Nobel Peace Prize for anti-rape activists Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege – BBC News

The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize has gone to campaigners against rape in warfare, Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege.
Ms Murad is an Iraqi Yazidi who was tortured and raped by Islamic State militants and later became the face of a campaign to free the Yazidi people.
Dr Mukwege is a Congolese gynaecologist who, along with his colleagues, has treated tens of thousands of victims.
Some 331 individuals and organisations were nominated for the prestigious peace award this year.
The winners announced in the Norwegian capital Oslo on Friday won the award for their “efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war”, Berit Reiss-Andersen, the Nobel committee chair, said.

via Nobel Peace Prize for anti-rape activists Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege – BBC News

Stockton University Allegedly Fails Women After Sexual Assault

A New Jersey university failed two former students after they were assaulted, two new federal lawsuits claim.

The first suit, filed Monday, involves a Stockton University student who says she was sexually assaulted by a fraternity member at a Pi Kappa Phi house party in 2012, The Trentonian reports. (23.1% of female undergraduates expert rape or sexual assault while in school, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.) The student says she tried to report her assault to police when they broke up the party approximately one hour later, but the officer told her to stop talking about it after she told him she’d punched the frat house member in self-defense.

via Stockton University Allegedly Fails Women After Sexual Assault

McDonald’s Workers to Go on 1-Day Strike Over Sexual Harassment

For Kim Lawson, who began working at a McDonald’s in Kansas City, Missouri last year, sexual harassment seemed to come with the job. Almost immediately after she started, she said, a coworker began brushing up against her numerous times and went out of his way to be near her, always standing too close. He would give her gifts, something he didn’t do to anyone else they worked with. But when she told a manager about her coworker’s behavior, no action was taken: “He still worked the same shift. He was still around,” Lawson told Jezebel. The experience soured her on reporting any harassment, so when a night shift manager began hitting on her, making lewd comments about her body, she felt like saying anything would be useless. And since he was a manager, she said, “I felt like I had to be nice about it.”

via McDonald’s Workers to Go on 1-Day Strike Over Sexual Harassment

Bravo Reality TV Star Grant Robicheaux Accused of Rape

Grant Robicheaux appeared a few years ago on the Bravo reality TV series The Online Dating Rituals of the American Male. Now, he stands accused of drugging and raping women.

Robicheaux, a surgeon in Newport Beach, Calif., in 2014 appeared in a single episode of the show, during which he went on a date with a woman who told him, “I wanna know what’s wrong with you, because you seem, like, too perfect.” Afterward, she told the camera, “He seems a little too perfect. I think there might be some dark skeletons in that closet.”

Earlier this week, Robicheaux and his girlfriend Cerissa Laura Riley have been charged with raping women with the use of drugs. Investigators say they have discovered “hundreds of videos of apparently intoxicated women believed to have been filmed” by Robicheaux and Riley, according to The Mercury News. Both have denied the charges.

via Bravo Reality TV Star Grant Robicheaux Accused of Rape

#WhyIDidntReport Goes Viral In Response to Donald Trump Tweet

It is not at all shocking that a guy who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy and has been accused of sexual assault by nearly two dozen women would embrace this line of thinking. And so, minutes later, #WhyIDidntReport was born. As of Friday afternoon, it’s the top trending hashtag on Twitter.

#WhyIDidntReport is not the first collective outpouring of sexual trauma on social media, nor will it be the last. A slew of people, including celebrities, opened up about their own experiences with abuse and the forces that kept them silent:

via #WhyIDidntReport Goes Viral In Response to Donald Trump Tweet

Women Are Turning Their Facebook Profiles Black Today in Protest of Domestic Abuse Amidst a National Conversation About Blackouts and Sexual Violence

Yesterday, a chain letter made its way through the Facebook DM’s in a coordinated effort to draw attention to domestic abuse. It reads:

Tomorrow [note: today, Sunday, September 30th] female blackout from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Its a movement to show what the world might be like without women. Your profile photo should just be a black square so that men wonder where the women are. Pass it only to women … It’s for a project against domestic abuse. It is no joke. Share it.

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The same effort has been made at least once before, but this blackout happens to dovetail with a conversation about the link between blackout drinking and violence toward women, prompted by allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. Unsurprisingly, alcohol is also intrinsic to domestic violence; while estimates fluctuate widely, the general consensus is that perpetrators are believed to be intoxicated in well over half of domestic abusive cases in the US. In general, researchers estimate that about half of all sexual assaults in the US are committed by men who have been drinking.

via Women Are Turning Their Facebook Profiles Black Today in Protest of Domestic Abuse Amidst a National Conversation About Blackouts and Sexual Violence

The truth about false assault accusations by women – BBC News

According to various academic studies over the past 20 years, only 2-10% of rape accusations are fake (Prof Ford’s lawyer says she believes this was attempted rape).
Two to 10% is too many, but it is not a big proportion of the total. Fake rape accusations get a lot of attention.
Both the Duke Lacrosse team case in 2006 and the alleged University of Virginia gang rape in 2014 were widely covered by the media. They were terrible miscarriages of justice – but they were not representative.

via The truth about false assault accusations by women – BBC News

Ohio State’s Suspension Of Urban Meyer Is Par For The Course

On Wednesday night, Ohio State announced that Meyer will be suspended for the first three games of the football season. At the press conference that followed, viewers got what anyone with a tinfoil hat and internet access could have predicted: a lot of talk about football, even more talk about how all parties involved respect women, the bare minimum in punishment, and almost no mention of Courtney Smith. Her name wasn’t even mentioned by any of the men who took to the podium until one of the questions near the end when ESPN producer Greg Amante asked Meyer what he would say to Courtney Smith. Meyer gave this pithy answer: “Well, I have a message for everyone involved in this. I’m sorry we’re in this situation. And, um … I’m just sorry we’re in this situation.” He couldn’t even be bothered to say her name.

via Ohio State’s Suspension Of Urban Meyer Is Par For The Course

The online platform that empowers survivors of campus sexual assaults |

Outraged at the incidence of sex crimes at colleges, activist Jess Ladd got mad — and then she got to building. Here’s how she developed a secure and sensitive reporting system that’s in use on 13 campuses.

The statistics on campus sex crimes in the US are sad and sobering. On average, it’s estimated that one in five women is assaulted during her college years, as well as 7 percent of men and 24 percent of transgender and gender non-conforming students.

And what occurs after an attack is also disturbing. Most assaults go unreported, and when people do go to the authorities, too often they’re subjected to a series of traumatic experiences: insensitive questioning, skepticism or outright disbelief about their experience, and an opaque investigatory process that places a greater emphasis on preserving the college’s public image than on prosecuting crimes.

via The online platform that empowers survivors of campus sexual assaults |

The Empowering Internet Safety Guide for Women | vpnMentor

Have you ever been harassed in the street? Received a crass message on a dating app? Had a coworker make a comment about your appearance that just didn’t sit right?

You’re not alone.

With the #MeToo movement, it’s easy to log onto Twitter or Facebook and see just how many women are victims of sexual harassment. Whether in person or online, women everywhere have experienced it in one way or another. And with all the new ways the internet has opened avenues of communication, online harassment is more prevalent than ever.

According to a study by the Pew Research Center, most online abuse takes place on social media. Although men are also subject to online harassment – which includes name calling, derision, and physical threats – the study found that online, women are more than twice as likely as men to experience sexual harassment.

via The Empowering Internet Safety Guide for Women | vpnMentor