Senate Armed Service Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) announced that he will remove a provision from the defense spending bill that would take military sexual assault cases out of the chain of command.
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House Armed Services Committee Takes on Sexual Assault In Annual Military Spending Bill
The epidemic of sexual assault across the armed forces was also the subject of a nearly eight-hour hearing by the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week.
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Air Forces Releases Lackland Sex Abuse Investigation Results
The US Air Force released the results of an investigation into widespread sex abuse charges at the Lackland Air Force Base training facility in Texas this week. As of Wednesday, 23 training instructors have been investigated for alleged sexual assault of 48 victims. Of those who have been investigated, 11 instructors have faced criminal charges, […]
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Activists Project “Rape Is Rape” onto US Capitol Sunday
Stories of sexual violence, punctuated by the words “RAPE IS RAPE,” were projected onto the U.S. Capitol building last night in Washington, D.C. Activist groups Luminous Intervention and FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture organized the action with the intent of drawing attention to the discourse around rape culture, noting that “American culture is uncomfortable to the […]
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High-Ranking Catholic Clergyman Convicted!
After a three-month trial, Monsignor William Lynn of Philadelphia has been found guilty of one count of endangering children in the archdiocese for which he served as secretary of clergy from 1992 to 2004. Lynn is now the first senior church official to be convicted of a cover-up in the priest sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church over the last 10 years. He faces 3 1/2 to 7 years in prison.
When Did Stopping Violence Against Women Become Political?
Last Thursday, I attended the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting when they voted to send the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2011 to the Senate floor for a vote. Every Committee Democrat voted yes and every Republican voted no. Most of the Republicans didn’t even show up to cast their no votes, but did so […]
Finally, Finally! FBI’s “Forcible Rape” Definition Is Officially History
By Annie Shields Last month we reported that victory was in sight in our months-long Rape is Rape campaign. At a December Senate hearing, FBI Director Robert Mueller let slip that “sometime this spring” the agency would update its archaic definition of “forcible rape.” Mueller’s prediction gave us reason for optimism, but an official announcement today from […]
Campaign Update: Rape is Rape
The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Service is considering modernizing the definition of rape, which currently does not include forced anal sex and/or oral sex, vaginal or anal fisting, rape with an object (even if serious injuries result), and other injurious and degrading sexual assaults. As a result of the FBI’s outmoded definition of rape, thousands […]
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100,000 Have Told the FBI That Rape Is Rape. Have You?
By Annie Shields Nearly 100,000 people have signed onto the Ms. and Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) campaign to change the FBI’s definition of “forcible” rape. After a Ms. investigative report found that the FBI’s fundamentally flawed definition excludes hundreds of thousands of rapes from the yearly Uniform Crime Report, Ms. and FMF started a Change.org […]
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Not Just Boys: Catholic Church Abuse of Women + Girls
Originally posted on Ms. blog by Angela Bonavoglia It was indeed outrageous that the Reverend Raniero Cantalamessa, with the Pope in eyeshot, compared the public outcry over the Catholic Church priest abuse scandal to homicidal anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany.
