conditions to keep this secret,” she says, speaking from Los Angeles. “There is no incentive to report rape, it is not treated as a priority in the military and the nature of the crime means that it is so implosively devastating that many women get the blame, or blame themselves.”

The statistics revealed in The Invisible War, which won the audience award at this year’s Sundance film festival, make shocking reading: a female soldier in combat zones is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire, over 20% of female veterans have been sexually assaulted while serving in the US army, of 3,192 sexual-assault reports in 2011 only 191 members of the military were convicted at courts martial.

Rape within the military has been exposed before – the Tailhook Association meetings in 1991, the Aberdeen Proving Ground in 1996 and the Air Force Academy in 2003 – but it has rarely been done with such a devastating combination of first-person testimony, watertight research and high-level interviews.

Through the testimony of victims and their families the extent of that devastation is laid bare, as well as the failings of a system that sees a rape victim’s commander decide whether to take action after a rape report.

Ariana Klay, who graduated with honours from the US Naval Academy and served in Iraq, describes her violent rape by a senior officer and her civilian boss. “He said that if I told anybody, that he was gonna have his friend Marv, from Indiana, kill me and throw me in a ditch, ’cause that’s how they took care of things in Indiana,” she tells the camera. When she reported the rape she was told to do “what a Marine officer should do, and that’s to ignore it and move on,” and she alleges the Marine Corps said she must have welcomed the assaults because she wore makeup and skirts – part of her regulation uniform.

“The thing that makes me the most angry,” says Klay, “is not even the rape itself; it’s the commanders that were complicit in covering up everything that happened.”

The film shows Andrea Werner, who reported her rape to her army superiors, only to be charged with adultery, even though it was her assailant who was married; Lieutenant Elle Helmer, whose case against her commanding officer at the Marine barracks in Washington DC, was closed owing to “lack of evidence” before a new case was opened charging Helmer with conduct unbecoming of an officer and public intoxication.

Ziering was instrumental in getting the women to open up about their horrific experiences. She readily agrees that her gender invariably played a role: “I became very emotionally involved in the victims’ stories, it was what drove me, and I wanted the film to have that heart and passion,” she says.

Ziering finds the documentary world “more welcoming and equitable” for women than Hollywood. “There is absolutely no balance in the movie world. It is so bleak there are so few women directors, it’s still very much an all boys club. It’s just horrible,” she says, though she notes the “big star” directors in documentaries still tend to be men. Dick and Ziering’s film has already had a far-reaching impact: offers of financial donations and support for victims have been made after almost every screening and when US secretary of defense Leon Panetta watched the film earlier this year he ordered military commanders to hand over all sexual-assault investigations to a higher-ranking colonel, and announce the creation of a special victims unit in each branch of the armed forces.

Ziering reveals that some commanders are using the film as a training tool, showing it to new recruits. “My real hope is that in 10 years’ time there is not another film made about this. We’re going to keep the pressure on – this can’t just be allowed to blow over.”

Revealed: the scale of sexual abuse by police officers

Tags

abuse, Children, crime, police, rape, sexism, sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual predators, vulnerability, women, young people

June 2012:

Revealed: the scale of sexual abuse by police officers

Sexual predators in the police are abusing their power to target victims of crime they are supposed to be helping, as well as fellow officers and female staff, the Guardian can reveal.

An investigation into the scale and extent of the problem suggests sexual misconduct could be more widespread than previously believed.

The situation raises questions about the efficacy of the police complaints system, the police’s internal whistleblowing procedures, the vetting of officers and a failure to monitor disciplinary offences.

Police officers have been convicted or disciplined for a range of offences from rape and sexual assault to misconduct in public office relating to inappropriate sexual behaviour with vulnerable women they have met on duty. Others are awaiting trial for alleged offences, though many are never charged with a criminal offence and are dealt with via internal disciplinary procedures.

The problem is to a large extent hidden, as no official statistics are kept and few details are released about internal disciplinary action in such cases.

By analysing the data available – including court cases and misconduct proceedings – the Guardian has attempted to document the scale of the corruption for the first time.

In the past four years, there were 56 cases involving police officers and a handful of community support officers who either were found to have abused their position to rape, sexually assault or harass women and young people or were investigated over such allegations.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) are so concerned they are carrying out a rare joint inquiry into the scale of the problem, which will be published in September, the Guardian can reveal.

Their work was prompted by the case of the Northumbria police constable Stephen Mitchell, 43, who was jailed for life in January 2011 for carrying out sex attacks on vulnerable women, including prostitutes and heroin addicts, while he was on duty.

Despite being the subject of previous disciplinary offences, involving one inappropriate relationship with a woman and the accessing of the force computer to find private details of an individual, Mitchell had not been subjected to extra supervision or dismissed by the force.

Those targeted by the officers are predominantly women, but in some cases are children and young people, many of them vulnerable victims of crime.

The Guardian’s investigation has uncovered evidence of:

• Vetting failures, including a concern that vetting procedures may have been relaxed post-2001 during a surge in police recruitment.

• Concerns over the recording and monitoring of disciplinary offences as officers progress through their career.

• A tendency for women who complain they have been sexually attacked by a policeman not to be believed.

• A pervasive culture of sexism within the police service, which some claim allows abusive behaviour to go unchecked.

Debaleena Dasgupta, a lawyer who has represented women sexually assaulted and raped by police officers, said: “I don’t think any [victims] are quite as damaged as those who are victims of police officers.

“The damage is far deeper because they trusted the police and … believed that the police were supposed to protect them from harm and help catch and punish those who perpetrate it.

“The breach of that trust has an enormous effect: they feel that if they can’t trust a police officer, who can they trust? They lose their confidence in everyone, even those in authority. It is one of the worst crimes that can be committed and when committed by an officer, becomes one of the greatest abuses of power.”

The officers involved come from all ranks within the service: the most senior officer accused of serious sexual harassment was a deputy chief constable, who was subject to 26 complaints by 13 female police staff.

David Ainsworth, deputy chief constable of Wiltshire police, killed himself last year, an inquest heard this month, during an inquiry into his behaviour. He is one of two officers accused of sexual misconduct to have taken their own lives over the past four years.

In one of the worst cases in the past four years, Trevor Gray, a detective sergeant with Nottinghamshire police, broke into the home of a woman he met on a date and raped her while her young child slept in the house.Gray was jailed for eight years in May for rape, attempted rape and sexual assault.

Many of the cases documented involve police officers accessing the police national computer to gain access to the details of vulnerable women and young people in order to bombard them with texts and phone calls and initiate sexual contact.

Deputy Chief Constable Bernard Lawson of Merseyside police, the Acpo lead on counter-corruption, who is working with the IPCC on the joint report, said: “Police officers who abuse their position of trust have an incredibly damaging impact on community confidence in the service.

“There is a determination throughout policing to identify and remove those who betray the reputation of the overwhelming majority of officers.”

In its report on corruption within the police service published last month, the IPCC identified abuse of authority by officers for their own personal gain, including to engage in sexual intercourse with a vulnerable female while on duty, and the misuse of computer systems to access details of vulnerable females, as two of the five key corruption threats to the service.

IPCC figures show that 15% of the 837 corruption cases referred by forces to the watchdog between 2008 and 2011 involved abuse of authority by a police officer, and 9% involved misuse of systems.

Clare Phillipson, director of Wearside Women in Need, who supported some of Mitchell’s victims, said: “What you have here is the untouched tip of an iceberg in terms of sexually questionable behaviour and attitudes. The police service, in my experience, has an incredibly macho culture and women are seen as sexual objects.

“Police officers have a duty to steer away from vulnerable women in distress, some of whom see these police officers as their saviours. It is an abuse of their power to exploit that.”

One area to be examined by the IPCC is whether there might have been vetting failures from 2001 onwards during a massive recruitment drive in the police.

Between 2001 and 2007, the overall strength of the service grew by more than 16,000, with around 2,666 officers recruited each year on average.

Six years ago, a study of vetting within the police service by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary revealed “disturbing” failures that had allowed suspect individuals to join the service. The report, Raising the Standard, exposed more than 40 vetting failures among police officers and support staff. The report concluded: “The potential damage that can be caused by just one failure should not be underestimated.”

Update: Sexual predators in police ‘must be rooted out’

Rape is not a dirty secret, it is a violent crime

Tags

blame, crime, culture, myths, secret, sexual assault, shame

Rape is not a dirty secret, it is a violent crime

It is troubling enough that such a small proportion of reported rapes make it to court, worse still that so few victims come forward in the first place. But most disturbing of all is the reason why so many people keep their suffering to themselves: because they do not think they will be believed. That rape is still a dirty secret, hedged about with so much blame and shame that victims feel they cannot come forward, is testament to how far we still have to go.

There are, of course, great legal difficulties in rape trials. Sexual assault is one of the few crimes where proof lies not in the physical facts of the matter, but in the subjective intentions of those involved. One person’s word against another’s, with no corroborating witnesses, is highly problematic for a legal system predicated on the concepts of innocent until proven guilty and proof beyond reasonable doubt.

This is no call for the wholesale abandonment of basic tenets of justice. But simply to shrug our collective shoulders, blame intractable issues of principle, and thereby leave a swathe of victims of violent assault with insufficient legal protection cannot be acceptable in what purports to be a civilised society.

The latest statistics make gruelling reading. More than a third of British women have been subjected to some kind of sexual assault, and one in 10 has been raped, according to the Mumsnet social networking site. Barely a third of victims go to the police, and another third tell no one at all, not even close friends.

In fairness, there has been significant progress in terms of institutional procedures. In many areas of the country, for example, there are now specially trained police officers and court prosecutors for cases of sexual assault. But uneven regional conviction rates only underline the extent to which such practices remain an optional extra rather than standard.

Equally, although victims no longer face the prospect of being cross-questioned by their attacker in court, pursuing a case to trial remains a horrifying ordeal. As a witness for the prosecution, the victim has no legal support, and faces intensely personal questioning from defence lawyers, often while face-to-face with their rapist for the first time since the assault. Even within the framework of innocent until proven guilty, there is more that can be done to ease the burden on victims, not least allowing them legal representation in court.

But the shortcomings of our institutions are merely part and parcel of a wider cultural understanding of rape that still militates against justice. It is that culture that must change if victims are to be encouraged to speak up. Comments from the Justice Secretary last year that appeared to imply that some rapes are more “serious” than others have hardly helped, adding to the persistent fallacy – often stoked by the media – that a person being either drunk or dressed in a certain way must take some responsibility for the actions of their attacker.

Part of the problem is the myth that rape is primarily a threat on the streets at night. Far from it. In fact, rape rarely occurs in the proverbial dark alley. The truth is both more banal, and more appalling: two-thirds of victims know their attacker, and assaults commonly take place in the home of either the victim or the rapist. Perpetrators rely on shame to keep their crime secret. Too often they are proved right. And if the conspiracy of silence is a problem for women who are raped, it is even worse for men.

Mumsnet is, therefore, to be applauded for its efforts to create a climate where victims feel they can come forward. The current Survivors UK ad campaign encouraging male victims to seek help is also welcome. But each is just one small step. Rape is one of the more appalling things that one human being can do to another, and yet there is no other crime about which our society is so ambivalent. That must change.