Hey, Can A Woman "Ask To Get Raped"?

BillRM and Hawkeye demonstrate rape denial and rape myths and rape apology to such an extreme degree, the best thing is just to let them go on talking--to each other. They illustrate the problem of the "rape culture" beautifully.

She gotten her headlines and that is all that matter to her in her quest to paint men as dangerous predators and women at preys to them.

And, right on target, BillRM hastily posted--post after post--of "false allegation" stories, followed by Hawkeye immediately questioning the truthfulness of the 16 year old who alleged she was raped this week in a bathroom in her high school

those false allegations comprise only about 4- 8% of reported rapes (about the same percentage of false accusations as occurs for every other type of crime) he continues to insist that almost half of all reported rapes are false allegations

The New York Times
October 8, 2011
In This Rape Center, the Patient Was 3
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone

IN a rape treatment center here, I met a 3-year-old patient named Jessica, who was cuddling a teddy bear.

Jessica had seemed sick and was losing weight, but she wouldn’t say what was wrong. Her mother took her to a clinic, and a doctor ferreted out the truth. She had been raped and was infected with gonorrhea.

As I stood in the rape center corridor, reeling from the encounter with Jessica, a 4-year-old girl was brought in for treatment. She, too, turned out to have been infected with a sexually transmitted disease in the course of a rape. Also in the center that day were a 10-year-old and a 12-year-old, along with older girls.

Sexual violence is a public health crisis in much of the world, and women and girls ages 15 to 44 are more likely to be maimed or killed by men than by malaria, cancer, war or traffic accidents combined, according to a 2005 study. Such violence remains a significant problem in the United States, but it’s particularly prevalent in countries like Sierra Leone, Liberia or Congo that have endured civil war. The pattern is that after peace arrives, men stop shooting each other but continue to rape women and girls at staggering rates — and often at staggeringly young ages.

The International Rescue Committee, which runs the rape center here in Freetown, the nation’s capital, says that 26 percent of the rape victims it treats are 11 years old or younger. Last month, the center said, a 10-month-old baby was brought in for treatment after a rape.

“The girls are being blamed,” noted Amie Kandeh, a heroic American-educated Sierra Leonean who runs women’s programs here for the International Rescue Committee (www.rescue.org). “If a girl is raped and she’s above 5, then it’s the way she was dressed. But we’ve had a girl of 2-and-a-half months who was raped. Was it the way her mom put her diaper on?”

That 2-and-a-half-month-old baby died of internal injuries sustained during the rape, said Ms. Kandeh.

The struggle against sexual violence will be won or lost primarily within each country, but the United States could help if Congress reintroduced and passed the International Violence Against Women Act, which would take modest steps to raise the profile of such violence. And the United States could hurt the effort if House Republicans succeed in eliminating financing for the United Nations Population Fund, which works in places like Sierra Leone to combat rape.

Ultimately, the only way to end the epidemic of sexual violence is to end the silence and impunity and send people to prison. But that almost never happens. Ms. Kandeh says that the International Rescue Committee rape centers have treated more than 9,000 patients since 2003 — and fewer than one-half of 1 percent of the rapes have resulted in criminal convictions.

In the eastern city of Kenema, a day’s drive from the capital, I met a 13-year-old girl, named TaJoe, who was being treated for a rape — and whose case underscores why survivors keep quiet.

TaJoe is a bright seventh grader, ranking third in her class of 18. One evening recently, she needed to use the outhouse, some distance away, and she asked her sister to escort her. The sister scoffed and said she’d be fine. TaJoe went by herself, and she says that on her way back she was grabbed by a businessman, thrown to the ground, and raped.

Ashamed and afraid, TaJoe confided in no one. But she developed a sexually transmitted infection that caused a raging fever. She stopped eating, and her health deteriorated. When her family took her to a clinic, doctors discovered the problem and she “confessed.”

The businessman was suspected of raping two other girls in the village, but he also was educated and rich. When TaJoe implicated him, the police acted quickly. They detained TaJoe and her mother, accusing them of sullying the name of a respected member of the community.

The police later released them, but the episode terrified TaJoe. Meanwhile, she says, the businessman promised that if he remained free he would pay all of TaJoe’s future school fees — a bribe that gives her hope of completing an education and transforming her life.

When I asked TaJoe what should be done with the case, she was adamant. “I do not want prosecution,” she said. “I don’t want to make trouble.”

I asked whether the businessman will continue to rape girls. TaJoe said listlessly that maybe he had learned his lesson. She knows that her well-being in the village — and, perhaps, her hopes of a medical career — depend upon her surrender.

“My fear is that they will go and arrest this man,” she told me.

So is the situation hopeless? To my surprise, I found a hint of progress, especially when a teenage girl asked me to help capture her rapist. I’ll tell that story in my next column.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-In-This-Rape-Center-the-Patient-Was-3.html?_r=2

Still such areas had one hell of a lot greater problems such as whole scale genocides of whole peoples.

Short of the western world being willing to once more take over ruling those people for a few generation I do not see what can done.

Footnote even if we did so the raping of children would be fairly far down the lists of problems that would need to be deal with.

-you can't understand any man who views the global pattern of rape, not just as crimes against women, but as intolerable crimes against humanity which demand that voices be raised in protest.

The New York Times
October 12, 2011
One Girl’s Courage
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

KENEMA, Sierra Leone

Early one morning, I came across the actress Eva Mendes, crying. She said that she was overwhelmed by all the girls she had met here in Sierra Leone who had been raped — and by her inability to help.

Ms. Mendes and I had just arrived here in West Africa to collaborate on a PBS documentary on some inspiring women around the world. In our first full day of reporting, we had met 3- and 4-year-old girls who had been raped.

It was heartbreaking, yet we ultimately found a hint of progress, partly because of the grit of a 15-year-girl, Fulamatu. A ninth grader and star of her class, Fulamatu dreams of going to university and becoming a bank manager.

Living right next door is Victor S. Palmer, a 41-year-old Pentecostal pastor and friend of her family, so close that Fulamatu calls him “uncle.” Yet, one day in May, Fulamatu says, the pastor threw her on his bed and raped her.

“I was scared, so I didn’t tell my parents,” Fulamatu remembered. He continued the attacks, she said, and she became sick and lost weight. Finally, after two other girls reported that the pastor had tried to rape them, her parents confronted her. Fulamatu told them that she had been repeatedly raped, and a doctor determined that she had a severe case of gonorrhea.

Fulamatu wanted to prosecute the pastor, and I watched as she made her statement to the police. She was scared and embarrassed but also determined. The police set out to arrest the pastor, but they couldn’t find him.

That’s when Fulamatu had an idea: If I, as a foreigner, called his cellphone, he might agree to meet. After concluding that it would be a mistake to let an alleged rapist go free if I could prevent it, I telephoned the pastor. I introduced myself and asked to see him that afternoon. When he showed up, the police grabbed him.

The pastor firmly denied all charges. At the police station, he told me that he had never had sex, forced or consensual, with Fulamatu or tried to rape the other girls. He could not explain why the girls would say that he had attacked them.

That evening, the neighborhood celebrated outside the police station. One girl after another came up to me and described how the pastor had been preying on girls. Fulamatu was thrilled at the prospect of justice. Impunity seemed to be eroding.

Yet progress is agonizingly slow, and the International Rescue Committee says that only one-half of 1 percent of the rapes it deals with in Sierra Leone lead to convictions. I soon saw the challenges first hand.

After Mr. Palmer was arrested, his family members came calling on Fulamatu’s family. They prostrated themselves before Fulamatu’s feet and begged forgiveness.

Under pressure, Fulamatu’s father announced that he forgave the pastor. Fulamatu’s mother told me that the family would not testify against Mr. Palmer at a trial.

The police moved on their own and released the pastor. He is now free again.

“This is very common,” Amie Kandeh of the International Rescue Committee, who battles sexual violence here, told me. She routinely sees cases dropped.

Then it got worse. Fulamatu’s father, humiliated by the furor surrounding his daughter, threatened to evict her from their house. Her mother prepared to send Fulamatu to a remote village with no school. It looked as if Fulamatu would be forced to end her studies and have her life’s hopes destroyed.

I left Fulamatu my cellphone so that she could contact me for help if necessary. That evening she phoned: Her father had kicked her out on the street. Then her parents confiscated the phone.

It’s because of girls like Fulamatu that I want Congress to pass the International Violence Against Women Act. It wouldn’t solve all the problems, but it would encourage countries like Sierra Leone to take sexual violence more seriously. And shining a light on oppression helps overcome it.

For Fulamatu, the situation is in flux. Under pressure, the family grudgingly took her back in, and the International Rescue Committee is helping her. Ms. Mendes is hoping to pay for her to go to a boarding school, where she could get an education and be safe.

There is so much in this case to shed angry tears about. Yet Fulamatu herself, while utterly humiliated, is dry-eyed and strong. She misted only when I grabbed her by the shoulders and told her that she had done nothing wrong.

It’s worth emulating her toughness and resolve as the path to change. As more girls show Fulamatu’s courage, we can some day break taboos about sexual violence and inch toward a global recognition that it is more shameful to rape than to be raped.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/opinion/one-girls-courage.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

He keeps beating away at that drum but he never gets very far, because what he talks about is not a reality in America.

Friday, October 14, 2011
Kidnap, rape, choking alleged
Woman found covered in blood
By Craig S. Semon
TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WEBSTER — A Worcester man is accused of raping and choking a female acquaintance and hitting her with a rock after the two had started out for Sunday church services.

Manuel S. Sanabria, 23, of 30 Everett Gaylord Blvd., Worcester, is charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, mayhem, aggravated rape and armed robbery. He was arraigned yesterday in Dudley District Court. Judge Margaret R. Guzman set bail at $50,000, although Assistant District Attorney Courtney Price, citing among other reasons previous charges against Mr. Sanabria, had asked for $100,000.

The judge ordered Mr. Sanabria, should he post bail, to stay away from the woman and wear a GPS monitoring device. The district attorney’s office did not have information last night on whether he made bail.

Police became aware of the case Sunday, when Dudley police received a report at 12:51 p.m. that a woman covered in blood was walking in the Chase Avenue area of Dudley. Because Chase Avenue runs through both Webster and Dudley, a Webster officer went to assist the Dudley officers.

The woman, in her early 20s, told police she had been raped and beaten before finally being released by Mr. Sanabria, whom she has known for approximately eight years.

She said she picked up Mr. Sanabria at 11:30 a.m. Sunday in Worcester to bring him to church in the Webster-Dudley area. When they got to Webster, Mr. Sanabria asked the woman to stop at his brother’s apartment on Main Street so he could pick something up, she told police.

Once she parked the car, she told police, Mr. Sanabria forced her into the back seat, then drove to a secluded spot, where he raped her and then choked her until she lost consciousness.

She said that when she regained consciousness, Mr. Sanabria struck her repeatedly in the head and face with a rock.

She told police she could feel and see the blood running down her face. She said she pleaded with Mr. Sanabria to stop hurting her and to let her go, according to police.

She told police Mr. Sanabria eventually stopped the attack and told her he would let her live if she promised not to report him.

Because of the severity of the wounds to her head and face, she was taken directly to UMass Memorial Medical Center — University Campus in Worcester, police said.

Officers said they found the woman’s vehicle in a lot behind 118 Main St., Webster. They said they saw large amounts of blood in the interior as well as blood smears on the exterior. Also, officers saw a blood-stained rock on the back seat, the police report said.

Worcester police arrested Mr. Sanabria Tuesday on a warrant with the charges stemming from the alleged attack, and also on a previous arrest warrant from another case.

According to court documents, Mr. Sanabria is charged with mayhem because he tried to maim or disfigure the woman by hitting her with a rock. He is charged with armed robbery because he was allegedly armed with a dangerous weapon (a rock) and allegedly stole $400 and a cellphone from the woman.

In February, Mr. Sanabria was charged with breaking and entering in the nighttime with intent to commit a felony, vandalizing property, assault and battery, intimidation of a witness, and threatening to commit a crime (assault and battery). In May, he was charged with assault and battery. All the charges were from Worcester Central District Court.
http://www.telegram.com/article/20111014/NEWS/110149735/1003/NEWS03

Committed crusaders, like Kristof, make self-involved people like you seem like a joke--and a sick joke at that.