Rape on The Huffington Post

Adam Clark Estes: The Good News From Our Citizen Journalism Project

2009-11-05T18:38:56Z

One of the big questions in the debate over the future of journalism is whether the Internet can foster a new alliance between professional reporters and citizens who have a high interest or expertise in a particular topic.

Here at the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, we're seeing signs that the answer is yes.

Several weeks ago, as one of our first investigative projects, we set out to explore how insurance companies decide which claims to approve or deny. Regulators, lawmakers and policy makers seem to be in the dark about that important aspect of the health care system, since insurance companies generally are not required to disclose their rules, methods or records about claims.

Investigative Fund reporter Danielle Ivory wrote about this lack of available data and invited citizen journalists to help us investigate. Hundreds of people volunteered. And they've already helped us extend and deepen our journalism.

Many have volunteered personal tales about their dealings with insurers. Others are health professionals and insurance insiders with direct experience in the claims process.

Some readers pointed us to patterns of inequity in the system. That led us to focus on two aspects of the health claims system -- the growing antagonism between many therapists and insurers over mental health benefits, and how victims of sexual assault can get entangled in the system.

Says Ivory: "I never expected such an extraordinary response. The readers obviously took the assignment very seriously. We started to notice small-scale patterns right away. It's invaluable to have such an enthusiastic community helping us out."

Ivory's article about a woman who was raped, took anti-HIV drugs as a preventative measure and then could not get coverage became a national phenomenon. Aside from thousands of commenters and bloggers fueling robust debate around the Web, the victim also appeared on CNN and Headline News. Our accompanying mini-documentary on mental health benefits has been viewed by thousands of people on YouTube.

Stay tuned for more coverage. We have several teams of citizen journalists digging through data and documents and helping us research other ideas that emerged from the larger group.

Aside from story leads, we've been receiving many individual tales that taken together may illustrate some of the gaps and weaknesses in the current health care system.

For example...

Shirley of Houston, now posted overseas, exposed a personal struggle with her newborn child. Because the child was born with some minor birth defects on her feet and hands, the family's health insurance provider refused coverage. The defects, they said, were a pre-existing condition:

We had individual insurance policies, and one for my daughter, but the policy did not cover "pre-existing" conditions, nor was there any affordable rider we could purchase that would cover. Any birth defect is a pre-existing condition.

As it worked out, the state ended up picking up the cost as part of Medicaid since I had to leave work to take care of her through the surgeries. People should be aware that babies are not being covered, and that in some cases it's the taxpayer that ends up footing the bill.

On the mental health front, Charlene Melton of Morrison, Ill., suffered from minor depression after losing her father. She since has been denied health insurance consistently. The reason, she was told, is that she was previously treated for a mental health condition:

After my father died I had some depression issues and sought help from a local mental health clinic. You know the type, they charge on a sliding scale and government subsidies cover the rest. Well, I later found out that the funding depends on the level of patients they have, so they have to diagnose you within 2 or 3 visits or lose their funding. As I was told, "We're not here for bored housewives, we're here for people with real disorders." They diagnosed me bipolar and explained to me that since I had both highs and lows (I like to call that a range of human emotion) I was bipolar as opposed to unipolar, which I learned isn't even a word. So I took the pills for about 6 months and they did no good and I just found a local grief support group instead. Flash forward 4 years, my husband decided to become self-employed and we shop around for health insurance and I get rejected by every company. Finally an independent insurance broker told me that because I had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and it is considered a lifetime condition, I will never be able to buy private insurance. I'm blackballed.

A Chicago nurse, who wants to be known only by her initials, A. G., told another story about the consequences of seeking therapy:

I am a 30 year-old family nurse practitioner in Chicago. I have worked in the HIV/AIDS field for 3 years. I am a very healthy adult woman with no medical problems. Last winter, I was stuck by an HIV+ needle at work and suffered temporary anxiety from this. Because of that, I continued to work full time and sought very short-term therapy for the anxiety, which has since resolved. Just this week I was denied medical insurance by Blue Cross Blue Shield because of that situational anxiety, and because I stopped going to therapy (which was no longer needed). I stopped going to therapy because I was improved, it was $600/month, and I had no insurance (I still don't)...

And finally, a woman from Miami, Fla., who also wished to remain anonymous for fear of "insurance company retribution" tells the all-too-persuasive story of patients running into trouble when filing claims for expensive cancer tests and treatments. After being denied treatment, her family appealed the claim and won but the delay was enough to do a lot of damage.

After a suspicious cat scan, my oncologist ordered a pet scan to further investigate the possibility that my original cancer had metastasized. Aetna, my insurance co, declined to approve the pet scan. We fought it for THREE months until they finally relented. There was a tumor, and, because it had been measured by the earlier cat scan, we know that it grew during those three months. The tumor had grown and wrapped itself around the vena cava, becoming inoperable. Due to the three month delay, my survival stats took a big hit since they never got to remove the darn thing. Now I get pet scans twice a year to monitor my continuing wellness. We continue to have to fight the insurance company every single time -- the last time it again took three months to get the approval, so Aetna continues to put my life at risk. My husband and I pay over $14,000 a year for this awful insurance, and then I have to hear our president cite Aetna as one of the "good guys."

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund will continue to hold its magnifying glass close to health insurance companies. If you are an insurance insider -- or a citizen who would like to join our team, submit a tip or suggest an idea -- please fill out the form below. We look forward to hearing from you.

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Ruthie Ackerman: Liberia: The Real Danger is Not Spending Enough

2009-11-03T13:56:13Z

After four years of being considered the beacon of hope for the entire West Africa region, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is about to be tested like never before.

Last month, a massacre in neighboring Guinea erupted, threatening Liberia's fragile peace. Claims were made that it was actually former rebels from Liberia that committed the atrocities. Whatever the case may be, the international community is going to need to pay attention. Th solution: Pour even more money into education and jobs in order to keep Liberia's citizens from picking up a gun.

Several years ago I traveled to Liberia to examine the rehabilitation of Liberian youth following Liberia's 14-year civil war. On my first night in Monrovia I sat outside St. Peter's Lutheran Church, where the Rev. Katurah Cooper preached to a group of women. She ended her sermon by reminding the women that, "Liberians always were the leftovers."

Since that night I have been struck by the idea of what it means to feel like a leftover, like an afterthought in the ongoing global conversation. If Sirleaf is to make Liberia's 3.3 million citizens feel like they are front and center, she will need to focus on what is called human security. This means providing for each individual's basic needs of food, shelter, healthcare and schooling, not to mention strengthening the justice system and rooting out corruption in the country. By changing the way we view security -- spending more dollars on education and job development, instead of solely beefing up a country's military -- we can better keep civilians from turning against each other and their neighbors.

The fear is that if Liberia does not strengthen its military might, it will be at risk. Yet the real danger is that if security is solely seen as the physical security of the state, and the buildup of armies is given priority over providing shelter, healthcare and food to civilians, we may end up arming the next generation of combatants.

The atrocities in Guinea speak to this. Just weeks after the first post-war generation began primary school in Liberia, Guinea erupted in violence on Sept. 28. Soldiers of the military ruler Colonel Moussa Dadis Camara opened fire on protesters and raped women in broad daylight, killing 157 people and wounding 1,200 more. The worst part is that the violence in Guinea, like that in Liberia prior to its conflict, was predictable and possibly preventable. Camara had promised he would not run for president, and then rumors began spreading that he changed his mind. When pro-democracy supporters rallied, bloodshed ensued. We can only hope that unlike in Liberia's conflict, the U.S. intervenes in Guinea instead of sitting on the sidelines.

Yet the story doesn't begin and end in Guinea. Camara, along with some of his military sources, claim that Liberian soldiers from two rebel factions committed the massacre. Both rebel groups fought in Liberia's civil war, resulting in the death of 250,000 Liberians and the displacement of over half the population. Ironically, it was Guinean president, Lansana Conte, who supported the creation of one of the rebel groups blamed for the recent violence and oversaw the training of its soldiers. Now those same forces have turned against Guineans. As they say, what comes around goes around.

While it is not clear whether Liberians were involved in the atrocities in Guinea, it would not be surprising to hear they were. During my visits to Liberia over the last several years I interviewed dozens of former child soldiers. Amputees, who lost limbs during the fighting, have told me all they want is to return to school and work. Instead, they are limping through downtown Monrovia begging for change to feed their families. Despite Liberia's progress, former combatants are still waiting to attend the rehabilitation programs promised to them at the end of the war in 2003. Many now live on the beach or in abandoned government buildings, finding it difficult to get jobs in the defunct economy. Or they have found the rehabilitation programs inadequate -- too few teachers, resources, or opportunities to be of any use at all. The end result is a whole generation of Liberians left not only with a broken country, but with a shattered future as well. That these same Liberians, who are unemployed and homeless in Monrovia, or languishing as refugees in Guinea, are now fighting as mercenaries, does not shock me. Because where there is poverty, there is always someone willing to fight.

Conservative critics will ask why during an economic recession should we spend even more money in Liberia. My answer: for the security of Liberia and the entire West African region. By providing employment and education, we are taking idle youth off the streets, which in turn keeps them off the battlefront. If we instead turn a blind eye with the whole "it's-not-happening-in-my-backyard" mentality, instability in West Africa will continue. It's a global backyard -- a war in a far-flung corner of the globe one day is a refugee crisis in your backyard the next.

Earlier this year Sirleaf told me that she considers the fact that she has restored hope one of the best successes of her administration. There is a lot that still needs to be done, but once those women I met outside St. Peter's Lutheran Church feel the reconstruction process begin to touch their lives, they will no longer feel like leftovers and Liberia will be on an irreversible path. But new conflicts are erupting faster than we can repair the old ones. And if violence rolls back Sirleaf's gains, all her work, and that of the international community, will be in vain.

Anthony Sowell's Neighbor Says Police Knew About Cleveland Rapist's House

2009-11-02T19:19:14Z

A neighbor of the convicted rapist in Cleveland who was arrested Saturday night after six decomposed bodies were found in his house said Monday that the police were notified repeatedly about violence there, but little was done.

Bystander Education: How To Act In The Face Of Violence

2009-11-02T12:12:17Z

In the final episode of Seinfeld, the apathetic foursome were arrested in a small New England town for standing by and laughing while a heavy-set man was carjacked. They were accused of breaking a "Good Samaritan Law" whereby witnesses of a crime are required to take some form of action.

What made the situation on Seinfeld funny is that Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer did what most of us would have done, though we may not have laughed so exuberantly. The same phenomenon, being passive while others are in danger, is now being questioned quite seriously in the week after dozens of people stood idly by while a 15-year-old girl was raped after her homecoming dance in Richmond, California.

The word from the local police is that none of the gawkers will face criminal charges, though four men are currently in custody, charged with the rape.

A group profiled in a Newsweek blog is trying to reverse this apathy, which is apparently not all that uncommon:

The MVP (Mentors in Violence Prevention) program, which was developed in 1993 at Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sports in Society, tries to teach students how to stop violence when they see it. The MVP program involves a two-day training period for teachers, coaches, and administrators, who then return to their schools equipped to train their students. "Most people think they only have two choices for intervention," says Jackson Katz, a cofounder of the program and an architect of the bystander approach. "One is to intervene physically right at the point of attack, and the other is to do nothing. And that's a false set of choices." As part of the MVP program, students sit in a classroom and talk about the menu of options -- from getting a group of friends together to calling 911 -- available to them. At the heart of the program is a set of scenarios that allow students to imagine what they might do in a variety of situations. Each scenario comes with a list of viable interventions for bystanders.

If you witness a violent crime, here are some more tips from the Mentors in Violence Prevention program and the University of Kentucky's Green Dot program:

•If the situation looks dangerous, just call 911 and give the details as clearly as possible.
•Delegate to someone else to get help. Don't feel bad if you feel powerless to help yourself. As long as you've empowered someone else to call 911 or get help, you've done the right thing.
•Create a distraction. Throw something, scream or honk a car horn. You'll stay safe and hopefully spook the perpetrators.

Rapist Imtiaz Hussain Flees Through Toilet Window, Causes Diplomatic Row

2009-11-02T12:04:28Z

The escape of a rapist being processed for deportation at the Pakistan High Commission has caused a diplomatic row.

Kristy Sanchez-Trujillo Charged With Rape For Sex With 13-Year-Old Student (VIDEO)

2009-10-29T19:04:24Z

Kristy Sanchez-Trujillo, a 33-year-old social studies teacher at Jimmy Carter Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been charged with rape after she confided to a fellow teacher that she was having sex with one of her 13-year-old male students. That teacher contacted the authorities.

Sanchez-Trujillo has been fired and the revelation of her sexual misconduct has sent shockwaves through the community:

Dianna Yonker sits in shock, her daughters in tears after learning a former teacher of her girls and good friend was fired by APS.

"She's actually a personal friend of my girls, my girls spend an awful lot of time with her," Yonker said. "They go to parties that they've thrown with her little girls, she's come to my home to my girl's birthday party. She's always conducted herself in a professional manner."

WATCH:

Catie Lazarus: TV Review: The Good Wife

2009-10-29T16:48:21Z

ON WIFEDOM

"He'll know how much it costs to rape someone and
get away with it," Christie Barbosa (Paloma Guzman) says to her lawyers, namely
Alicia Florrick, to justify how, even as a struggling stripper, she'll turn
down an almost half-million dollars in an out-of-court settlement. Fewer than two
percent of women lie about sexual assault, but as the one-hour drama is art
imitating life, the rape victim's motives are questioned in more detail than
those of her rapist, a sleazy, entitled politician named Lloyd McKean. Alicia
discovers more tidbits (also known as conflict of interest) about McKean when
visiting her husband Peter in jail before work, one morning, the way one might
sneak in a jog.

McKean and the District Attorney's office make it difficult
for our "young" associate to secure evidence, instead explicitly
deriding Alicia about her husband's infidelity. Several times, sexual violence,
infidelity and rape, are mentioned as interchangeable, at least Alicia briefs her cohorts, however flatly, that how power issues and "isms" fall on a continuum.

She does feel insecure enough to ask a personal question
when gather evidence at an escort service, why men pay to be sexually serviced,
and why some services, like not wearing a condom, are more expensive?" The
assistant at the escort service explains that boys will be boys and they ask
for, "What ever they can't get at home." Men could try springing these
special requests on their wives before giving them (or the escorts) HPV.

Weaved into the main story about a rape case, are the
questions for the wife and children of a politician's sex scandal, including
being forced to see and hear graphic images one would rather not view under
kosher circumstances. Peter remains clueless to the impact of his behavior and
during a visit asks her, "When are you going to stop thinking I have sex
with everyone? When are you going to forgive me?" Alicia can't answer what
must be a rhetorical question, although she does ask him several of her own,
like, where he was at their daughter's Grace's 12th birthday party, when he "had"
to leave early. Not a wisp of her hair falls out of place. (Although, this is a
woman who goes to bed caked in makeup.)

The judge is a white male, so liberal, Alicia's boss, jokes
that he, "makes Ralph Nader look like Rush Limbaugh." The Judge even
forces the court to take a moment of silence to reflect on those in Darfur. (If
some one that progressive would warm the bench, let it be known that they
should sport a plastic bracelet or ribbon pen. Nothing says compassion like
accessories.)

He isn't as progressive when it comes to sexual violence and
refuses to re-examine a DNA sample, evidence that would better resolve a sexual
assault case than eyewitness testimony. The idea that a liberal male might still
be sexist is not news, but The Good Wife deftly hints at how even the most well
meaning of us, men and women, aren't always well doing.

The show ends without answering why a spurned woman would be
an effective champion for a sexual assault case, although it implies that
empathy is one of the unwritten duties. Wives don't do good or bad acts, they
are good or bad, and to be a good wife means to be sexually frustrated, able to
see the imbalances of power and dance around them, but not (yet) able to solve
them. The answer probably won't lie in future episodes of The Good Wife or on
Oprah or a Sarah Palin bipoic, but at least The Good Wife asks substantive
questions.

Charles Karel Bouley: A City and Nation of Bystanders

2009-10-29T10:51:21Z

How could any American, any human, stand by as another is brutally raped? How could other Americans join in, jeer, take photos and videos with their cell phones as a 15 year old girl has man after man crawl on top of her drunken body, as she's held down to a bench in an alley, just 200 feet away from where her homecoming was going on? How could up to 20 people ignore this over two hours, two of the longest hours this girl would ever live, either walking past, or popping in to take a look or even a quickie? What was she thinking as man after man used her, abused her, as others ignored her, as two hours passed?

It's a scene right out of a movie like Jodie Foster's The Accused or The Brave One except it's real, a scene that played out Saturday, October 24, 2009 in an alley outside a high school in the town of Richmond, CA, a town of about 120,000 just outside of San Francisco. That's right, not in the backwoods of Podunkia, USA, not in a nation that doesn't value women, but in Richmond, a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) ride away from one of the most liberal cities in the world.

So far, four people have been arrested for rape, for assault, robbery and sexual assault with a foreign object. Up to 10 are said to have raped her, according to police and up to two dozen, yup, 24 people are said to have watched or happened upon the rape. And those that read the story wonder how? How could this happen here, in this country?

It's bystander syndrome, according to Drew Carberry, a director with the National Crime Prevention Council in Arlington, VA; the Genovese Effect. That's right, this phenomenon is so common it has a name.

"When people happen upon a scene, a crime, a horrific event, the norm become the norm, if that makes sense," he commented on my syndicated radio show Wednesday, October 28, 2009.

If a group of people are watching the event, it almost becomes acceptable for no one to do anything, if no one is doing anything. Inaction leads to more inaction in larger groups. A person passes a bad wreck on the freeway and sees everybody looking at it, and then don't call it in because they figure somebody else has. It's the same thing, they assume somebody else is taking care of it. ...

There's also the fear of getting involved. Many see things like this as somebody else's problem, in fact, the more people observing, the more people are apt to think it's up to somebody else to do something, that they don't need to act. There's also fear of retaliation, of what the involvement will entail and their overall feelings about the victim, the crime or the circumstance. ...

Before we called it 'Bystander Syndrome' it was, and is, known as 'Genovese Syndrome. Kitty Genovese was killed while many people watched, up to 60 that we know about. She was on the street in 1964 in New York when she was attacked, raped and then killed. When those in her building that heard the attack and/or saw the attack were interviewed in the New York Times, most simply said 'They didn't want to get involved.' Genovese's death rattled the community, the inaction more than the death in most cases, and Genovese Syndrome was named.

There's another name for that action, or inaction: cowardice. Only a coward would sit by and do nothing when someone is in trouble. And this rape, this crime, and Kitty Genovese's and others draws a frightening parallel to society as a whole. As many try to figure out how this could happen in Richmond, CA, others will wonder how this could happen in The United States of America.

America has been raped, pillaged and beaten so severely it's in the intensive care unit and may not recover. War criminals paraded around as the leaders of the country and extorted the nation, beat the nation in to compliance using terror, fear and verbal abuse unimpeded. A large group sat and sits inactive, like the group of spectators at the rape, doing nothing while the crimes against the American people continue and go unpunished.

533 people sit and do nothing while each year 45,000 Americans die, actually die, cease to exist, stop breathing, often after suffering for a long period of time, and the 433 members of Congress and 100 members of the Senate do nothing that will really help them immediately. Any help is delayed until 2013 and that help won't be to help the nation, or those truly needing the assistance needs. It is acceptable to this group of spectators to let over 100,000 Americans die over the years that they do nothing, debate, contemplate or refuse to act at all. They turn away to their chambers as real people, not numbers, but 45,000 real people die each year and those 533 people could end it and don't.

533 people sat and watched as American after American was, and is, marched off to the untold terror of war for no clear reason, no clear gain, with no clear plan. 4671 of them died as those 533 sat by and not only did nothing; in fact, they facilitated, paid for, cleared the way for more killing and death. Another 1493 died as these 533 turned their eyes on a new prize, a new battle a new war (both figures on Iraq and Afghanistan found at iCasualties.com).

533 people sat by as a leader terrorized a nation with false information and the manipulation of events for personal and professional gain. 533 people sit by as Americans are beaten or killed, denied benefits or discriminated against simply because of who or what they are.
And worse, 307 million others sat, and sit, by as their livelihood, their honor, dignity, their country and their culture is raped and ravaged, as their neighbors fall ill or fall in to poverty, as others are told they don't belong, as their institutions crumble.

George W. Bush is a war criminal, and no one drops a dime on him. Still. Dick Cheney a criminal, and no one turns him in, reports the crimes, punishes him. Congress lets Americans die each day from lack of health care and the only urgency they show is a half-assed plan that may help some four years down the line.

Let's face it, most Americans, especially those in power, have Bystander's syndrome, Genovese effect. Most have been bystanders in their country's fall. And why not, it's not a crime to ignore harsh truths, horrifying situations.

"It is a crime to not report a crime happening to a child," Carberry explained. "The law states in California that if you see something happening, know of something illegal happening, to someone under the age of 14 and do not report it, it's a crime," he added. "However, the girl was 15, so in this case, simply not calling the police, unfortunately, is not a crime."
Not a crime to see a crime and not report it, unless it can be proven that your actions or inactions in some way contributed to or incited someone to commit the crime? Turning a blind eye isn't illegal be it a crime in the alley against a young innocent girl or crimes being committed in the halls of Congress, White House or Wall Street?

A host on KGO Radio San Francisco, Bernie Ward, downloaded and looked at images of underage girls, nude and in "provocative" positions and then emailed them to one person. He downloaded them in one day, emailed them another. Three days of debauchery, total, as stated in court records. He's in jail in Texas for seven years as part of a plea bargain, they wanted him to get 17 years. He never took the photos. He never touched a teenager, ever. He downloaded photos from a site, and emailed a few. Disgusting, yes. But he will serve more time in jail than the student quoted by the AP on Tuesday, October 27, 2009, identified only as "Rubio" who said to the AP that some "dudes" came up to him in the courtyard of the school, told him there was a girl naked in the alley and said if he wanted to "get some" he should go back. He didn't, but he didn't call anyone. He could have ended the rape an hour into it, an hour, instead of the two, and he didn't. He knew a girl was being raped, was told so, did nothing, and he won't see the inside of a cell. No one that saw, looked, and then didn't want to get involved will see the inside of a cell.

As of now, the war criminals that destroyed America and the current bunch that sit and do nothing as we sink further, as we die, will not only not be punished but will prosper. And those that sit by and watch, the millions of Americans that did and do nothing about the Iraq War, that do nothing about Afghanistan, that do nothing about 45,000 annual deaths from lack of health care, the same people that sat by as AIDS ravaged the gay community in the 1980s, the same country that does nothing as tens of thousands are slaughtered in its name or as a select few make billions while Americans starve or lose their homes to banks and corporate criminals...the only punishment for their inactivity, for our inactivity, is having to live in the country that apathy creates.

The rape in Richmond, CA, and the fact that 20 or more watched it and did nothing isn't an aberration, it's now the norm. Sitting by and watching as Americans are harmed, or die, isn't unusual, it's business as usual for Congress, the Senate, the President and most of We, the People.

Americans have bystander's syndrome, Genovese effect, not just on the streets of New York or Richmond, CA, but it would appear in every nook and cranny, in every area of American life. People afraid to get involved, afraid to speak up, frustrated that it won't matter, people that condone inaction because they don't approve of the person or thing being attacked have become the norm, while those that try and stop the harm, stop the devastation, stop the violence are few and far between.

A 15 year old girl will have to grow up and know that while she lay being raped and beaten, robbed and degraded beyond belief over two dozen watched and did nothing, or even participated. A nation will have to go on knowing that while it lay injured, broke, sick, confused, afraid, millions sat by and did nothing, participated or even prospered. And if it keeps up, will watch as 533 people, and 300 million others watch doing little or nothing and when it all finally crumbles and falls apart will ask themselves "Why?"

The "Why?" is simple: because people today, en masse, won't do the right thing, won't get involved, won't say Stop! This is Wrong! Wait! Do Something Now! Because no one is demanding immediate action, because everyone believes someone else will, or is, taking care of it, and in doing so, will be bystanders to the fall of one of the greatest nations in history.

To Hear Karel's segment on this, hear more podcasts, read more Huffington Post columns or watch videos of these discussions go to RadioKRL.com .

Half The Sky : Fighting Gender Violence

2009-10-29T08:11:30Z

Breaking a Conspiracy of Silence

Sue Halpern
The New York Review of Books

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
Knopf, 294 pp., $27.95

Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism
by Muhammad Yunus, with Karl Weber
PublicAffairs, 282 pp., $14.95 (paper)

This past July, a little over a year after the United Nations Security Council finally declared rape a crime of war, the parents of Taraneh Mousavi, a twenty-eight-year-old beautician from Tehran, received a call from an anonymous stranger. The young woman had been missing for weeks, ever since she'd attended a post-election rally at the Ghoba mosque; it was rumored that she was being held by Basiji militiamen. The caller said that Mousavi had had "an accident," and was in the hospital with "tears in her womb and her anus." Mousavi's parents rushed to the place where she was supposed to be, but she wasn't there. They still have not found her--or her body.

UN Resolution 1820 expressly foresaw the situation that Taraneh Mousavi found herself in on June 19, one year to the day of its adoption. " Noting," it says,

...that women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group.

There are many ways to define war, just as there are many ways to violate a woman's body.

It would be naive to imagine that a string of tortuously constructed sentences issued by an organization whose own "peacekeepers" have been implicated in the rapes of girls and women in Sierra Leone, Congo, Ivory Coast, Haiti, Cambodia, and Bosnia, among other places, would reverse or forestall a practice that dates back to the Mongols, and likely before them. Indeed, as the playwright Eve Ensler wrote in The Washington Post the day that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon was supposed to issue a one-year assessment of the resolution, rape in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where girls as young as three are systematically brutalized, has actually doubled and in some areas tripled in that time. As she pointed out, "The girl children born of rape are now being raped."

Ban's report, when it was finally released, was full of recommendations to gather

more and better data to enhance our understanding of the various forms of sexual violence in conflict and its aftermath, including its magnitude, nature and risk factors; the profile and the motivation of perpetrators; the consequences of this violence; and the effectiveness of programmes and prevention strategies.

It urged

State and non-State parties to armed conflicts to ensure that civilian superiors and military commanders use their authority and powers to prevent sexual violence and punish crimes committed by subordinates, failing which they themselves must be punished.

Still, as toothless as all this reads, UN Resolution 1820 was a small step toward ending what Jan Egeland, the former United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, called recently "one of the biggest conspiracies of silence in history."

One party to that conspiracy has been the mainstream media, which, as Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn point out in their stellar new book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, is what happens when a phenomenon is extensive, entrenched, and so common as to be perpetually old news even while it's happening. The one consistent exception has been Kristof himself, in the column he's written for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times since 2001. On a page where others can be relied on to elevate the conventional wisdom, Kristof earnestly takes up the cause of the poor and oppressed of the world, most of them women, and of those who work on their behalf. For him, it seems, the traditional newsroom dynamic is reversed: the fact that another girl has been denied an education, or sold to a brothel at seven, or raped by the police to whom she was reporting that she had been raped, or left to die because of an obstetric fistula that has left her leaking urine and feces is worthy of comment because it has happened again, and will keep on happening until something--moral outrage, jurisprudence, grace--intervenes. In the meantime, and to press for change, Kristof invites us all to bear witness with him.

It wasn't always like this. As Kristof and WuDunn, who is both his writing partner and his wife, point out, when they were young reporters, newly married and newly posted to China for the Times,

We assumed that the foreign policy issues that properly furrowed the brow were lofty and complex, like nuclear proliferation. It was difficult back then to envision the Council on Foreign Relations fretting about maternal mortality or female genital mutilation. Back then, the oppression of women was a fringe issue, the kind of worthy cause the Girl Scouts might raise money for. We preferred to probe the recondite "serious issues."

Then Tiananmen Square happened, and the recondite was overtaken by the intractable but urgent issue of human rights. (The two reporters won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China.) And then they stumbled upon another, less dramatic human rights story, the widespread practice by Chinese parents of withholding medical treatment for their baby girls, who were, therefore, dying in infancy in statistically anomalous numbers. "Those Chinese girls never received a column inch of news coverage," they write, "and we began to wonder if our journalistic priorities were skewed."

While working as journalists, the pair took up the fate of girls in China, and once they did so, a Pandora's box of gender-based cruelty and brutality was cracked open, and not just there. Sexual trafficking and slavery in Asia and Eastern Europe, honor killings in India, rape as a tactic of war, and female genital mutilation are now part of the international conversation, in no small part due to their reporting for the Times, and to the editorial platform afforded Kristof by the paper.

And just as Kristof is unabashed in his use of that platform to spread a message, he and WuDunn are very clear that they have not written Half the Sky simply to document the condition of child brides in Ethiopia and girls forced into prostitution in Cambodia, but to inspire readers to change the dynamic and shift the paradigm. "Let us be clear about this up front," they say in their introduction. "We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts." It is a testament to their skills as writers and reporters that they've managed to write this call to action without having to raise their voices. The facts, as they learned long ago in China, speak loudly enough.

And what are some of those facts? A girl in India dies every four minutes because her parents don't believe she's worthy of medical care; a third of all women worldwide are beaten at home; women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined ; according to the United Nations, 90 percent of females over the age of three were sexually abused in parts of Liberia during the civil war there; there are, very conservatively, according to the British medical journal The Lancet, ten million child sex slaves. If Kristof and WuDunn have their way, righting "gender inequality in the developing world" will be embraced as the moral battle of the twenty-first century, as totalitarianism was in the twentieth and slavery was in the century before that.

For Westerners, the words "gender inequality" are likely to suggest pay differentials and glass ceilings and old-boy networks. For the women and girls Kristof and WuDunn write about, gender inequality is more elemental. It takes the form of sexual slavery and other kinds of bondage; rape and other kinds of physical and mental assaults; and the withholding of medicine, food, and other privations; and it issues from a belief so fixed as to be unimpeachable: women are less human than men. (Not that they are less worthy, but that they are, fundamentally, less human.) When this belief is coupled with religious and political ideology, class bias and racial supremacy, women's bodies also become tools for ethnic "cleansing," for political intimidation, and for genocide. If this is old news for being commonplace, might it mean that in some deep place most of us believe it, too?

Let's hope not. Let's say, rather, that the consequences of gender inequality are so vast, and the numbers those consequences generate so huge, that they diminish feelings of connection and urgency. The lens through which we're looking gets longer and longer, and everything seems far and removed. Psychologists (and marketers) understand this. In an experiment to determine what motivates individuals to donate money to charity, researchers conducted an experiment in which subjects, divided into three groups, were each asked to give $5 to alleviate third-world hunger. The more data they had, the less likely they were to part with their money:

One group was told the money would go to Rokia, a seven-year-old girl in Mali. Another group was told that the money would go to address malnutrition among 21 million Africans. The third group was told that the donations would go to Rokia,...but this time her own hunger was presented as part of a background tapestry of global hunger, with some statistics thrown in. People were much more willing to donate to Rokia than to 21 million hungry people, and even a mention of the larger problem made people less inclined to help her.

It's not for nothing that donor-driven NGOs like Save the Children fund-raise by asking people to "sponsor" particular children in need (even though the money doesn't go to them directly), or that the remarkably successful Internet fund-raising group Kiva is able to raise tens of millions of dollars in $25 increments from people all over the world by posting the photographs and stories of individual entrepreneurs in need of a small loan to start a home-based business, like selling baskets or running a soft-drinks kiosk. People connect with each other, not with statistics. (In another study, researchers found that after doing math problems, people were much less likely to give to those in need.)

Conscious of this research, Kristof and WuDunn follow the Save the Children strategy themselves, recognizing that if their call to action is to succeed off the page, they need to show, not tell, on it. And show they do: every larger point, about human trafficking laws, for example, or global maternal health, is introduced by an explicit, moving, illustrative anecdote, so that the larger narrative is suffused with stories that keep the issues focused and comprehensible. This alone would have made Half the Sky a valuable and instructive book.

But Kristof and WuDunn are more ambitious for both themselves and their readers. By telling the story of Rath, a Cambodian teenager who was sold twice to brothels in Malaysia and Thailand, for instance, or Mahabouba, whose body was not big enough to deliver the baby she was carrying from the sixty-year old man who owned her, they aspire to do more than document what might seem to be unbearable, outrageous hardships. Rather, they mean to demonstrate that the obdurate is assailable; that it is, in fact, possible to "turn oppression into opportunity"; and that the experience of a young woman like Rath is replicable: she escaped sexual slavery, which is an accomplishment in itself, and has gone on to become a successful entrepreneur, selling hats and bags and phone calls out of a cart she was able to buy and stock with a $400 loan from an aid group, and now is married, has a son, and supports her extended family.

This has been the message for the past twenty-six years of Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economics professor, Nobel Prize winner, and recent recipient of the United States Medal of Freedom, who founded the Grameen Bank. Grameen pioneered the concept of microcredit, the granting of small loans to people who otherwise would have no access to money to run a business. These, historically, have been the poorest of the poor; in Bangladesh, Grameen now even loans money to street beggars. The businesses are "micro," too, but in almost every case they have enabled recipients to earn enough money to lift themselves and their families out of the direst conditions. In almost every case--nearly 100 percent--the loans are repaid, despite their high interest rates (which arguably are substantially lower than those of the typical predatory lenders to whom poor people have access). So far, in Bangladesh alone, Grameen has loaned more than $6 billion. From its recently opened office in Jackson Heights, Queens, it has already distributed over $1 million.

When Yunus and a few of his students started Grameen in the village of Jobra, it was an experiment. They wanted to see what would happen if they took the top-down model of economic development--in which "humanitarian" aid flowed from large and distant institutions like the World Bank to other large and distant institutions, like governments themselves, in an effort to spur overall economic growth, or didn't flow at all because the poorest of the poor were considered too poor to handle money responsibly--and turned it upside down. As Yunus writes in his most recent book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism:

In their pursuit of growth, policymakers are focusing on efforts to energize well-established institutions. It never occurs to them that these institutions themselves may be contributing to creating or sustaining poverty. Institutions and policies that created poverty cannot be entrusted with the task of eliminating it.

Moreover, he writes, "the focus, in development strategy, [is] on material accumulation and achievement. This focus needs to be shifted to human beings, their initiative and enterprise."

Once Yunus and his team began to lend money, something unexpected happened: they found that women, who in most cases had never before handled money, were much more likely than men to use it responsibly and pay it back. Women tended to invest their earnings in their families--in education, housing, and health care. Men, on the other hand, were more likely to spend it on themselves. "Thus," Yunus concluded, "lending to women creates a cascading effect that brings social benefits as well as economic benefits to the whole family and ultimately to the entire community." Grameen has found the same pattern--men play, women pay--in every country in which it operates. In short order, Grameen changed course: its loans would be to women; if a man in the family wanted a loan, he could ask his wife to apply, and it would be up to her to decide if he was a good credit risk. Inevitably, the power dynamic between them shifted.

The question from development economists, looking at the work of the Grameen Bank or at the opportunities about which Kristof and WuDunn write, and assessing their effectiveness, is typically one of scale: Where does the economic (and emotional) turn-around of a young woman like Rath, the beneficiary of a small infusion of cash, fit in the big picture of chronic, widespread, desperate poverty? Where, for that matter, do thousands of women like Rath fit in when "real" progress is measured by an expansion of the gross domestic product (GDP)? One answer is that top-down measurements like GDP are not especially sensitive to the vagaries of poverty; an increase in the GDP in a poor country does not perforce translate into a rise in the fortunes of poor people. Another is that small, grassroots efforts that invite or demand the active participation of beneficiaries are poised to spread and compound wealth in ways that can't be measured directly.

Consider the case of Sekena Yacoobi, who grew up in Herat, Afghanistan, found her way to a university in the United States, and then moved to Pakistan to work in the Afghan refugee camps in Peshawar. Yacoobi opened a school for girls there, and within a year had 15,000 students. When the Taliban made it illegal for girls to go to school in Afghanistan, Yacoobi, at great risk, created a network of "secret schools." According to Kristof and WuDunn, many of the women currently enrolled at Kabul University were those secret students; Yacoobi pretty much singlehandedly created an Afghan female intelligentsia. Now she runs the Afghan Institute of Learning in Kabul, providing education and services to 350,000 women and children. These include health clinics, family planning clinics (where condoms are distributed), and workshops where women can learn embroidery, hair styling, and computer science. "Education is the key issue for overcoming poverty, for overcoming war," Yacoobi told Kristof and WuDunn. "If people are educated, then women will not be abused or tortured. They will also stand up and say 'My child should not be married so young.'"

And then there is Edna Adan, whose unlikely trajectory took her from Somalia to the World Health Organization, where she worked for many years, traveling the world. A nurse by training, her dream was to return to her homeland, the breakaway, unrecognized country of Somaliland, which has the highest infant and maternal mortality rate in the world, and build a clean, modern maternity hospital. To raise capital Adan cashed in her WHO pension and sold her car, then ran out of money before a roof could go up. The United Nations and other NGOs that she approached turned down her request for funds to finish the hospital, and it looked like her project would be yet another failed effort, like so many that, according to Kristof and WuDunn, "litter" Africa.

But then Kristof's colleague at the Times Ian Fisher wrote a story about Edna Adan's hospital and two readers in Connecticut and two in Minnesota were moved to help her. They sent out fund-raising letters to friends and neighbors and raised the remaining capital. The Edna Adan Maternity Hospital now has sixty beds and seventy-six staff members, a blood bank, and an on-site lab. From its opening in 2002 until June of this year

it has admitted 8654 women, delivered 8810 babies, seen more than 62,000 patients in the outpatient clinic, performed nearly 107,000 laboratory tests, providing training courses in, amongst others, 3 year general nursing (3 classes), midwifery, laboratory techniques, first aid courses for school teachers, and computer literacy courses.

These numbers are one way to measure success. Another, oddly, comes by way of a letter Adan wrote to Kristof last year, which he posted on his blog:

I am writing to you in desperation because we have lost ten of our best qualified nurses and midwives to International NGOs who do not support us during the training but who snatch the best from us with salary offers that we cannot match. Somehow, we seem to have become victims of our success because our nurses are the best in the country. We train four times what our hospital needs but still cannot cover the demand for good and responsible nurses.

Kristof and WuDunn are not naive. They are quick to point out that good intentions sometimes go wrong, or are wrongheaded to begin with, and that sometimes good intentions are just not enough. Even so, small steps taken against intractable problems can be resounding. It is now pretty much taken for granted that educating girls has an ameliorating effect on almost every social indicator, most especially family income and family size, and that this in turn reduces the violence that stems from resource wars. An education doesn't necessarily mean book-learning, either: one of the stipulations made by Edna Adan when she was building her hospital was that the brickmakers teach women their trade. Somaliland now has its first women brickmakers; those women now have a marketable skill. As Muhammad Yunus and his colleagues at Grameen have demonstrated, enabling women to enter the workforce itself leads to more education and the spread of literacy. It's the opposite of a vicious circle.

Still, it's a vicious world. Attitudes change slowly, but they do change. For the past two years, the United States Congress has been given the opportunity to pass the International Violence Against Women Act, authorizing over $1 billion to be spent on the kinds of programs highlighted by Kristof and WuDunn in Half the Sky. The act also is meant to make violence against women a diplomatic priority by establishing a women's department in the State Department and USAID, so that this kind of violence will be a factor in foreign aid. The bill, which was introduced by Senator Richard Lugar and then Senator Joseph Biden, will be reintroduced until it passes. It won't end the kinds of gender inequalities that Kristof and WuDunn chronicle, but it may have an effect comparable to William Wilberforce's efforts to pass the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which didn't outlaw slavery itself but was a step toward abolition.

In the meantime, though, there are wars like the one in Congo, and repressive regimes like Iran's, where sexual violence is practiced against girls and women; there is wholesale selling of girls and women across borders as well as within countries in unfathomable numbers; there is battery, which is so common as to be unremarkable, even in the West, and for every story of triumph over one atrocity or another, there are many more that share the same brutal ending. Handing out small loans isn't going to fix the world, and neither is legislation passed in the United States Congress or a United Nations Resolution. But if the success of the microcredit movement has taught us anything, it's that incremental change--change that happens house by house and community by community, especially when it is directed by women themselves--can be profound. Kristof and WuDunn tell us that, as Westerners, our most effective role in making it possible for half the world's population to hold up their half of the sky may simply be to write checks so that Edna Adan can pay her nurses and Sakena Yacoobi can buy books for her students. Kristof and WuDunn, for their part, have found another way.

Sue Halpern is a scholar in residence at Middlebury. Her most recent book is Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research.

Read more at The New York Review of Books.

Karin Badt: Polanski: What's On Trial?

2009-10-28T17:37:45Z

What is fascinating about the Polanski case is that it is not particularly about Polanski. Looking at the debate raised in France (where I live) and the United States -- in defense of the extradition decision or against it -- it becomes clear that the Polanski affair has become an occasion for people to express (or rather expose) prejudices, premises, outrage about a whole host of issues, from child abuse to national integrity.

Let's look on "what is on trial" in the range of articles and television shows devoted to the subject. As you will see, Polanski himself is a minor issue in the thicket.

COUNTRIES AND ERAS

1. Switzerland : its decision to snag Polanski after its own Zurich film festival had invited him to receive a life achievement award. What bad manners! The authorities could have snagged him at any other time in Polanski's own Swiss chalet, where he goes several times a year. And how dare Switzerland have contacted the US first! The fury against Switzerland is such that it even elicited a Huff Post blogger to denounce Switzerland, lumping its pretended neutrality in WW II ("letting tanks in") with this recent scandal, and concluding that we should boycott Swiss chocolate. There is a suspicion as well as to Switzerland's real motives for its extradition move: to get the US to be more lenient in its IRS investigations of a major Swiss bank (the USB) which allegedly helps Americans tax-evade in Switzerland.

2. The United States: From the classical French point of view, the US is criminally puritanical about sex as opposed to France , with its own more "liberal" wink-an-eye espousal of affairs under the sheets. The extent of this prejudice is so great that most popular French papers -- such as "Le Monde" and Liberation -- have chosen to distort the facts when reporting on the case. Liberation described Polanski's crime as an "affaires des moeurs", a banal case of mores, rather than a convicted case of "illegal sex with a minor". Le Monde describes what happened as "Polanski's relations with a young girl," forgetting the word "illegal."

The distortion is such that many French readers, responding in blogs, do not understand that Polanski has already been convicted of a criminal charge, which he admitted. At a party last night, a French gentleman noted: "Oh come on, the Americans keep bringing up that old bêtise (little mistake). To his credit, this gentleman had no idea what Polanski's "little mistake" was nor that it was technically a convicted crime. How could he? The French press has been reluctant to repeat the actual facts of Polanski's bêtise: i.e. that the grand jury testimony recounts that on March 10, 1977, a thirteen year old girl was given champagne, a half-quaalude, and then sodomized, while she continually protested.

France's current treatment of the case may also reflect the fact that the French are not so up-to-date on the idea of rape as a "violation" of the person (a crime of unequal power relations) rather than a matter of eros gone awry--a fuzziness exposed in philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy's much ridiculed comment that Polanski should be let off for an "error of a youth" (he was 43 at the time).

NB: while these French views above are prevalent, they have been energetically attacked by the French themselves--so there is no "universal French view".

3. The 1970s: for its wild lenient attitude towards sex, date rape and drugs, and less conscious ideas about "child abuse." Polanski's attitude was part and parcel of the 1970s, when, following the arrest, he referred to Samantha G as the "whore" who ruined his life. Years later, in a televised interview with Diane Sawyer, he tenderly said that at the time, he had no idea that what he did was wrong--"it was spontaneous"--and that now it had dawned on him.

4. The current period: for its stricter attitude towards sex, date rape, drugs, child abuse. Today a crime like Polanski's would receive a much harsher sentence than in 1978. Now, if Polanski returns for sentencing, legally the most he himself could receive is two years.

THE US LEGAL SYSTEM

1. Why is Polanski being charged for "une histoire ancienne", is a popular complaint in Europe. The charge is already "thirty years old"! Interestingly, the French intellectuals critiquing the lack of "prescription" in US law (prescription = dropping of charges after a certain time) overlook the fact that France does not have it either. "Prescription" in France means that after ten years, no one can be charged of a crime. It does not mean that once someone has been convicted, he cannot be punished. It is also interesting that the French call this an "old story" rather than an "old conviction", again minimizing the "crime."

2. The judge's handling of the case. Marina Zenovich's documentary : Polanski: Wanted and Desired" fueled this perspective, in concentrating on the judge's (Lawrence Rittenband) waffling about the sentencing. Polanski was initially given three months in Chino 's psychiatric ward, for psychiatric evaluation. After 42 days served, Rittenband changed his mind and seems to have been about to either sentence Polanski to serve the full term in this psychiatric ward, be deported or have a new prison sentence. Reports in the media are murky as to what he actually was going to do, so it is impossible to have an opinion here.

Incidentally, this particular charge has given the spotlight to Zenovich's film, which frankly was one of the worst films I have ever reviewed at Cannes: confused about perspective (you wonder what the film is about for the first l hour, until you get to Rittenband), amateur in film techniques ("tickertapes" predominate) and lopsided in evidence (the victim was not given a word in the documentary). The point of the film is that Rittenband was a rich powerful man, and so was Polanski, so there! To make this point, the director emphasizes that Rittenband also had had a young girlfriend, age 20, as if this means he were not allowed to judge Polanski's own deviance with a 13 year old.

I interviewed Zenovich at the premiere and asked her pointblank what was her own perspective in the film -- on the rape, or Polanski or law or ... She looked embarrassed and finally sputtered, "As a filmmaker, it is not my place to have an opinion." As to why she did not have the victim speak, she added: "Americans don't open up like Europeans." [!]

Now back to the charge against Rittenband. While everyone is outraged that he might have waffled on the plea bargain, a few have noted that the initial 90 day sentence for a rape of a minor is a rather light sentence.

3. The current US prosecutor: why is he making this charge now? Is he up for re-election? [See law professor Ronald Sokol's op ed, Oct 2, 2009] Critics also have conflated the US move to extradite Polanski with imperialism, comparing it to the Iraq invasion. Note former culture minister Jacques Lang's plea to "protect" Polanski.

4. The privileged status of wealthy criminals. Quite a few articles have critiqued the fact that Polanski, a rich man, might have received more leniency than the typical proletariat rapist. A very curious spin on the "money makes law" issue is the fact that Samantha's civil case against Polanski has been misrepresented in the French press. Fact: Samantha tried Polanski in 1988, in a civil court case -- ten years post the rape -- and received the right to indemnities of perhaps 500,000 dollars (which seems not to have been paid yet). Revealing a peculiar idea of US law, a major French tv show hosted a debate about Polanski -- in his favor--where the MC announced: "Look the girl was paid half a million by Polanski and his lawyer in front of the judge, at the time of the trial, and so"--the MC wiped her brow -- "End of story! Justice has been made!" Apparently, this French host has no problem with the "a private money-funded justice" scheme.

5. Victim legal influence. Samantha G's own reneging of the complaint , which, contrary to public misrepresentation, has not yet reached legal status. See actress Valerie Lemercier's televised comment: "I don't know all the facts [sic], but it is clear for me that since the young girl has stopped her complaint, the affair is closed." Proponents of this view overlook the fundamental question here: What does US law say here--across the board--about the victim's influence over whether a prison sentence is served?

ART

Can an artist be considered superior to the common man? Look at what Polanski has offered. I will add that my own "verdict" of Polanski as an artist is that he is my favorite director of all time. No one is more masterful in exposing the cruelty of unequal power relations, sado-masochism (Death and the Maiden), alienation (Repulsion, Tess, Chinatown) and the awful power of the group (The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby). My (deceased) friend Jean-Pierre Ruh, Polanski's sound-engineer, rhapsodized that no director he has worked with--from Truffaut to Leone--had as much genius in craft as Polanski, to the point of asking him to use a special microphone to make exterior sounds louder than interior sounds, to enhance the "sense of alienation", as well as putting mikes under faucets to do the same. Polanski's training at the famed Lodz film school, his mature vision (his student films at age 22 -- depicting the horror of "others" -- are nothing short of genius), and his absolutely honesty in depicting his own psychic wounds make him one of the most unusual and powerful artists working in film today.

That said: the debate has been is the Artist above the Law? See the interesting twist on this idea in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad editorial by Raymond van den Boogaard, entitled "Art is not made by Nice Guys". It states that serious artists live by other standards than other human beings, and secretly we expect they do, and like it that way, making a comparison between the Polanski rape with the sexual behaviour of Lord Byron, who raped his wife, her sister and a few others: stories that "horrified and delighted the Victorians".

THE MAN HIMSELF

Polanski's past: hasn't he suffered enough? Hasn't he had a horrific childhood and adulthood? Note, most criminals have had bad childhoods and they are not excused because of this. And all respect to Polanski's history, but has anyone considered that it could be this very history that led him to be prone to pedophilia in the first place (a point hinted at in an early biography of Polanski, which notes -- perhaps with no basis -- his supposed repeated sadism with younger women)? After all, pedophilia would be a way to reverse the anguished powerless situation of his childhood: i.e. the victim theme in all his films, from Chinatown to Rosemary's Baby to the Pianist, where a helpless lone victim must submit to "all of them witches". (http://kbadt.free.fr/articles/Art%20After%20Auschwitz.pdf) Polanski's films equally show moments of vengeful violence: he himself pulling the knife on "nosy" Jack Nicholson in Chinatown , or he himself, as a 22-year-old, again pulling a knife on a hapless passerby in his 1958 student short "Two Men and a Wardrobe" (after stoning a cat to death with apple cores).

As for the violence of sado-masochistic machinations in human sexual relations, nobody is more self-aware and honest about this than Polanski himself who gave full-rein to the theme in his film Bitter Moon (19992) as well as in the early masterpiece Knife on the Water (1962).

Polanski's flight: how dare he flee the country! Some argue that he should be punished for this crime as well. Of course, however, it might be reasonable to assume that anyone who has seen Nazis take over his country and kill his mother, would have a natural suspicion (and lack of respect for) national authority, including legal systems.

Polanski's bad manners. He never sent Samantha G, the victim, a thank you note for her generous op ed in the New York Times about how one should let bygones be bygones and give him an Oscar. [This was an actual op-ed]

Polanski's good manners. The strongest point raised in his defense: rehabilitation. He's a nice guy now, and has a family of his own. Especially moving argument by Robert Harris, author of "The Ghost", the film Polanski is making (and won't finish if he doesn't get out soon). A question here: is rehabilitation a legal cause for overruling an earlier verdict?

THE VERDICT

Most spectacularly, what is on trial is the actual verdict: as if the case had not already been tried. Here there are various subsets to the arguments.

a) Is sex with a minor a bad thing? More than one blog-site has been devoted to dredging up child-adult sex relations from romantic history to show "children are not innocent". This ignores the fact that rape is not about sexual innocence but about unequal power relations, which most often targets females inscribed in a patriarchal system -- and children.

b) Was Samantha consenting to some extent, given her sexual past and the "date-rape" atmosphere? As Whoopi Goldberg notoriously said: "it wasn't rape-rape." Alternatively, people have argued (especially fathers with children), that a child is a child, and rape is rape.

c) The mother: isn't she the criminal here, dragging her daughter to a star's mansion for "photographs" (hint hint)?

* * *

What is disturbing about this whole debate -- which predominates in the media -- is that the verdict was already made (and Polanski absolutely frank about his guilt). So, if you disagree with the premises upon which the verdict was based (that it's wrong to have sex with a minor, that it is the perpetrator rather than the mother that should be on trial, that no matter what the girl's sexual history, she is still a child), or believe that a victim should decide if the law should be implemented, clearly your issue should not be with the verdict but with the law itself.

Which brings me to my own opinion. No matter how fascinating on deeper murky cultural political levels this Polanski case is, when it comes to having an opinion on the Polanski case, it should be looked at as a legal case above all.

In other words: IF a) the context of suspicious national behavior (Switzerland), b) suspicious prosecutor motivation c) criminal's painful past, d) criminal's rehabilitation, e) the length of time since the crime has been committed, f) victim opinion, and g) international shenanigans is enough to warrant that a nation's legal verdict should be overturned, then the Polanski case should be buried. But if one believes in the authority of the law--and US law in particular--then the extradition must hold.

Or change the law, so that all convicted child molesters -- the poor and non-famous and the rich and famous alike -- are eligible for leniency -- not just Polanski.

Now, of course, if you don't believe in the law, that's another story.

addendum: I find it ironic that so many French critics have been in favor of leniency, considering this is the same country where -- when I bike through a red light -- at least half a dozen pedestrians shout out: "Madame, la loi est pour tout le monde!!"

Guinea Rapes, Attacks Were "Premeditated And Pre-Planned" By Junta: Human Rights Watch

2009-10-28T08:59:34Z

A deadly crackdown on protesters in Guinea in September was "premeditated and pre-planned at the highest level", Human Rights Watch has told the BBC.

Woman Denied Health Care Insurance After Rape Tells Her Story (Video)

2009-10-27T04:56:33Z

Christina Turner was drugged and raped by two men in 2002. After taking anti-HIV drugs prescribed by her doctor as a preventative measure, Turner was denied health insurance. The HIV drugs, Turner was told, raised too many health questions for her insurer.

Christina Turner's story was part of a citizen journalism project by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. Readers were asked to provide information and anecdotes about the inner workings of the insurance industry. Stories showing how victims of sexual assault can get tangled in the health insurance system were just one result of the project.

CNN's Anderson Cooper interviewed Turner on Monday night. She recounted her story and underscored the need for reform. She touted the web site awomanisnotapreexistingcondition.com and encouraged viewers to find out more about the issue.

WATCH

L.A. Times : Testimony Of Roman Polanski's Victim Turned "Almost Benign"

2009-10-24T08:04:46Z

An extensive review of several thousand court documents, as well as numerous interviews, shows a basic dynamic defining the entire saga -- one force trying to drive debate away from a young girl's unshaken allegations, and another trying to reel it back in.

Byron Toner, British Rapist, Escapes From Court Minutes After Conviction

2009-10-22T11:26:12Z

A man leapt from the dock of a court and escaped custody just minutes after being convicted of rape, police said today.

Byron Toner, 26, had been found guilty of repeatedly assaulting a 19-year-old woman during a five-hour attack.

His two-week trial at Liverpool Crown Court was told he left his victim with 58 injuries, including a broken jaw.

Toner, of Culme Road, West Derby, Liverpool, was remanded in custody by Judge Adrian Lyon following the guilty verdict yesterday afternoon.

But as a security guard stood to escort him to the cells, Toner jumped out of the dock and ran out of the third-floor courtroom.

Continue reading at The Independent

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Guinea: Rape Fails To Silence Women

2009-10-21T16:15:45Z

I have interviewed women and even child survivors of sexual violence before, mostly during civil wars in conflict zones. Naturally, my heart went out to them.

But when I met with 20 or so Guinean women to hear about their experiences on Sept. 28 the day Guinean soldiers trained their guns on pro-democracy protesters and then, allegedly, unleashed a brutal wave of rapes something was different.

Rape Victim's Choice: Risk AIDS or Health Insurance?

2009-10-21T12:50:45Z

Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month's worth of anti-AIDS medicine.

Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.

Turner had let the men buy her drinks at a bar in Fort Lauderdale. The next thing she knew, she said, she was lying on a roadside with cuts and bruises that indicated she had been raped. She never developed an HIV infection. But months later, when she lost her health insurance and sought new coverage, she ran into a problem.

Turner, 45, who used to be a health insurance underwriter herself, said the insurance companies examined her health records. Even after she explained the assault, the insurers would not sell her a policy because the HIV medication raised too many health questions. They told her they might reconsider in three or more years if she could prove that she was still AIDS-free.

Stories of how victims of sexual assault can get tangled in the health insurance system have been one result of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund's citizen journalism project, which is calling on readers to provide information and anecdotes about the inner workings of the insurance industry. The project aims to uncover details and data that can inform the larger debate over how to fix the nation's health care system. As the Investigative Fund reported in September, health insurance companies are not required to make public their records on how often claims are denied and for what reasons.

Some women have contacted the Investigative Fund to say they were deemed ineligible for health insurance because they had a pre-existing condition as a result of a rape, such as post traumatic stress disorder or a sexually transmitted disease. Other patients and therapists wrote in with allegations that insurers are routinely denying long-term mental health care to women who have been sexually assaulted.

Susan Pisano, spokeswoman for the health insurance industry's largest trade group, America's Health Insurance Plans, said insurers do not discriminate against victims of sexual assault and ordinarily would not even know if a patient had been raped.

"These issues you are bringing up, they deserve to be brought up," said Pisano. "People who have experienced rape and sexual assault are victims and we want them to be in a system where everyone is covered."

Turner's story about HIV drugs is not unusual, said Cindy Holtzman, an insurance agent and expert in medical billing at Medical Refund Service, Inc. of Marietta, Ga. Insurers generally categorize HIV-positive people as having a pre-existing condition and deny them coverage. Holtzman said that health insurance companies also consistently decline coverage for anyone who has taken anti-HIV drugs, even if they test negative for the virus. "It's basically an automatic no," she said.

Pisano, of the insurance trade group, said: "If you put down on a form that you are or were taking anti-HIV drugs at any time, they [the insurance companies] are going to understand that you are or were in treatment for HIV, period," she said. "That could be a factor in determining whether you get coverage."

Some doctors and nurses said that the industry's policy is not medically sound. "The chance of a rape victim actually contracting AIDS is very low. It doesn't make any sense to use that as a calculus for determining who get health insurance," said Dr. Alex Schafir, faculty instructor at Providence St. Vincent Hospital in Portland, Ore.

Nurses who deal with sexual assault cases say the industry's policy creates a significant problem for those treating women who have been assaulted. "It's difficult enough to make sure that rape victims take the drugs," said Diana Faugno, a forensic nurse in California and board director of End Violence Against Women International. "What are we supposed to tell women now? Well, I guess you have a choice - you can risk your health insurance or you can risk AIDS. Go ahead and choose."

Turner, now a life and casualty insurance agent, said she went without health coverage for three years after the attack. She second-guesses her decision to take the HIV drugs. "I'm going to be penalized my whole life because of this," she said.

Several women told the Investigative Fund that after being sexually assaulted they had been denied care or ruled ineligible for health insurance because of what were deemed pre-existing conditions stemming from their assaults -- particularly post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

A 38-year-old woman in Ithaca, N.Y., said she was raped last year and then penalized by insurers because in giving her medical history she mentioned an assault she suffered in college 17 years earlier. The woman, Kimberly Fallon, told a nurse about the previous attack and months later, her doctor's office sent her a bill for treatment. She said she was informed by a nurse and, later, the hospital's billing department that her health insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, not only had declined payment for the rape exam, but also would not pay for therapy or medication for trauma because she "had been raped before."

Fallon says she now has trouble getting coverage for gynecological exams. To avoid the hassle of fighting with her insurance company, she goes to Planned Parenthood instead and pays out of pocket.

A New Mexico woman told the Investigative Fund she was denied coverage at several health insurance companies because she had suffered from PTSD after being attacked and raped in 2003. She did not want to disclose her name because she feared that she would lose her group health insurance if she went on the record as a rape victim. "I remember just feeling infuriated," she said.

"I think it's important to point out that health plans are not denying coverage based on the fact that someone was raped," said Pisano of the insurance trade group. "But PTSD could be a factor in denied coverage."

"That might not be a discriminatory action, but it certainly would seem to have a discriminatory impact," said Sandra Park, staff attorney at the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "Insurance discrimination against rape victims will only further discourage them from coming forward to law enforcement and seeking medical help."

Even when patients have coverage, there are fundamental disagreements between insurance companies and doctors about what mental health treatment is medically necessary. The Investigative Fund spoke with doctors, psychologists, and licensed clinical social workers around the country who work regularly with victims of sexual assault. They said that their patients have been experiencing an increase in delays and denials, particularly for talk therapy.

"There's a lot of anger about this in the medical community," said Dr. George Shapiro-Weiss, a psychiatrist in Middletown, Conn. "You don't realize what an Alice in Wonderland web this has become."

"A lot of my patients are being told that their treatment isn't medically necessary," said Keri Nola, an Orlando, Fla., psychologist, who said about 75 percent of her patients are victims of sexual violence.

Several therapists cited problems with managed care companies that specialize in mental health. Such firms generally work under contract with health insurers to hold down costs while still authorizing appropriate care.

WATCH a video about a rape victim's efforts to obtain mental health services:

Some therapists and patients said the managed care companies have cut off necessary treatment for sexual assault victims in the name of cost containment. "The companies are peppering them with questions about their symptoms, and about their histories, and asking, 'Well, are you sure you really need therapy?'" said Jeffrey Axelbank, a New Jersey psychologist. "For someone who has been traumatized, it can feel like another trauma, and it makes the therapy less effective."

Pisano, of the insurance association, said it was not fair to draw a larger pattern from such anecdotal evidence. "These situations are evaluated on a person-by-person basis," she said. "There is nothing routine about this."

Jim Wrich, a Madison, Wis., a consultant who helps employers evaluate the companies that manage their mental health care, said his work has made him wary of the industry. "This is absolutely routine - these denials," Wrich said. "The default position is to reject care."

Magellan Behavioral Health Services, Inc., one of the nation's largest managed-care companies with more than 58 million customers, said that it does not routinely turn down treatment requests from victims of sexual assault or other clients. "We're not denying care. We are exercising our responsibility to make sure that medical necessity is met," said Dr. Lawrence Nardozzi, Magellan's medical director. "I think the process works well."

Asked if cost is a factor in the company's decisions, Magellan spokeswoman Erin Somers said: "If all the safeguards are in place to determine whether treatment is medically necessary and appropriate" then "the cost takes care of itself."

A former care manager for Magellan said in an interview that she felt pressure to deny care for cost reasons. Lois Gorwitz, a psychologist with thirty years of experience who went to work for Magellan in California in 2000, said her superiors would tell her: "We are not denying this person treatment, we are denying them their benefit. If they want the treatment they can still pay out of pocket." But, Gorwitz said, "You know that means that the person is not going to get the treatment because they can't afford to pay out of pocket."

Gorwitz quit after two years. "It's a very uncomfortable feeling of not being able to offer help," she said.

Asked for a response, Magellan's Somers said, "I think you should keep in mind that there have been a lot of changes at Magellan in the last seven years. I think the people who work at Magellan now are not having that experience."

Read more about Huffington Post Investigative Fund and the Insurance Watchdog Investigation.

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John Haig Marshall: Former Reserve Cop Accused Of Drugging, Raping And Shaving Friend

2009-10-20T21:04:49Z

A former Redondo Beach reserve police officer has been arrested for allegedly drugging an acquaintance, raping him and shaving off the victim's body hair, authorities said.

Monterrico Torture: Mining Company Accused Of Torture In Peru

2009-10-20T01:37:57Z

A British mining corporation is facing a multimillion-pound claim for damages after protesters were detained and allegedly tortured at an opencast copper plant that the firm is seeking to develop in the mountains of northern Peru.

Ellen Snortland: Roman Polanski, Have I Got a Sentence for You!

2009-10-16T18:27:29Z

An Open Letter to Roman Polanski:

Dear Mr. Polanski,

I'm sending you this letter, even though you don't know me from Eve. As I write this, we've just received news that you're open to house arrest for your 1977 statutory rape sentence. That's a great idea, but I've got another idea for you: back my documentary about ending violence against women and girls.

Why don't you help me and my colleagues in the personal safety community get the word out about a person's human right to protect themselves from emotional and physical harm? Specifically, how about helping us mainstream the idea of a woman or girl's right to defend herself from an assailant? I'm not kidding. With your notoriety and clout, you could bring women's physical empowerment from the shadows into headline news, theaters and the talk show circuit.

At the risk of coming off as completely self-serving - my status and bank account prove that I'm not - I've been having a heck of a time with my mission of providing self-defense skills as a normal part of physical education. Hey, trying to sell self-defense classes to women and girls is a bit like trying to sell cod-liver sundaes. Healthy idea, but YUCK! Most people are so uncomfortable with the image of a female being attacked that they just want the whole idea to go away. Nonetheless, violence against women is one of the darkest open secrets we have, which you - as a cultural king - could actually help end or at least reduce for us subjects. Do you dare help me at the root level?

As your case is endlessly blogged and blabbed in the media, all I can think about is the waste of money, column inches and air time - resources that could be used to prevent future "Polanski episodes": when a powerful authority figure like a priest, celebrity or film director promises great rewards or consequences, exacting secrecy in exchange for silence. No one is arguing over whether you raped a 13 year old. They bicker over whether it was really that bad, or whether you should be punished or not.

I'm mostly against warehousing human beings, even though the more vengeful side of me would definitely like to see you punished, as in setting you down in a prison somewhere with the words "Casting Couch" embroidered on your pants. I know, I know. Your supporters argue that life has been punitive already. I argue that because you had already suffered so deeply before the "incident," you should have been less cowardly and more willing to own up to the suffering you caused to someone weaker and less powerful than you are. But I digress.

Rather than punishment, I stand for creative sentencing and actions that serve to make inroads in the area involving the damage you caused. I am for the prevention of violence, with an emphasis on teaching people - boys too - what they might do before something violent happens, or more importantly WHILE it is happening.

Your 1977 scenario is almost a cliche, insofar as there is a socially inept girl who has the promise of possible stardom, with Your Highness "dangling" it in front of her. She's not only scared of you physically, but scared of "blowing" her own shot at fame or wealth. I know straight grown men who would have been scared to fight or say an effective "no" to someone like you, especially drunk and drugged. Nasty business, that casting tub.

I've been struggling - and I use this word advisedly - to raise money to complete a documentary which demonstrates the transformative power of teaching girls and women how to set boundaries - physically if they must. It's called "Beauty Bites Beast" which is also the title of my book. If you were sentenced to fund my film, it'd get done in 6 months and get a distribution deal and lots of press! We could actually prevent injury and save lives; not all, but a significant number of them.

I just completed co-teaching a self-defense class for kids with IMPACT Personal Safety, www.impactpersonalsafety.com, a non-profit provider of personal safety training. I thought of you when I was showing the two girls who were almost 13 how to tell a predator to stop being creepy. They practiced over and over. They were so shy, and yet eager to know and "rehearse" what to do if they were in trouble. We then had them exercise eye strikes and groin shots with a padded mock assailant as simple escape maneuvers.

Do not think I blame your victim for not defending herself. She didn't have a clue what to do. So many attacks could be stopped if we only taught enough women and kids simple, brains-not-brawn, easy-to-learn techniques against sexual predators. I assert that the statutory rape in 1977 will plague you until you make some type of sincere public amends. Backing an "end violence against women and girls" film would be an astonishing act of atonement. Consider it. Talk to the lawyers. You can see the trailer to my movie here.

Sincerely,

Ellen Snortland

Trish Kinney: Tyler Perry Gets It Right

2009-10-13T18:55:52Z

Tyler Perry's movies are a complex mix of humor, faith, social commentary and family. I wouldn't call myself a fan, maybe more a curious observer. A fascinating personality with a voracious appetite for work, he's just down right appealing. The production values can be sloppy, the directing is almost always uninspired, the scripts lack dramatic structure, the acting sometimes appears to be off the cuff (particularly his) but the work is so sincere and likable that you just say "what the hell" and forgive all that because you have a good time while you are there and feel good when you leave. He's a smart filmmaker despite his lack of polish. He knows that good music can cover almost any fault and if the actors are having a good time, it is likely that the audience will also, erasing any doubt by using outtakes over the credits which are often funnier than the actual scenes. They provide clues as to how he just lets the camera run while they improvise and mess around with each other, creating that joyful sense of "aren't we all just having the best time." And actually, maybe we all are.

His latest film, I Can Do Bad All By Myself , is based on a stage play of the same title, which marked the original appearance of Madea, a "God fearing, gun toting, pot smoking, loud mouthed grandmother," famously played by Mr. Perry himself. She is a force unto herself, a box office juggernaut, perhaps more suited to comedy skits rather than full length films that tackle serious subjects. But maybe the old show business rule, "give 'em what they want" applies here. We have already established that we forgive Tyler Perry a lot of things. I, for one, would like to see Mr. Perry begin to trust himself, and his loyal audiences, a little more.

The core of this new film is based on a subject that the filmmaker knows way too much about, based on his recent disclosure of severe childhood abuse. Because of that personal experience, he knew exactly how to write it and present it in the film. After the first 40 minutes or so of a messy plot set-up designed to give screen time to the Madea and Joe characters, both played by Mr. Perry, the film finally finds its footing. April is a night club singer who drinks too much and is involved with a married man who pays her bills. She also happens to be the aunt of three children being cared for by her mother, from whom she is estranged, and who has gone missing. Madea deposits the kids on April's doorstep. What follows is a somewhat formulaic story of April's redemption starring a dreamy good man, Sandino, and the Lord.

But it is the way that Mr. Perry presents the sexual abuse component of the film that deserves special recognition. He really got it right and that matters. April's married lover, Randy, is controlling with the potential for violence while she is a woman who doesn't think she deserves better. April's inability to acknowledge and open her heart to the pain of her dead sister's children, only adds to their misery and sense of belonging nowhere in the world. When the church sends over Sandino, a good man in need of a place to stay, who also happens to be hunky and wonderful in every way, April can't connect with him either, even though he comes to really care about the children. She shuts everyone out and cannot overcome her own pain. Randy shows a lurid interest in her 16 year old niece, Jennifer, foreshadowing the climax to come. In the dead of night, he attacks Jennifer in the kitchen as she prepares an insulin shot for her little brother. She is saved by Sandino who rushes in right on cue and gives Randy a good beating. April demands to know what's going on and Jennifer begs her to believe that Randy tried to rape her. At first she doesn't, and sends Randy up to the bathtub to clean up. There she experiences a rage, fueled by the flashback of her own sexual abuse and a mother who would not believe that her man would do such a thing. Just as April is about to dunk a boom box into the bathtub to electrocute Randy, Sandino rushes in one more time to save the day. April remains angry, even suggesting that Sandino's interest in the children must make him a child molester also. She lets the knight in shining armor get away.

But one Sunday morning, April begins to allow herself to believe that maybe she can have a healthy relationship with Sandino, and love the children, assisted by the powerful sounds of the gospel choir from the church across the street wafting into her kitchen right on cue. She begins to sway and sing along to a song her mama taught her, almost in a trance, and finally goes to the church to begin her new life, all before the song ends. This deus ex machina, or "god from the machine" dramatic technique, utilizing the "out of the blue" resolution to a character's unsolvable dilemma, is generally considered poor form. (As a fascinating side note, Euripides was criticized for his use of the deus ex machina, perhaps most famously in the case of Medea, with an "e".) But this, too, is a forgivable sin.

If you look at Tyler Perry's very personal website, you can read about his own abuse and how turning 40 made him feel grateful for his survival and willing to tell his story. You can even read about how his aunt held a gun to his father's head when she found out how abusive he was and her husband stopped her before she pulled the trigger. When you read that, you have to resist the urge to write about how most abuse victims don't get saved the way April did in the film, and will ultimately have to save themselves. To hear Mr. Perry tell it, that savior might be God. The fact remains that the abuse piece of this story is told with honesty, integrity, accuracy and compassion. And it stands out as the truest part of the film. I hope that Mr. Perry will have enough faith to know that he doesn't always need Madea. He can be serious all by himself.

Georgianne Nienaber: Satellite Imagery Proves Catastrophic Failure of Joint Rwanda/Congo Military Exercises

2009-10-13T00:19:03Z

Seeing is believing. For the past ten months, human rights organizations, political sources, eyewitness reports, and secret communiqués from remnants of Laurent Nkunda loyalists have reported that joint military operations between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo have been a catastrophic failure. Now DigitalGlobe and GeoEye satellite photos provided by The American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) are irrefutable proof of atrocities perpetrated by the regular Congolese Army (FARDC) and Rwandan Rebels (FDLR) against innocent villagers. Satellite imagery of the Busurungi area in North Kivu clearly shows burned villages.

The statistics are overwhelming and hopefully these startling images from the heavens will galvanize the world to act. For every rebel combatant disarmed during the operation, one civilian has been killed, seven women and girls have been raped, six houses burned and destroyed, and 900 people have been forced to flee their homes.

Up to six million souls have lost their lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1998. 800,000 to one million people have been displaced from their homes in eastern Congo since this January, when The United Nations Mission in Congo (MONUC) ostensibly partnered with Congolese and Rwandan military forces to drive out Ugandan, rebel Rwandan forces, and other militias from the Kivu Provinces.

"To allow these troops to be led by commanders like Bosco Ntaganda, with a known track record of horrific abuse, creates a climate in which atrocities flourish," Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch said in July to deaf ears. MONUC has backed the Congolese army in the Kimia II operation since March, after Rwanda abandoned its commitment to Operation "Umoja Wetu," and after the ouster of rebel leader Laurent Nkunda of the CNDP.

Rwanda engaged in a secret agreement with the Congolese president Joseph Kabila to depose CNDP (National Congress for the Defense of the People) rebel General Laurent Nkunda and install Ntaganda in January. Why? For approximately four years Nkunda had erected a wall of protection for ethnic minorities and had also made significant military gains in territory and weapon seizures from the FARDC. Kabila was rapidly losing territory and support and turned to Rwanda to neutralize Nkunda. Rwanda was happy to oblige, since the rebel Tutsi leader had become too popular and too independent.

Now, HRW reports that FDLR militia are deliberately targeting civilians and burning their villages as punishment for the Congolese government's decision to launch military operations. Congolese government soldiers have also persecuted civilians through killings and widespread rape, looting, forced labor, and arbitrary arrests.

But it gets worse.

Sexual violence has grown even more brutal in areas affected by the Kimia II operation. "We're seeing more cases of mutilation, extreme violence, and torture in sexual violence cases against women and girls, and many more of the victims are children," said Immaculée Birhaheka of Promotion et Appui aux Initiatives Féminines (PAIF).

Some previously displaced people in the Kivus have returned home to areas that have become relatively secure. But the ongoing military operations have caused new displacement of civilians in Masisi, Rutshuru, Lubero, Walikale, Kabare, Kalehe, Walungu, Shabunda, and Uvira territories of North and South Kivu, as well as in southern Maniema and northern Katanga provinces. Many civilians who have recently left displacement camps around Goma and elsewhere have moved on to secondary displacement sites since they fear returning home.

The United Nations provided backing for the failed and incompetent Kimia II operation, including tactical expertise, transport and aviation support, as well as food rations, fuel, and medical support to Congolese army soldiers, at an estimated cost of well over $6 million.

"With an investment this big, the UN has clout and should not remain silent when abuses occur," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The UN needs to make it clear that if the Congolese government wants its continued military support, the army should remove abusive soldiers from command positions and its soldiers should stop attacking civilians."

Reprisal attacks against unarmed populations by the FDLR militia have made the task of protecting civilians increasingly complicated for the Congolese government and UN peacekeepers. Yet the 3,000 additional UN peacekeepers authorized by the UN Security Council in November 2008 are only just arriving in eastern Congo, and the helicopters and intelligence support requested by UN officials have still not materialized, HRW reports.

The numbers do not add up if you are a civilian in DRC.

1,071 FDLR combatants were repatriated and 1,143 civilians were killed, including at least 10 local chiefs. An estimated 250-300 FDLR were combatants killed and 7,000 women and girls raped, the majority by the FDLR and FARDC soldiers deployed on military operations. 1,632 FDLR dependents have returned to Rwanda. Nearly 900,000 civilians were forced to flee their homes since January 2009 in North and South Kivu.

Image: IDP Camp (Georgianne Nienaber)

10,949 Rwandan refugees have returned to Rwanda, and 6,037 homes were burned (by both the FDLR and FARDC). There is new recruitment of children by the FDLR; armed groups are still not integrated, are maintaining parallel command structures, or are threatening to abandon the integration process.

We have been writing since January about the corruption, embezzlement, rapes, murders, burnings, misappropriation of soldiers' salaries and other uncountable and unimaginable atrocities. The Huffington Post has been steadfast in its support for innocent Congolese citizens, but more is needed. What are required are outrage and an international force of will to end this madness.

Until then we are all trapped in the belly of Satan, whether we want to open our eyes or not. So far, the United States has been dumping money and not American blood into this cesspool. Will this change when SOS Hillary Clinton's AFRICOM puts boots on the ground?

Joseph Rocha: Gay Former Sailor Details Abuse In Navy Despite Keeping His Sexuality A Secret

2009-10-11T16:18:26Z

I was 18 years old when I landed in the kingdom of Bahrain, off the coast of Saudi Arabia, in the winter of 2005. It was the first time I'd ever left the continental United States. My joints ached after more than 24 hours of travel, but I knew that a new life of service and adventure awaited me on the other side of that aircraft door.

Roman Polanski's Lawyers Meet With DOJ, Argue Against Extradition

2009-10-10T23:23:48Z

Lawyers for Roman Polanski met with U.S. Department of Justice officials to make their case against extraditing the 76-year-old fugitive film director from Switzerland to the U.S., according to court documents released Friday.

Lloyd I. Sederer, MD: Problem Drinking

2009-10-09T18:50:03Z

How many times have you seen on TV or read in the paper of a DUI (driving under the influence) to later find out this person has offended before? Someone is killed every 22 minutes in the USA from an alcohol related crash. Someone is injured in an alcohol related crash on average every minute -- 500,000 people each year in the USA -- and one third of MVAs are associated with intoxication. Yet, we are more active about the health impact of passive smoking than we are about the (passive) victims of drunk driving. But DUIs are only a small part of the consequences of problem drinking.

Crime, including domestic violence and rape, is frequently perpetrated under the influence. Rates of sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV/AIDS, syphilis and gonorrhea, escalate when alcoholic disinhibition is at work. Pregnant women with problem drinking are at higher risk to deliver babies with fetal alcohol syndrome and a host of developmental delays and disabilities. Eighty percent of fire and drowning accidents involve heavy drinking. Alcoholism produces brain atrophy, peripheral nerve disorders, liver disease and pancreatitis, among other health problems. Sure, we have all read that a glass of wine promotes a healthy heart. But three glasses of wine or a six pack actually increases risk of hypertension, diabetes, even breast cancer.

Estimates of the criminal and health impacts of problem drinking are surely underestimated since often the diagnosis is not made, or disguised in order to protect someone or get insurance companies to pay for medical care in emergency rooms, hospitals and doctors' offices. What's more, we don't measure the cost, in terms of suffering, lost productivity and other costs, to family members - nor the often tragic consequences to those injured by cars and crimes as a result of alcohol abuse. Still, global studies (such as by the World Health Organization) attribute alcohol to have about 5% of the global burden of disease and injury (2004). In this country, the cost of alcohol related problems is $186 billion each year.

But this testy problem is not without proven strategies for improvement. What works from a public health point of view is making alcohol less available and more expensive; banning alcohol advertising; and lowering the legal levels of alcohol while driving -- and regularly stopping drivers (sobriety checkpoints). When France and Sweden restricted alcohol advertising it was challenged by the European Commission and the challenge failed. You may want to know that there is little evidence of the effectiveness from media campaigns such as "responsible drinking" (though alcohol manufacturers like to use this method), nor of marketing limitations that are self-imposed by the alcohol industry. Designated driver campaigns when studied have not shown effectiveness.

At the individual person level, researchers have demonstrated we have an effective means of identifying and intervening with people with problem drinking through a simple query by a doctor, nurse or other health professional when a patient comes for a medical visit. Called SBIRT (Screening Brief Intervention and Referral for Treatment) this is done by talking about drinking (counseling) and has shown remarkable impact. The simple, first step (screening) in SBIRT asks three questions: 1) On any day in the last month, have you ever had more than 4 drinks (men) or more than 3 drinks (women)?; 2) Think about your typical week, on average, how many days per week do you drink alcohol?; and 3) On a typical drinking day, how many drinks do you have? Responses above specified levels have the clinician provide brief counseling and referral if the person is ready.

Unhealthy drinking goes down dramatically, just like smoking, when people hear from their doctors that drinking a lot is unhealthy, that their doctors are concerned about the potential of drinking on their health, and they are given opportunities to consider and take action.

Results from a nation-wide SBIRT study of more than 600,000 patients showed nearly 40% of heavy drinkers cut down or stopped drinking six months after screening and brief counseling. A study in a large urban hospital found that brief alcohol counseling of injured patients reduced re-injury and re-hospitalization by about 50%. Medical procedure codes now exist so primary care doctors can bill for SBIRT. In other words, we have a simple, low burden, effective means of helping large numbers of problem drinkers. Studies of mandatory treatment, in fact, show far less robust effects than SBIRT (though this could represent differences in the severity of the problem).

Problem drinking is all too common. Solutions are clear and proven. But their use is rare. The safety, health and economic costs of problem drinking are legion. We can make a difference and we are hardly paying attention.

The opinions expressed herein are solely my own as a psychiatrist and public health advocate.

Lloyd I Sederer, MD, written with Eric Goplerud, PhD, Director of the Center for Integrated Behavioral Health Policy at George Washington University Medical Center.

Jared Rohrig: Ex-Cop Pleads Not Guilty To Posing As Twin Brother For Sex, Raping Woman

2009-10-08T08:42:26Z

MILFORD, Conn. — A former Connecticut police officer has pleaded not guilty to allegations he posed as his twin brother to have sex with a woman, and then raped her when she realized the ruse and tried to leave.

Twenty-five-year-old Jared Rohrig of Milford appeared in Milford Superior Court on Wednesday. He says he's innocent of first-degree sexual assault and criminal impersonation charges.