More than 300 rapes reported in schools in past three years

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child abuse, Children, harm, rape, safeguarding procedures, Schools, sexual abuse, Sexual Violence, young people

More than 300 rapes reported in schools in past three years

Sexual abuse in British classrooms is increasing fast, according to official figures that reveal a 40 per cent increase in reports of rape in schools in the past three years.

At least 2,865 sex-crime reports have been recorded by police between 2011 and 2013  – and more than half of them were committed by other children, according to data released to The Independent by police under the Freedom of Information Act.

The figures showed that more than 320 alleged rapes were reported in schools in the last three years, with the NSPCC saying that pupils’ easy access to online pornography has likely driven the surge in online child abuse.

Last year alone, there were at least 1,052 alleged sex offences reported in schools, of which 134 were reported as rape.

Statistics on rape and sex crime reports that took place in schools were released by 37 out of 46 UK police forces. Children accounted for more than 90 per cent of alleged abuse victims, but more than half of the claimed offences were also said to have been committed by children.

The Department of Education (DfE) has resisted calls to introduce mandatory reporting of abuse allegations but the Government is now facing renewed pressure to reform child safeguarding. Currently, headteachers are urged to report allegations to child-protection experts, but there is no legal penalty if they choose not to.

Among cases that have come to light in recent years, a 12-year-old girl was allegedly stripped naked and raped by pupils at a school in Hampshire. The school, however, believed she had consented and excluded her for breaking rules by having sex on its grounds, a tribunal heard. In May, the Crown Prosecution Service said no charges would be brought against the suspects because of insufficient evidence.

In another case, a religious-education teacher in Manchester groped and kissed a teenage pupil in one-on-one meetings he arranged in his classroom. Richard Jones, 57, started a secret relationship with the girl, but was arrested when and when her family discovered explicit messages on her computer.

He was sentenced to eight years in prison last month after admitting a string of sexual offences.

Claire Lilley, of the NSPCC, said: “Schools must make sure they have adequate safeguarding procedures in place and that parents and teachers are able to recognise warning signs early so they can take swift action when required.

“However, the damaging behaviour of these children can be turned around if caught early. Prevention has to be the key.”

The National Association of Headteachers claimed the increase in child-abuse reports may reflect “alleged victims being more confident about making a disclosure”. A spokesperson said the work being done in schools to create a safe environment was “excellent”.

But Labour called on the Government to take “urgent action”. Yvette Cooper, the shadow Home Secretary, said: “These figures are very disturbing. Schools should be a place of safety for children and young people. The Government needs to take action given the evidence of growing sexual violence amongst young people.” She added they must “introduce compulsory sex and relationship education in all schools”.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “There is nothing more important than protecting children from harm – any allegation of abuse must be taken very seriously. Schools’ safeguarding arrangements are regularly inspected.”

International protocol launched to deal with sexual violence in conflict

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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.”

On the front lines: Documenting evidence of rape is a fraught task

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accountability, army personnel, asylum seekers, conflict, disclosure, evidence, humiliation, impunity, medical care, perpetrators, police, psychological services, rape, sexual assault, Sexual Violence, shame, survivors, testimony, Torture, trauma

On the front lines: Documenting evidence of rape is a fraught task

In my line of work it’s impossible not to notice the chilling impact rape has on its victims. The shame and humiliation they are made to feel means disclosure can be very difficult, even in a ‘safe’ setting such as a doctor’s examination room.

Taking statements and documenting evidence of rape for use in legal proceedings is not easy – it requires skill and experience to gather all of the required information from a survivor of such a terrible crime while respecting their rights, supporting their health care needs, ensuring their safety, their confidentiality and minimizing further traumatization. Giving this kind of harrowing testimony often comes at a personal cost to the survivor, and their courage never fails to astound me.

In the UK it is estimated that almost 90 per cent of victims of serious sexual assault never disclose it to the police, and around 38 per cent tell no one (at the time of the crime.) Yet, in the UK we have support available for survivors of sexual violence and a comparatively open society that generally supports the victim and does not stigmatise them.

Imagine then, how hard it is to disclose rape in a place like the Democratic Republic of Congo where the perpetrators of such crimes are often the police and army personnel – the very officials charged with the protection of civilians.

A new report by Freedom from Torture reveals the routine use rape, gang rape and multiple rape to torture politically active women in official state detention centres in the country. The levels of impunity enjoyed by those who commit these crimes is breathtaking and it is this lack of accountability that the Global Summit aims to address.

The Protocol on Investigation and Prevention of Sexual violence in Conflict which will be launched by Angelina Jolie and William Hague at the Global Summit on Wednesday and will set out best practice for obtaining witness testimony of crimes of sexual violence in conflict.

It will ensure that the evidence collected is of a standard that can be used in international criminal courts to charge not just those who committed the crimes directly but also their commanding officers. Though work still needs to be done to get this document right, and to resource evidence collection, it is a very welcome step towards holding perpetrators to account both nationally and internationally.

My big concern is that while so much noise is being made about the protection of survivors of sexual violence in conflict at the Global Summit, the Home Office remains out of step.

Every week I see survivors of persecutory rape who have fled their countries and are seeking protection in the UK from the horrors that have been inflicted on them and their families. Sadly their experiences as asylum seekers rarely afford them the dignity, security and peace they need in order to be able to disclose sexual violence.

Repeated interrogation by Home Office officials about what they have been through – all too often conducted from a clear standpoint of officials’ disbelief inadequate welfare support and difficulties in accessing the medical care and psychological services they so desperately need all serve to compound their trauma.

Protection through asylum is a key element in the fight to end sexual violence and support survivors of these crimes. Accordingly, it should be at the forefront of this week’s discussions.

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.”

Jolie to seek end to sexual violence as war weapon at London summit

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Bosnia, conflict, DRC, rape, Rwanda, Sexual Violence, shame, silence, soldiers, systematic rape, the UN, War Crimes, weapon of war

Jolie to seek end to sexual violence as war weapon at London summit

Angelina Jolie has said she hopes a global summit on sexual violence she will co-host in London with the UK government will bring lasting change to global peacekeeping and war crimes prosecutions, deterring the use of mass rape as a weapon in future conflicts.

The four-day summit, beginning on 10 June, will bring together governments from 141 countries to discuss how to improve and standardise the investigation of large scale sexual violence in wartime, to bring an end a culture of impunity that has severely limited prosecutions up to now.

Speaking to The Guardian during a visit to Bosnia, Jolie said: “I would hope that years down the line when war breaks out, people who are considering raping a man, woman or child would be very aware of the consequences of their actions, and that a woman crossing a checkpoint would be aware there was someone collecting evidence and that evidence would have a … result for her.”

“When that begins to happen on masse, then things will change. That’s why its important that this effort isn’t just one single [approach]. We are working with everyone who has worked on this issue for years, with every NGO and every government, to assist these people on all fronts.”

Jolie visited Bosnia at the end of last week with Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, as part of a two-year partnership aimed at preventing sexual violence in conflict. In the course of the trip they spoke in private to several women survivors of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, where the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys has overshadowed another crime against humanity committed at the same time, the systematic rape of women and girls.

The meeting with the Srebrenica women took place in a disused battery factory where in July 1995, thousands of Bosnian Muslims sought the shelter of Dutch UN peacekeepers. The UN promise of protection proved hollow and the factory is now echoing and empty apart from a sombre memorial – two black boxes each as big as a house. In a cemetery outside a stone monument records the names of the 8,000 men and boys slaughtered by General Ratko Mladic’s Serb army.

One of the women, Edina Karic, was taken from her family by Serb soldiers and held at a nearby lead and zinc mine, where she was repeatedly raped.

“I was taken to the mine, where I was raped many times along with two other girls. Then we were eight days in an abandoned house where we were raped again,” Karic said. “When these things were happening to me, it was as if I wasn’t there in my body. I was looking at it from outside.”

None of Karic’s rapists has been prosecuted, even though she could definitively identify at least three of them, and has followed their lives, in a town a few miles away, through Facebook.

More than 20,000 Bosnian women and girls were raped. Over a decade in the Democratic Republic of Congo there are thought to have been 200,000 victims. There were up to half a million rapes in Rwanda in 1994, and there are widespread reports of systematic sexual violence in Syria.

The silence surrounding rape as a war crime is deepened because the victims are often shunned by their own communities. Edina Karic is a rarity in that she is prepared to speak openly about what happened to her.

“I realised I’m not the one who should feel shame. It’s for the perpetrators to feel ashamed,” she said.

In Sarajevo, Hague and Jolie spoke to a hall full of Bosnian army officers who have, with British assistance, developed a training course meant to equip peacekeeping contingents from around the world to detect and prevent the commission of mass rape. As part of the Hague-Jolie campaign, every UN peacekeeping mission is now supposed to provide for the protection of civilians against sexual violence in conflict.

“At times, you may be all that stands between a child and violence that will scar him or her forever,” Jolie told the soldiers in Sarajevo. You may sometimes be the first person outside their family that a survivor of rape encounters. Your actions may make the difference between a successful prosecution, or aggressors going unpunished.”

So far, for the 20,000-50,000 wartime rapes in Bosnia, there have been 30 convictions at the Hague war crimes tribunal and another 33 at the Bosnia state court. Thousands more perpetrators, like Edina Karic’s rapists, remain at liberty.

“There is no forensic evidence, often no medical reports. All you have usually are witness statements, and in a very conservative society, most victims don’t want people to know what happened to them, so most rapes are not reported,” said Dubravko Campara, a Bosnian war crimes prosecutor.

The Bosnian state court has hundreds of open investigations on its docket and just 17 prosecutors. But with the help of UK funding, another 15 are going to be added to the staff to ease the backlog. The court now has a witness support unit to ease the pressure on women witnesses.

The global Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative was launched two years ago after Hague saw Jolie’s 2012 film about the Bosnian rape camps, Land of Blood and Honey. The hardest part of the effort is likely to be translating goodwill at the summit into real change in future conflicts. When Hague and Jolie visited Goma in DRC last March, they heard that women fleeing the fighting with their families were being frequently raped when they ventured out of refugee camps to look for firewood, despite the proximity of thousands of UN peacekeepers nearby. Keeping the women safe was not part of the soldiers’ mandate.

Hague conceded that progress in changing UN peacekeeping practices had been slow, but added: “The UN will be heavily involved in the summit. A big ally of ours is Zainab Bangura, the UN special representative on sexual violence. I think we are getting somewhere with that, but it means systematically building our objectives into all peacekeeping training.”

“There is a lot of goodwill,” Jolie said. There is a lot of understanding of what’s right and wrong, but there is a disconnect. So if we can try to put the pieces together and fill the holes, then maybe there can be a real change.”

UK launches £500,000 fund to help male victims of rape and sexual abuse

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counselling, male rape, men, rape, Sexual Violence, taboo

UK launches £500,000 fund to help male victims of rape and sexual abuse

A £500,000 fund to provide help, including counselling and advice, to male victims of rape and sexual violence is to be launched on Thursday.

The creation of the fund comes as the latest set of crime figures showed there were 2,164 rapes and sexual assaults against men and boys aged 13 or over recorded by the police in the 12 months to last November.

The crime survey for England and Wales estimates that there are as many as 72,000 male victims of sexual offences every year, whether they are reported to the police or not.

The victims minister, Damian Green, said the new fund would also help “historic victims” who were under 13 at the time. He said: “We believe around 12% of rapes are against men. Yet many choose not to come forward, either to report the crime or seek the support they need. I am determined to help break the silence on a subject still seen as a taboo.”

Green said the average sentences for male rape had increased but there was still more to do: “That is why we are toughening up sentencing and have introduced a mandatory life sentence for anyone convicted of a second very serious sexual or violent crime.”

Duncan Craig of Survivors Manchester, which specialises in helping male survivors of rape and sexual abuse, welcomed the new funding. He said: “In the past, there has not been enough support in the UK for male victims of sexual violence. But in the future I would like to see both the government and society begin talking more openly about boys and men as victims and see us trying to make a positive change to pulling down those barriers that stop boys and men speaking up. This funding will help to raise awareness of the issue and ensure that male victims are no longer ignored.”

The launch of the fund comes as the justice ministry starts a social media #breakthesilence campaign to encourage male victims to speak about their experiences. The Channel 4 teenage soap Hollyoaks recently featured a male rape storyline.

Congo receives £180m boost to health system to tackle warzone rape

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abuse, conflict, Congo, DRC, rape, sexual abuse, sexual assault, Sexual Violence, soldiers, taboo, training, war, War Crimes, weapon of war

Congo receives £180m boost to health system to tackle warzone rape

When Beatrice was raped, by a gang of soldiers who sauntered by her home and saw her alone, she thought it was the end of world. She could not have imagined then that rape was only the start of a terrible downward spiral that would often seem to have no end.

“My husband came and said what happened? You can’t be telling me the truth. He no longer wanted to be with me and he left. I was alone with five children.”

Beatrice, not her real name, now has a sixth child, the result of the rape. The infant is strapped to her back, and sleeps while she sobs at the memories that stalk her, in a dark room in a hospital in Goma, in the violent south-eastern corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“My husband’s parents totally rejected my child. The village did. Everyone who sees me, curses me. They say I am a soldier’s mistress.”

Beatrice’s ever deepening tragedy is also a national nightmare. By the United Nations’ very conservative estimate, 200,000 women have been through a similar ordeal since 1998.

On a trip to Goma, William Hague, the British foreign secretary, launched the UK’s plan to help tackle the crisis, announcing £180m in new funding for the DRC health system, some of which will go to training medical staff to give proper care for rape victims.

Jonathan Lusi, a surgeon at the Goma hospital, both tends to the very serious injuries which accompany rape, and oversees his patients’ psychological recovery, training to give them independent livelihoods.

“We are in a war. It’s a legal vacuum. There is no government, no authority and no values. Rape is a warning sign something has gone very wrong.”

The DRC, after decades of conflict and turmoil is just one of the world’s battlefields where the routine sexual abuse of women and girls is a weapon of war. No one has any idea how many have been raped in Syria, for example. It is hard enough to count the bodies. It is a crime against humanity that often goes unmentioned because of the squeamishness of public officials and the many challenges to collecting evidence. Corpses are easier to count than rapes, while the victims of rape live in societies that enforce silence.

The tens of thousands of rapes during the Bosnian war, for example, have only led to 30 convictions.

The British government will attempt to break the official silence over the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war by taking the unusual step of using its presidency of the G8 this year to put it at the heart of the agenda of the rich nations’ club that has in recent years been preoccupied with economic woes.

“It’s time for the governments of the world to do something about this,” said Hague in an interview with the Guardian during a visit to Goma. “I will argue it has been taboo or ignored and taken for granted for too long … We can move the dial on something like this. We are big enough in the world to do something about this.”

As well as the money pledged to support the DRC health system, Hague also announced £850,000 in support for an advocacy group called Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice to help it document cases in eastern DRC and push the international criminal court (ICC) to take heed of sexual crimes in its deliberations. Other funding will go to Physicians for Human Rights, another NGO, for evidence collection equipment such as locked evidence cabinets for eventual prosecutions.

Such prosecutions are not necessarily a distant aspiration. One of the leaders of the rebel M23 militia, Bosco Ntaganda, handed himself in at the US embassy in Kigali, the capital of neighbouring Rwanda, last week and was flown to face war crimes charges at the ICC in the Netherlands, where he denied charges including murder, rape, pillaging and using child soldiers in his first appearance on Tuesday.

Hague was accompanied in Goma by Angelina Jolie, with whom he has forged an unorthodox partnership to campaign on the issue. He credits Jolie’s film last year about Bosnian rape camps, In the Land of Blood and Honey, with helping to inspire the British initiative.

“The hope and the dream is that next time this happens, it is known that if you abuse women, if you rape the women, you will be accountable for your actions,” Jolie told the Guardian. “This will be a crime of war and you won’t just get away with it.”

Hague and Jolie visited a camp on the shores on Lake Kivu which has sprung up as a result of an upsurge in fighting when the M23 advanced into Goma last November.

Set against a breathtaking backdrop of lake and volcanoes, the camp of 10,000 people is a huddle of meagre straw shelters half covered with tarpaulin.

The women here are forced to venture out of the camp to collect firewood or water. Both make them vulnerable to rape and many of the women and girls have been assaulted. All the International Rescue Committee, which runs the camp, can offer to mitigate the threat are “dignity kits” that contain efficient stoves that require less firewood and extra clothes so the women have to look for washing water less often.

“It’s a sad fact that when you ask how to reduce sexual violence the answer is to help them not have to go out,” Jolie said.

On the way out of the camp a woman who had earlier given Hague and Jolie a reserved factual account of her experiences ran up to them on a last minute impulse: “Please help us. We are being raped like animals.” Hague said: “The memory of meeting her will always stay with me.”

Partner exploitation and violence in teenage intimate relationships

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abuse, relationships, Sexual Violence, Teens, young people

A 2009 report by the University of Bristol and the NSPCC on Partner exploitation and violence in teenage intimate relationships

Trafficking girls in India

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abuse, Bangladesh, discrimination, girls, India, infanticide, Nepal, rape, Sexual Violence, stigma, support, Trafficking, young people

The BBC Radio 4 iplayer website currently has a podcast available on Trafficking girls in India

From the blurb:

In a major investigation, Natalia Antelava reports on the abduction of tens of thousands of young girls in India for forced marriages. Thousands more are sold as prostitutes and domestic servants. She follows the route of the traffickers, who take girls from destitute households in places like West Bengal to wealthier areas in Northern states, where a shortage of women is blamed by many on sex-selective abortions. It’s a problem the United Nations describes as of ‘genocidal proportions’. Natalia joins campaigners and police fighting the trade and hears the stories of the trafficked girls and from a trafficker himself.

Time to lay responsibility at the rapist’s door

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behaviour, blame, challenge, low self-esteem, perpetrators, prevention, rape, relationships, responsibility, Sexual Violence, support, Teens, vulnerability, women

Time to lay responsibility at the rapist’s door

A 15-year-old boy was describing to me and a group of 12 other young men his relationships with teenage girls. He held firm with his opinion that if a girl came round to his house it implied that she wanted to have sex. But there was one boy in the group who, even in the face of pressure from the others, was certain that “even if she’s naked, she’s not supposed to be raped”.

I was interviewing the young men about their experiences of relationships for the Female Voice in Violence project, and it was clear that the majority of the boys did not understand the concept of rape. They could not see it.

Would you “see” rape? This is the question being asked in the second stage of a government campaign to raise awareness of abuse in teenage relationships. The initiative is launched at a time when there is an increasing focus on young women’s experiences of sexual violence. To date, those shouldering the responsibility of rape prevention have been the victims: girls are blamed for making themselves vulnerable to rape, and their low self-esteem or a craving to belong is the reason, we are told, that they place themselves in situations where they may be victimised. Now, however, it is the turn of those who commit sexual violence to be challenged to recognise it.

It is right that girls are supported to reduce their vulnerability. However, there is a growing sense of frustration among girls, and some services that work with them, that this vulnerability is communicated as the cause of sexual violence. The message they hear is that girls are raped because they are vulnerable. Where, they ask, is the space to consider the responsibility of those who are perpetrating abuse? So a campaign that challenges the perpetrators to ask whether they see rape is welcome.

Girls have told me they are relieved that they are not once again being told to modify their behaviour in order to avoid abuse. Those same girls would call for services to support victims of sexual violence; these are essential. However, providing services to pick up the pieces, or reduce vulnerabilities, will never, on their own, prevent sexual violence. Until the behaviour of rapists is understood and challenged the abuse will continue.

The campaign signals a move to reframe and revisit questions about how to prevent sexual violence, so it is crucial that the response on the ground is able to mirror this. While investment has been made in services for boys and men who commit forms of violence such as gun and knife crime, little attention has been given to preventing their use of sexual violence. This needs to change.

Young people’s views are shaped by a mosaic of messages, images and attitudes. Professionals need to be supported to challenge these ideas in order to stem the development of abusive attitudes and behaviours.

Challenging the ideas that normalise sexual violence, from the outset, should underpin any such preventive work. The inclusion of men and boys in this debate is critical. The young man who condemned rape in the face of peer pressure is not a one-off. We need to understand the difference in attitudes between young men. Only then will we move from seeing rape to stopping it.