Castrating Sex Offenders

Every time there’s a conversation about what an appropriate punishment for rape is, someone is bound to talk about how castration is the answer.

A Louisiana Senate Committee seemed to agree when it considered castration to supplement (and not to supplant) punishment in cases of ‘aggravated rape, sexual battery, selling pornography that shows minors under 17 years old, incest, simple kidnapping of children under the age of 14, and child abuse’. [1]

The castration envisaged is through the use of a drug called MPA (medroxyprogestrone acetate) although an offender may choose physical castration.

The bill is by Senator Nick Gautreaux, an Abbeville Democrat, and will now go to the full Senate.

Links:
[1] 2theadvocate.com/news/17412114.html
[2] nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/senate_panel_approves_bill_req.html
[3] foxnews.com/story/0,2933,348171,00.html

Sisters in a Circus

I know that they said that circuses with animals violated animal rights but … am too tired to say anything coherent. Just came across a story about two Bulgarian sisters in a circus which left me stunned:
One was forced to swim in a tank with flesh eating pirhanas and the other was forced into a container where snakes were tossed at her.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080326/od_nm/circus_dc

The News

Reading the RBI Act. The news playing in the background. Not really paying attention to it but this is what I’ve heard of in the last 40 minutes or so:

Young British girl who supposedly drowned was apparently raped and murdered — her mother claims that the police are trying to cover up the crime

30 year old woman shackled for seven years by her parents supposedly because of being mentally ill

Man married 6 women in 3 years to torture them for dowry with the aid of his parents
Woman killed due to domestic violence

Ugh!

Self Blame

I’m beginning to think that what is most attractive about blaming oneself for the things which happen in one’s life, or taking responsibility for them, is that when you say, “If I had done something differently, the result would have been different,” what you’re effectively saying is that you are in control of your life in some way, that it’s your own choices which have led you to where you are. In many ways, it’s much easier to do that than it is to say, “What happened was not a result of my own choices,” because that is a statement which automatically implies that you had no control over what happened. And not being in control can be truly frightening.

Link: Rape Recovery Journal

“January 26th 2000 Oh these flashbacks are killing me. My heart is hurting so badly. IF this is HEALING, I dont want to do it anymore!”
http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/AmysAnger/Journal.html

'Herland'

Debs from The Burning Times writes about Umoja:
“In 1990, Rebecca Lolosoli founded a women-only village in Kenya called Umoja (”unity” in Kiswahili). The village was first established by 15 women, and by 2005 the number of women living there had risen to 48. The village is a refuge for women fleeing their husband’s abuse. The women survive by selling their brightly-coloured bead necklaces to tourists, and this has been so successful that the village has even come under attack from jealous local men.”
It’s an inspiring story.

Links:

[1] Umoja Uaso women group: http://www.jambosafaris.com/umojacharity.htm

[2] Debs’ post: http://burningtimes1645.blogspot.com/2008/02/umoja-women-only-village-in-kenya.html

[3] The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/16/wkenya16.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/07/16/ixworld.html

Prosecution for Obscene Writing

ABC reports that Karen Fletcher, a woman who wrote sexually explicit stories involving children is now being prosecuted for obscenity. The woman claims that she wrote the stories to deal with her own abuse as a child, and that she charged the 29 subscribers to her site so that she could run it and to ensure that children wouldn't be able to access the material. The stories were apparently not accompanied by any pictures and this is one of the few instances where the written word alone has been attacked. The lawyers involved in the case say that the trial will probably focus on whether the stories have any literary or artistic merit.
I can see how writing such stories can be cathartic although I'm not sure if it's a good idea to post them on the Net but posting them online seems to have more to do with bad judgment / poor taste than with criminal intent. Also, I'm not sure I understand the artistic merit argument: does it mean that if you are a particularly good writer, you can write about 'obscence' subjects and that if you aren't, your writing about exactly the same subject would make you a criminal?
Although I do sympathise with the author, I hate the idea of child porn. The result is that I don't know what to make of this particular case (other than to say that when it comes to child porn, I'm sure that there are many other people around who deserve to be prosecuted far more than Ms. Fletcher).
Link: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=4222798&page=1

Healing

One question. When something unpleasant happens, how long is an acceptable amount of time to grieve? Does such a timeframe exist at all? Or is it something you simply create for yourself because, intellectually, you see no reason why you shouldn't be able to get over whatever's bothering you and simply move on?You try to remind yourself that, as Catherine Britton put it, "Courage is reclaiming your life after a devastating event robs you of your confidence and self-esteem. It is facing tomorrow with a firm resolve to reach deep within yourself to find another strength, another talent. It is taking yourself to another level of your own existence where you are once again whole, productive, special…"The hardest thing to deal with though is that you're never entirely certain whether you have reason to complain, whether you somehow caused whatever's bothering you. You invariably somehow manage to convince yourself that it is your own fault and, once you manage to do that, it seems as though nothing you do can ameliorate your condition.You see others' concern for you but you hear nothing they say. You feel their arms around you but you find no comfort in them. Nothing exists for you but your own guilt-induced misery. And you ask yourself how long it'll take you to recover?

Trafficking and Prostitution

This post focusses on the EU.

1 Direct trafficking

The expansion of the European Union and the opportunity to make money due to an ostensibly insatiable demand are factors which have contributed to up to 120000 women and children being annually trafficked into Western European countries from Central and Eastern European countries.
Most women victims are aged between 18 and 25, and have been abducted or deceived (by being promised ‘normal’ jobs) in Western Europe. They are usually sexually exploited and suffer from severe physical and psychological trauma which may continue long after the exploitation itself has ended. The European Union has been more active in developing penal legislation, law enforcement and judicial co-operation than in the preventing trafficking and protecting victims although it has supported NGOs and health and social services to assist victims to recover and resume a normal life. [1]

2 Indirect trafficking

In 2003, immigration contributed to more than 80% of the total population growth in the EU-15. The effective integration of immigrants, many of whom are financially dependant and therefore particularly vulnerable to abuse, in both the labour market and society has become a channel to reach the Lisbon targets. However, ‘the gender perspective is to a large extent lacking in integration policies, which hampers the possibilities to fully utilise the potential of immigrant women in the labour market’.[2]

3 The links between trafficking and domestic violence

Women who have entered a society alien to them are especially vulnerable to being subjected to exploitation and violence since they often do not know their rights and even if they do, they may not know how to protect themselves.
Mass migrations due to poverty, pauperisation and prejudice ensure that rootlessness, ethnic tensions and violent lawlessness are a feature of nearly every city of the developed democratic world, [3] and one of the manifestations of this phenomenon is that those who are violent at home now have access to a market of both women who are illegally trafficked and women who migrate to Western European countries in search of a husband.
Moreover, women who migrate to marry ‘threaten’ the local women, particularly those who are already married, because their husbands may divorce them in favour of (younger) migrants thus depriving them of their pensions and leaving them in poverty after decades of marriage.
Recommendations have been made to protect local women in such situations by increasing stamp duty to make divorce proceedings prohibitively expensive, ensuring that matrimonial property is divided equally between the husband and his first wife, considering housework as labour in the case of housewives and making provisions to entitle housewives to a salary and pension from the state for their work in the home.

4 Efforts to beat trafficking

In line with the principle of subsidiarity and as signatories of the Beijing Platform for Action, it is Member States’ responsibility to take measures to fight trafficking although the European Commission has undertaken initiatives to help them fulfil their obligations. The Commission was, for example, responsible for implementing STOP (1996-2000) and STOP II (2001-2002) which were conducted to exchange information, and to reinforce networks and practical co-operation between Member States in order to encourage and facilitate action to prevent and combat trade in human beings and the sexual exploitation of children (including child pornography). STOP had a budget of €6.5 million and co-financed 85 projects in its five-year implementation period and STOP II, which was initiated to ensure continued support to the programme, had funds €4 million at its disposal for its two-year implementation period.[4]
Furthermore, both human rights law and (the the majority position in) refugee law now acknowledge state responsibility for human rights violations such as family violence which has become one of the most visible (and prolific) emerging bodies of refugee case law.[5]

References:
[1] Trafficking in Women; The misery behind the fantasy: from poverty to sex slavery
[2] Framework Strategy on Gender Equality 2001-2005
(The European Commission)
[3] Reflections on Violence
(John Keane, Oxford, 1996)
[4] STOP
[5] Refugee Law, Gender, and the Human Rights Paradigm
(Deborah E. Anker, Harvard Human Rights Journal, Volume 15 Spring 2002)

This post is an extract from an essay was written for the POROS Project.