Migration Category: NCWP Old Site

Inmates in need of abortion services at the Cuyahoga County Jail in Ohio will now receive transportation to clinics that can perform the procedure. The county will also provide sex education programs and information on contraception, abortion, and adoption to inmates as part of a legal settlement reached with a former prisoner, Yuriko Kawaguchi. In 1998, Judge Patricia Cleary sentenced Kawaguchi to six months in jail on forgery charges. Kawaguchi contends that Cleary only sentenced her to jail after learning that she was pregnant and seeking an abortion. The Ohio Supreme Court later suspended Cleary – a vocal anti-choice supporter – from practicing law because of her biased ruling in the Kawaguchi case. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Kawaguchi, who was forced to carry her pregnancy to term, then sued the jail. As part of the settlement, Kawaguchi will receive only $1,000.

Mar’a Teresa Macias v. Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Ihde will be heard in a San Francisco courthouse beginning on June 17th. Mar’a Teresa Macias was shot to death by her estranged husband, Avelino Macias, on April 15, 1996. Her mother was also shot, but survived. Prior to her death, Teresa had called the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department more than 20 times to report her estranged husband’s violence, sexual assaults, stalking, and threats to kill both Teresa and her mother. Despite California law and county policy requiring arrest on domestic violence and domestic violence restraining order violations, the sheriff’s department never arrested or cited Macias, and only filed two police reports. By failing to enforce the law, Macias was free to track Teresa down and murder her. The lawsuit seeks to establish a woman’s constitutional right under the Equal Protection Clause to hold police legally accountable for their response to violence against women.

A new report by the Police Professionalism Initiative at the University of Nebraska at Omaha documents disturbing nationwide occurrences of female drivers being stopped by male police officers and subjected to sexual harassment and assault. The report examined a decade of over 400 media accounts describing incidents across the United States. Only 100 of the incidents resulted in official sanctions against the officer. In one instance, a Long Island police officer was suspended after admitting he had forced a woman to undress in public in exchange for not writing a traffic ticket. Experts expect that this study is only a small representation of the extent of these situations, since many women are reluctant to report police misconduct because of fear of reprisal or humiliation. The study’s name, “Driving While Female,” parallels the pattern of racial profiling of motorists, often referred to by the term “Driving While Black.” The report utilizes research by the National Center for Women & Policing to call on police departments to adopt a zero tolerance policy on harassment of female drivers, and to hire more female officers to reduce the risk of misconduct.

The city of Boston and the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department in Massachusetts settled a class-action lawsuit this week, agreeing to pay $10 million to over 5,000 women who were wrongfully strip searched at a local jail over a period of four years. The women, many of whom were arrested for petty crimes including failure to return an overdue video game and selling goods without a permit, were also subjected to searches of their vaginas and rectums. The women were all arrested after normal business hours and were – for a variety of reasons – not released on bail and thus transported to the county jail where the searches took place.

Originally, the city and the sheriff’s department argued that the women had no bases for their suit. US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner, however, found that the strip searches violated the constitutional rights of the women involved. Compensation will now be given to the women based on the types of crimes committed. Women who were arrested for misdemeanors will receive the largest payouts versus women arrested for sex or drug crimes.

Eight female soldiers training to perform ground sweeps in the mountains of Afghanistan were removed from their Reconnaissance, Surveillance and Target Acquisition squadrons, an Army spokeswoman announced yesterday. The female soldiers were reassigned after the implementation of a Pentagon mandate forbidding women from participating in ground reconnaissance units, a reversal of a Clinton administration policy that made these units open to women. The mandate came despite an earlier Army announcement that it had no plans to change the units’ mixed-sex status, according to the Washington Times.

The ban also comes in the wake of another troubling Bush Administration change that may limit the role of women in the military. In March, the Pentagon fired all members of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) and rewrote the charter for the 51-year-old committee severely restricting its role and forbidding independent site visits to military installations. While a new committee is currently being put together, no commitment has been made to ensure that women are adequately represented on the panel.

The destruction of the panel is even more disturbing as a federal district court struck down the Army’s promotional affirmative action policy this year. Despite 1997 figures that show women make up a mere 14 percent of Army personnel, the policy was deemed to unfairly favor women and minorities, according to the judge. A DACOWITS report in 1997 found that the practice of male commanders denying women leadership positions and assigning them to desk duty was “widespread.” At some bases, women were “openly demeaned and their roles in the military ridiculed.”

In an editorial appearing in today’s Washington Post, the newspaper called on the US to withhold aid from countries that are not working vigorously enough to curb sex trafficking and sex slavery. The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 establishes global standards for the elimination of sex trafficking and allows the US government to apply pressure to countries found in violation of those standards. Among the biggest offenders, according to the Washington Post, are India, Thailand, and Cambodia. The State Department notes that more than 2.3 million women and girls are forced prostitutes in India. In Thailand, child sex slaves number close to 1 million, and in Cambodia, and estimated 20,000 child sex slaves work out of brothels. The Washington Post reports, however, that these countries were not included on a list developed by the State Department in 2001 of nations found to be too “complacent” about prosecuting and convicting sex traffickers. “There is an internal debate about which countries will be fingered; country specialists within the department, concerned about causing offense that might damage other US interests, tend to want leniency,” explained the Post. “But naming and shaming offending countries is a good way to stimulate the prosecutorial crackdowns that could actually curb sex slavery.” The State Department is now preparing to publish its 2002 list.

Sex trafficking is the third most lucrative criminal activity in the world after smuggling arms and narcotics according to officials present at the Second World Congress Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children held in December 2001. The United States, itself, is not immune to sex trafficking. According to the 2000 Annual Trafficking in Persons Report issued by the State Department, between 45,000 and 50,000 people – mostly women and children – are trafficked to the United States and forced to work in sweatshop like conditions or in the sex industries as prostitutes. The United Nations, however, estimates that between 244,000 and 325,000 women and children are victims of commercial sexual exploitation in the United States.

Preliminary data collected by the World Health Organization(WHO) found that women worldwide suffer from severe health problems resulting from pervasive violence against women. WHO found that as many as 60 percent of women in rural areas of Peru, Thailand, and Brazil are victims of violence, and in other parts of the world, two in three women experienced violence. The WHO study also documents that this widespread violence also leads to major health problems for women including miscarriage, depression, alcoholism, and infections resulting from sexual assault. Domestic violence, which includes marital rape, was also found to contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS among women. The findings will be used to encourage governments to create social policies to combat violence against women.

A Roman Catholic priest from Illinois pled guilty this week to charges that he conspired to make and distribute gamma hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), also known as the “date-rape” drug. Rev. Jeffrey Windy allegedly had a chemical solvent used to make the drug delivered to St. Patrick’s Church in Sheffield, Illinois where he worked and then made the drug at a friend’s home. GHB can be used as a hallucinogen or as a means to incapacitate people for the purpose of committing sexual assault. Windy now faces up to 20 years in prison and $1 million in fines. He is to be sentenced on August 22. Windy’s guilty plea came on the same day that an appeals panel rejected an effort to reduce the sentence of Boston pedophile priest, John Geoghan. Geoghan received a 9-10 year sentence for molesting a 10-year old boy in 1991. Lawyers were attempting to reduce the sentence to 2 years with 8 years of probation. Despite this failed attempt, Geoffrey Packard, Geoghan’s attorney, indicated that Geoghan intends to appeal his conviction.

In a 12-7 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of Judge D. Brooks Smith to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The nomination will now head to the Senate floor for a full vote. Numerous women’s rights and civil rights groups, including the Feminist Majority, opposed the nomination of Smith because of his anti-women’s rights record. These groups now vow to fight the nomination on the floor.

Judge Smith is an ardent opponent of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which originally gave a victim of gender violence the ability to sue her attacker in federal court. In a speech to the right-wing Federalist Society, Smith stated that a federal court should not be the forum for such lawsuits and federal laws should not try to protect women from violence. While a Federal District Court Judge, Smith also retained membership in an exclusive all-male club, the Spruce Creek Rod and Gun Club until 1999. Membership in an all-male club shows contempt for women’s equality that is incompatible with the responsibilities of a federal judge; such membership rightly causes litigants to question a judge’s ability to treat women fairly, especially women involved in sexual harassment or sexual discrimination cases.

Three Democrats joined Committee Republicans to vote in favor of Judge D. Brooks Smith: Sens. Joseph Biden (D-DE), Herb Kohl (D-WI), and John Edwards (D-NC).