By GottaLaff Our friend and former co-editor, Cliff Schecter, has written a piece over at Huffington Post. He has graciously given me permission to share excerpts with you.
In his piece, he drops this little bombshell: There is a prison in Texas where 15.7% of the inmates were raped last year, by other inmates, or by those who are supposed to be "guarding" them.
This includes over 100,000 men, women and yes -- CHILDREN-- a fact that should be every bit as shocking, embarrassing and downright sickening as those photos from Abu Ghraib.
We're not quite as beacon-y as we should be, now are we?
It is currently Sexual Assault Awareness month, and we are approaching the end of a deadline (June 2010) for the Attorney General to act on recommendations mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), passed in 2003.
That bill was co-sponsored by Teddy Kennedy and Jeff Sessions and signed by George W. Bush. Now that's noteworthy. Democrats and Republicans working together? Who'd a thunk it?
In order to make sure the Obama Administration follows through, weeds out known predators, provides additional monitoring, and increases the overall transparency of our corrections system, you can take action.
Keshia Cantor, left, talks to her mom, Pam Yates, about a religious pamphlet that was given to her by a Hi-Lo Burger customer that takes issue with women’s clothing.
A 19-year-old girl was handed a pamphlet through a drive-thru window at the fast food restaurant where she works. She was dressed pretty much as you see in the photo above. “Women & Girls” was written across the top of the pamphlet.
“You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed,” it begins. “Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?”
It continues with one essential theme: The sins of men are, in part, the fault of women, specifically women in tight-fitting clothing. [...]
“Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin,” the leaflet states. “By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”
The hand-out is signed “anonymous.”
So all those elderly women and toddlers who have been raped asked for it?
Sandra G. Rasnake, the sexual assault program director at Bristol’s Crisis Center:
Victim blaming is the most prominent reason rapes are so rarely reported and even more rarely taken to trial. [...] It’s become a societal defense mechanism for dealing with issues of sexual assault. [...]
“Blaming victims is the way we who have not been victimized feel safer,” Rasnake said. “If it’s their fault then I’m safer because I wouldn’t do that. If someone steals your purse, can you imagine someone asking why you had a purse? If you are sexually assaulted, it is not because you come with breasts.”
Nothing like perpetuating the worst kind of message, huh? Lives are destroyed because of a selfish desire to feel more secure and blameless. Or to justify some religious belief. Hey, she asked for it! Slut! Okay, time to get back into my safe little cocoon... reality be damned... until I'm the rape victim.
“It’s insulting to men,” she said. “The men that I know and associate with are not so lust-driven that they cannot control their urges. By this person’s argument, everyone working at Hooters deserves to be raped.”
That last part reminds me of the controversy over Don't Ask Don't Tell. I've said this in the past, but it bears repeating: The implication is that gay men and women have so little control over their sexual urges that they have to be treated differently from straight men and women. Discrimination is justified.
So what about all those military rapes by straight men that have been reported?
To paint any group with a broad brush is absurd.
To blame women for being brutalized, both mentally and physically, is equally absurd.
To spread sick, destructive lies by way of religious literature is, well, a sin.
I've been out for a day or two, and Paddy has been covering like a champ. While I catch up on the mounds of e-mails and tweets, and Paddy takes a well-deserved break, we all benefit from a very welcome guest post.
TPC has generous, talented friends in high places who offered to lighten the load a little: The sharp as a tack radio/TV personality/blogger Shannyn Moore (you've seen her on Countdown with Keith Olbermann) and the very accomplished writer/investigative journalist Allen McDuffee (who has been a consistently wonderful supporter of this blog).
Here is their very welcome contribution, and we are honored to be able to include their excellent work on TPC:
Hats off to Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo III for taking the heat off McChrystal and Petraeus on Afghanistan by telling women (and the men who impregnate them) that if they get pregnant on his watch in Northern Iraq, it will be a punishable offense, which may include jail time.
Yesterday, Amanda Terkel at Think Progress cleared up one of the immediate misconceptions about Cucolo’s policy: pregnancy by sexual assault.
To ensure a consistent and measured approach in applying this policy, I am the only individual who passes judgment on these cases. I decide every case based on the unique facts of each Soldier's situation. Of the very few cases handled thus far, it has been a male Soldier who received the most severe punishment; he committed adultery as well. Though there have not been any cases of sexual assault, any pregnancy that is the product of a sexual assault would most certainly not be considered here; our total focus would be on the health and well-being of the victim and justice for the perpetrator.
Cucolo is reportedly backing off his policy, according to an ABC news report today, saying “I see absolutely no circumstance where I would punish a female soldier by court martial for a violation ... none…I fully intend to handle these cases through lesser disciplinary action."
Whether or not the policy is legal, implemented or not implemented, here are 8 ways this shows how wrong-headed the Army is on pregnancy and a whole lot more.
1) Fornication, ok. Pregnancy, not ok. This one kind of speaks for itself.
2) The new military directives include the dismissal and possible criminal charges against becoming pregnant, or impregnating a service member. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander…that’s fair…but what if the gander is a Blackwater contractor? How many times have you seen a successful prosecution of a military contractor?
3) Speaking of contractors, which one will win the Pentagon contract for providing $10 condoms, $200 diaphragms, $25 contraceptive sponges or whatever else? Seems like Halliburton territory. They’re the ones with the biggest Dick in their past, after all.
4) Controlling and punishing pregnancy in the military has become a priority over, you know, actual criminal behavior. We all know how badly sexual assault escalated since the Iraq invasion, but nearly 7 years later not much has changed. This month, a military task force reported its findings after a year-long survey. Not good, according to The Virginian Pilot, saying that the report concluded “too often the perpetrators go free and the victims do not get the assistance they deserve.”
5) After lowering the standards for the US military to include felons, including rapists can we really afford to lose more service people? Think about it. If you’re gay…pack your bags. If you’re pregnant, you are out of there. If you got someone pregnant…well, you’re out too. If you’re a convicted rapist…sign here.
6) So many questions about abortion…
Who supports this? The Anti-Choice groups? What are the chances of a back door barrack abortion to save a job? Will military docs provide Plan B or an abortion? Will abortions be recommended (read: coerced)? Will the Pentagon find a way to federally fund abortion to SUPPORT THE TROOPS killing THE TERRORISTS? What will it take to get a front row seat to watch Sen. Ben Nelson blow a gasket when he finds out.
And what will conservatives do when their two favorite pastimes collide: dropping bombs and controlling women’s bodies?
7) War is hell. Is it hell enough that you’d get pregnant for a “Get Out Of War Free” card?
8) It’s got to be difficult to feel pretty and pregnant in camouflage…nothing quite like strapping a gun on a baby bump. Can’t imagine there’s anything much more life affirming after a long day of death and destruction than human contact…in a good way.
Ok, ok—in all seriousness, there must be some cases of female service members getting pregnant intentionally to get out of combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But there must be better ways of addressing that concern of Cucolo’s. Let’s hear your ideas below.
Let me know if the video shows up for you. It's not showing up on my computer, and I have no idea why.
Evangelist Tony Alamo is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison after an Arkansas judge sentenced him to 175 years in prison Friday on charges that included taking minors across state lines for sex, according to prosecutors.
An amendment that would prevent the government from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.
Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.
Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.
Inouye's office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up. The Senate is considering taking out a provision known as the Title VII claim, which (if removed) would allow victims of assault or rape to bring suit against the individual perpetrator but not the contractor who employed him or her.
Lobbyists, special interests, Big Everyone: They own us. It's time to replace these so-called lawmakers with people who actually care about Americans. This is stomach-turning.
Unacceptable.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
We have some hard work ahead of us. Need some motivation? Reread this post and watch the video above.
Sure enough, the right wing Heritage Foundation -- who, along with the American Enterprise Institute, is a favorite of the "respected" RWNJs --wrote a convoluted defense of the 30 GOP Senators who claimed that not interfering with Halliburton/KBR and other leeches on the government was more important than holding them accountable for preventing rape in the workplace. [...]
So now we are discussing the vast right wing infrastructure created over three decades supporting rape. If you are a woman, how can you vote Republican? It's a question of backing a party that enables rape, period, whatever specious defense they cook up. [...]
I guess if you're in the GOP, rape and racism are as American as apple pie and a noose.
Didn't they used to lynch black men for just looking at a white woman the wrong way?
On October 13th, 2009, to kick off a national campaign to educate the public about a new Department of Defense study that says 1 in 3 women in the military are raped, Staff. Sgt. Sandra Lee comes forward for the first time to announce to the public that she had been raped twice while deployed to Iraq. A press conference was held by the Times Sq. Recruiting station, and then a march was conducted.
PDF of a Department of Defense study here, titled: Factors associated with women's risk of rape in the military.
Annie approached me with her story voluntarily, and her mother graciously gave me permission to interview her. I had no idea she was related to Samantha Geimer. My mouth literally dropped open.
I was interested in Annie's feelings about her aunt's ordeal and subsequent attention, but only that. The rest of the scandal has been covered and re-covered. But how did Annie take the news? What was it like to realize a family member was the center of a decades-long scandal? How did it affect her, a young teenager? How is she doing?
I can answer that last one: Just fine, thank you. In fact, she's one intelligent, funny, insightful, amazing 15-year-old.
Here is Annie's story, from her point of view (she talked, I took it all down):
I was 13. I Googled my own name one day, I was bored. My name is so close to hers [her aunt's] that it came up. I did an image search and saw my aunt! I saw all these interviews, and Polanski came up, too. I clicked on a CNN piece, a recap of the story.
I got chills. I couldn't believe that happened to someone so close to me. I mean, she's been to my house! So I asked my mom about it. "So , do you know about Aunt Sam?" She said, "Well, what do you know?" She laughed at me Googling myself and then explained everything in detail. "You're gonna find out anyway." She explained who Polanski was, and how they met.
It really disgusts me. What if that happened to me?? He's so famous! If it happened now, it would be like, they'd say I'm trying to get my 15 minutes of fame.
Seeing how people sleep with this person or just go out with that person... wow.
I'd just seen "Rosemary's Baby". I felt, well, really eerie about that.
I felt bad for her, or that it would happen to anybody, being on the news all the time. I can't even put into words, someone so genius and Hollywood, such a great director, could do anything so vile and disgusting.
I'm not very close with my aunt, but she came over from Hawaii to see us, so...
I tried to talk to my dad. I was worried that he'd try to hush me up about it. I wanted to see how he felt about it, but he doesn't like to talk about feelings. I never found out how he felt [Note: Samantha Geimer is his sister-in-law], he just said it was an awful thing to happen. I felt sad; it's something you can't talk about?
Everyone in the world can talk about it except the people related to it.
Mom [who Annie lives with, her parents are divorced] did talk about it. She said not to see Aunt Sam differently, it doesn't make her disgusting or a victim all the time. She's still my aunt, not a 13-year-old victim.
The next time it came up was when Polanski got an HBO special or something, about his life. I was at my dad's. He just got an e-mail of photos from Aunt Sam, from her trip to New York. She went there for the HBO premier and to do a bunch of TV appearances, the Today Show, others.
I asked, "Oh, is this from what happened? Because they're honoring him in a way!" And he said, "Yeah."
A few days later, a teacher asked if I was related. I was 14. They were surprised I shrugged it off. They always are, people who ask me.
I DVR'd a show, E Channel's Top 100 Shocking Moments. That was one of them. I was like, "This is crazy!" I said to Nana, "She's on TV again," and we watched it together. We chuckled about how we knew all the names and everything... not at the situation.
It's crazy how on Nancy Grace, people argue about it, practically spitting in each other's faces. They think they know her.
I'm sympathetic that her name comes up a lot, and now people talk about her publicly, judge her. Were you there? I wasn't! I don't know if I could handle that. You can't go up there and defend her.
Personally, I think Aunt Sam has a screw loose, from all her "extra curricular activities." [Those will not be divulged here, per Annie's request] The only reason she got the house in Hawaii was from the payoff. She needed to get away, raise her family there. [For the record, Annie is very sympathetic.]
Generally, I don't define her by the Polanski thing, but by the way she acts.
Every girl has a "girl sense". Didn't she have that? I'd never get into a hot tub! Her mother... It's such a stage mother thing to do. I wonder how she feels. I'm a 15-year-old girl. I'd never leave my child anywhere, even with a celebrity! You don't know who that person is behind the pictures.
I think she was very naive to stay there. I would have gotten the "girl sense, the creep feeling". Am I the only one who is that intuitive? Sometimes I get that feeling just from a picture!
I used to really care, feel really angry, when they talked about it. How can they say those things? But now, I don't really care as much, because we had a sort of falling out. I care for her, have sympathy for her, but don't really care about how it affects her now.
I think it's really crazy how small the world really is. My friend's grandfather was the first cop on the scene of the Manson murders. Six degrees of.... me.
Thank you Annie, for sharing your feelings so freely and for your unique viewpoint.
You have great instincts and a great head on your shoulders. Let's hope more girls pay attention to their "girl sense" or the "creep feeling". And maybe, hopefully, your words will help others.
Here's a video of someone who should have been an sworn in as senator months before he was:
I've written about Jones over and over again, distraught over what she was forced to endure and the treatment she got (unfortunately, the archives were lost when we moved to this site). This is very, very welcome news:
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.” [...]
On the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) spoke against the amendment, calling it “a political attack directed at Halliburton.” Franken responded, “This amendment does not single out a single contractor. This amendment would defund any contractor that refuses to give a victim of rape their day in court.”
In the end, Franken won the debate. His amendment passed by a 68-30 vote, earning the support of 10 Republican senators including that of newly-minted Florida Sen. George LeMieux. [...]
Appearing with Franken after the vote, an elated Jones expressed her deep appreciation. “It means the world to me,” she said of the amendment’s passage. “It means that every tear shed to go public and repeat my story over and over again to make a difference for other women was worth it.”
This was long overdue. Thank you, Senator Franken, Take a look at the 30 Rushpublic senators who voted against his amendment. They include Vitter, Sessions, DeMint, and, well....
... one of the stellar "'Family Values'-rape's-okay-if-it's-committed-by-special-friends" senators (h/t: John Amussen):
In 2005, Jamie Lee Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. In an apparent attempt to cover up the incident, the company then put her in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and “warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” Even more insultingly, the DOJ resisted bringing any criminal charges in the matter.
Are you getting angry yet? Good. But guess what? A ray of sunshine, a silver lining, a moment of sanity... an actual victory:
KBR argued that Jones’ employment contract warranted her claims being heard in private arbitration — without jury, judge, public record, or transcript of the proceedings. After 15 months in arbitration, Jones and her lawyers went to court to fight the KBR claims. Yesterday, a court ruled in favor of Jones.” Mother Jones reports:
Jones argued that the alleged gang rape was not related to her employment and thus, wasn’t covered by the arbitration agreement. Finally, two years later, a federal court has sensibly agreed with her. Tuesday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2 to 1 ruling, found her alleged injuries were not, in fact, in any way related to her employment and thus, not covered by the contract.
One of the judges who ruled in her favor, Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale, is a West Point grad, Vietnam vet, and one of the court’s most conservative members, a sign, perhaps, of just how bad the facts are in this case. It’s a big victory, but a bitter one that shows just how insidious mandatory arbitration is. It’s taken Jones three years of litigation just to get to the point where she can finally sue the people who allegedly wronged her. It will be many more years before she has a shot at any real justice.
Earlier I posted about the Abu Ghraib photos and that their existence has been confirmed. I went back and reread the article I linked to. Please go read the whole thing, but this part stood out:
The most prominent victim in the past of [Pentagon spokesperson, Bryan G. Whitman's, who came to prominence during the Bush administration] disinformation may have been none other than Barack Obama. On the campaign trail, in Austin, Texas, candidate Obama said he had gotten a message from an Army captain in Iraq who described how his unit had been shorted in munitions and equipment. I learned from reporters that Whitman started a whispering campaign with the Pentagon press corps telling them (not for attribution) that he didn’t believe Obama’s claims were true. Whitman’s game, however, was stopped by ABC reporter Jake Tapper, who tracked down the captain, interviewed him and fully verified the account.
Bryan Whitman remains on the job in the Pentagon today. But the effort to suppress the shocking photographs is already failing, as they leak to the public and reliable sources verify their authenticity. A senior military officer told me that in the months before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Pentagon officials engaged in strange maneuvers to avoiding viewing the pictures. That, he noted, didn’t make the photos any less real. But it apparently made it easier for Pentagon officials to dissemble about them. That process hasn’t stopped.
This back and forth about the photos is dizzying. And what about the videos that were referred to? My posts about all of this are here, here, here, here, and here.
[Y]esterday, Scott Horton reported that he has confirmed that the photos do, in fact, “depict sexually explicit acts,” including “a government contractor engaged in an act of sodomy with a male prisoner and scenes of forced masturbation,” as well as “penetration involving phosphorous sticks and brooms.” Horton writes further:
A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released. … Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position. [...]
Still other withheld photographs have been circulating among U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq. One soldier showed them to me, including a photograph in which a male in a U.S. military uniform receives oral sex from a female prisoner.
Horton also obtained what he characterizes as “rarely seen Abu Ghraib torture photos,” which can be viewed here.
It looks like it's time for someone to sort all of this out. Again, IMHO, the ObamAdministration should control the message. Leaks like this are already getting out of hand (as you can see by the number of posts I've done on this subject), and eventually, the photos/videos themselves will make their way out to the public.
In 2007, shortly after he was forced into retirement, Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba, made a startling admission. During the course of his investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib Taguba said he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.”
Taguba told New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh that he saw other graphic photos and videos as well, including one depicting the “sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees.”
That video as well as photographs Taguba saw of U.S. soldiers raping and torturing Iraqi prisoners, remains in the possession of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID).
Taguba said he did not discuss the details of the more graphic photographs and videos he saw in his voluminous report on the abuses at Abu Ghraib because of the Army’s ongoing criminal probe and the photographs’ “extremely sensitive nature.”
Taguba's report on the widespread of abuse of prisoners did say that he found credible a report that a soldier had sodomized “a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.” [...]
But the photographs described by the Telegraph are not the ones that were at the center of the five-year-old lawsuit between the Bush administration and the ACLU that Obama had agreed earlier this year to release.
Two weeks ago, after Obama decided against releasing the photographs, the Telegraph published a story along with several pictures depicting Iraqi prisoners being abused claiming those too were the ones Obama was withholding. But that report was also incorrect as the photographs the Telegraph published had first surfaced in 2006. The newspaper has since changed the headline and first paragraph of its report.
The photographs Obama has decided to withhold, as I first reported May 15, are ones that were taken in 2003 and 2004 in which U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan took dozens of pictures of their colleagues pointing assault rifles and pistols at the heads and backs of hooded and bound detainees.
Another photograph, found on a government computer, showed two male soldiers and one female soldier pointing a broom to one detainee “as if I was sticking the end of a broom stick into [his] rectum,” according to the female soldier’s account as told to an Army criminal investigator.
I found the documents that describes many of the photographs that were set for release this month on the ACLU’s website. [...] Those files can be downloaded here: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5].
Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney, confirmed that the photographs described in documents posted on the group's website were those that President Obama has decided to withhold fearing the disclosure would stoke anti-American sentiment and endanger U.S. troops.
That does not mean the photographs and videos described by Taguba do not exist, as Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs seemed to suggest in response to the Telegraph’s report Thursday, which was also harshly critical of the British press in general. It's just not the photographs in question.
So, we don't know if the pictures Taguba refers to are the pictures which were covered under thee ACLU's FOIA request, and whether they still exist. We do know that accusations of rape were investigated under both the Taguba and Fay reports, but can't be sure of the disposition of them. And again, we don't know if these pictures refer to those specific allegations or if they pertain to different incidents. The Pentagon denies that there are any pictures which depict these heinous acts. In other words, confusion still reigns and suspicions run high.
The administration claims that it withheld the FOIA pictures because they were more of the same and would inflame anti-American hatred which, as I said, always seemed contradictory. And now it appears that they may actually show something much worse than we've seen --- and the administration looks as if it's covering that up by saying that there's nothing new. Perhaps they aren't, but their conflicting statements and refusal to release the pictures quite naturally raises these questions.
The administration needs to realize that it can't avoid this issue even if it wants to and it's not useful to try to finesse it or kick the issue down the road. There are simply too many lies under the bridge --- it's impossible to take the government at its word. If sexual assaults beyond those which we already know about and saw evidence of (and which were prosecuted) happened, then it will come out. The only question is whether it will be a drip, drip, drip of toxic revelations and speculations that will continue to poison this country and its relationship to the world or whether it will be an official, transparent accounting of what happened. Either way, there's no running away from it.
Please go read the whole thing. Digby addresses my own struggles with this, and my tendency toward getting this out in the open (not literally, there are ways to tell the story without blasting photos all over the airwaves).
I've maintained that the ObamAdministration needs to take control of the message, and not give the appearance of hiding anything. The skill and wisdom with which they do that will determine the way the world reacts, especially considering the horrific revelations have already leaked out, and inevitably, the photos themselves will, too.
My post about the so-called censored Abu Ghraib "rape" photos has caused quite a stir on Twitter and elsewhere. The article I drew from has caused quite a stir, period. Here is Robert Gibb's response:
Did he just call Major General Taguba a liar, er, mistaken? I know he meant all that for the reporter, but...
Afghan women in Kabul protest new marital rape law. Getty image.
New York Times: in Kabul, about 300 women protest a new law permitting, among other things, marital rape; male hecklers outnumber the women three-to-one.
CW: these brave women deserve inter-national support.
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