All posts tagged: rape

French mass rape trial as seen by the foreign press: ‘Merci Gisèle’

French mass rape trial as seen by the foreign press: ‘Merci Gisèle’

Published by Sam

Gisele Pelicot speaks to the media as she leaves the Avignon courthouse on Thursday, September 5, 2024. LEWIS JOLY / AP Described as “a feminist figure,” “a heroine” and “an icon,” Gisèle Pelicot became a symbol in the French media and far beyond in just a few days. Her story was picked up by the American, European and even Indian press. The widespread recognition stemmed from her courageous decision to share her personal ordeal in an open-court trial, in the hope that “shame will change sides,” in the words of one of her lawyers. Read more Subscribers only Gisèle Pelicot, drugged by her husband so he and others could rape her, is a woman ‘still standing’ The New York Times highlighted the impact of her decision: “By opening the doors to the public, Ms. Pelicot has opened up the view not only onto her own collapsing life and the legal process around rape but also onto the regular, mundane, normal profiles of the accused men. And many women credit her with skewering the myth of …

Indian doctors call nationwide strike over rape and murder of Kolkata medic | Protests News

Indian doctors call nationwide strike over rape and murder of Kolkata medic | Protests News

Published by Sam

Hospitals to suspend non-essential services and medical procedures on Saturday as public fury over brutal attack grows. Indian doctors have called for a nationwide shutdown of hospital services as public fury over the rape and murder of a trainee medic in the eastern city of Kolkata last week mounts. The Indian Medical Association (IMA), the country’s largest grouping of medics with 400,000 members, said the 24-hour shutdown would be implemented on Saturday, affecting most hospital departments except for essential services. The shutdown comes after thousands of people took to the streets in several cities to express their outrage at the rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor, whose brutalised body was found on August 9 at Kolkata’s state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital. On Friday, large protests were held in various cities – including Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state, Mumbai in the west and Hyderabad in southern India – demanding justice and better security at medical campuses and hospitals. “We want justice,” doctors chanted in Kolkata, waving handwritten signs that read, …

As a child, I was relentlessly abused by a Catholic priest. As an adult, it almost killed me twice | Rape and sexual assault

As a child, I was relentlessly abused by a Catholic priest. As an adult, it almost killed me twice | Rape and sexual assault

Published by skeptic

It was November 1970 and Northern Ireland was sliding into the Troubles, but for Gerard Gorman, a new pupil at St Colman’s College, the horror of that era began when Fr Malachy Finegan summoned him into a room, closed the door and told him to sit on a sofa. Gorman was 11 years old and small for his age, with big blue eyes. Two months earlier, he had started as a boarder at the Catholic boys’ school in Newry, County Armagh. Staff tended to be aloof or intimidating, except Finegan, the religious education teacher, who was solicitous and avuncular. More than half a century later, Gorman can still picture the scene on that autumn day. He had been with other boys, running to the dormitory, when Finegan beckoned him from a doorway into his sitting room. It overlooked playing fields and had a TV and a bag of sweets on a table. The priest sat beside the boy. He was a big man with huge ears that had earned him the nickname Floppy. There was a bit of …

‘Obsessed’ security guard hatched plan to kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby, court told | UK News

‘Obsessed’ security guard hatched plan to kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby, court told | UK News

Published by Sam

An “obsessed” security guard plotted to break into Holly Willoughby’s family home and knock her out with chloroform so he could kidnap, rape and murder her, a court has heard. Gavin Plumb, 37, allegedly hatched the “graphic” and “sexually motivated” plans over more than two years as he tried to recruit accomplices online. Chelmsford Crown Court heard he boasted of trying to abduct two air hostesses from trains and falsely imprisoning two 16-year-old girls to “bolster his credibility”. Killing Willoughby was suspect’s ‘ultimate fantasy’, court told | Trial as it happened Prosecutors allege his past convictions – which included tying a teenager’s hands behind her back with rope and tape, and using an imitation firearm – showed he knew “what it would take to terrify and overpower a woman”. But Plumb, from Harlow, in Essex, unwittingly disclosed his plans to an undercover US police officer, who alerted the authorities in the UK and disrupted his plans to carry out “catastrophic violence” against Willoughby, the court heard. A jury was told he had more than 10,000 …

French teens charged with anti-Semitic rape in attack condemned by political leaders

French teens charged with anti-Semitic rape in attack condemned by political leaders

Published by Sam

Two teenage boys were charged with the gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in a suspected anti-Semitic attack in a Paris suburb that has raised tensions in France ahead of snap parliamentary elections. French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday denounced the “scourge of anti-Semitism”, while far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused the “extreme left” of “instrumentalising” the Israel-Hamas conflict. Source link

Labour pledges 80 new rape courts in bid to tackle backlog crisis | Labour

Labour pledges 80 new rape courts in bid to tackle backlog crisis | Labour

Published by skeptic

Labour will establish 80 new rape courts across and England and Wales to fast-track cases as part of wide-ranging plans to tackle violence against women and girls that will be announced in the party’s general election manifesto this week. The specialist courts will be set up in unused rooms and spare capacity within every existing crown court, in an effort to end a growing backlog that causes 60% of rape victims to drop out before their cases even begin. Between the end of 2019 and the end of 2023, Labour says, there was a 346% increase in the number of adult rape cases in the crown court backlog, leading to claims that rape was effectively being “decriminalised”. Just 2.6% of rape cases result in a charge. Labour leader Keir Starmer has said he will halve violence against women and girls, and bring in tougher sentences for rapists, under his “missions” for government. The party will also make a manifesto pledge to introduce specialist rape units in every police force, where staff trained to deal with …

Four more boys arrested on suspicion of rape in Nottinghamshire | UK news

Four more boys arrested on suspicion of rape in Nottinghamshire | UK news

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Four more boys including a 12-year-old have been arrested on suspicion of the rape of a teenage girl in Newark. Nottinghamshire police received a report that a teenage girl had been attacked on Yorke Drive playing fields, Nottinghamshire, between 5.30pm and 7pm on 25 May. A boy aged 12, a 13-year-old, and two boys aged 14 have all been arrested on suspicion of rape, police said. They have all been released on bail with strict conditions. Four other teenage boys, two aged 15 and two aged 16, were arrested earlier this week on suspicion of rape and all four remain on conditional bail, police said. DI Amy Revill, of Nottinghamshire police, said: “We have made a further four arrests in this case and our investigation is continuing to move at pace. We are continuing to support the girl and her family with specially trained officers and are doing everything we can to establish exactly what’s happened. “I want to again appeal to the local community and anyone who may have any information to please get …

I Was Sexually Assaulted Today — Again | Lisa S. Lawless

I Was Sexually Assaulted Today — Again | Lisa S. Lawless

Published by skeptic

In a time when topics like rape culture, sexual assault, and sexually inappropriate behavior are so prevalent in the media — it is no surprise that I was just sexually assaulted. Again. A man called my company over the weekend while our business was closed. He kept calling our office number over and over, so I decided to answer his call as I happened to be working in the office this weekend. After all, it is not uncommon for me to work seven days a week as a woman who owns her own business. I am someone who is quite educated in the areas of rape, sexual abuse, and assault through my training as a mental health therapist. I used to be a Rape Crisis Counselor who not only counseled and helped rape victims but also lectured about rape, sexual abuse, and assault. I have also counseled sexually abused adolescent girls in a group home and helped them as they dealt with the violation, anger, and grief they experienced. I also have vast experience in self-defense training through martial arts, shooting guns, and basic preventative …

French women speak out on rapes by US soldiers during WWII

French women speak out on rapes by US soldiers during WWII

Published by Sam

Aimee Dupre had always kept silent about the rape of her mother by two American soldiers after the Normandy landings in June 1944. But 80 years after the brutal assault, she finally felt it was time to speak out. Nearly a million US, British, Canadian and French soldiers landed on the Normandy coast in the weeks after D-Day in an operation that was to herald the end of Nazi Germany’s grip on Europe. Aimee was 19, living in Montours, a village in Brittany, and delighted to see the “liberators” arrive, as was everybody around her. But then her joy evaporated. On the evening of August 10, two US soldiers — often called GIs — arrived at the family’s farm. “They were drunk and they wanted a woman,” Aimee, now 99, told AFP, producing a letter that her mother, also called Aimee, wrote “so nothing is forgotten”. In her neat handwriting, Aimee Helaudais Honore described the events of that night. How the soldiers fired their guns in the direction of her husband, ripping holes in his …

Harvey Weinstein will be retried for overturned rape conviction

Harvey Weinstein will be retried for overturned rape conviction

Published by skeptic

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office will put Harvey Weinstein on trial again for rape allegations, after the highest court in New York overturned his conviction last week. In court Wednesday, Judge Curtis Farber presided over arguments to retry the case, remanding 72-year-old Weinstein and ordering a trial after Labor Day. Weinstein was one of the earliest figures found guilty for serial sexual abuse in the #MeToo movement, originally sentenced to 23 years in prison in New York. He was later found guilty in California for similar crimes, convictions which have not been overturned. The New York Court of Appeals struck down the initial conviction, citing Judge James Burke’s decision to allow testimony from Weinstein’s victims that they found to be outside the scope of the trial. New York prosecutors said they will take the case back to court. “There was nothing consensual about this conduct,” prosecutor Nicole Blumberg said. “We believe in this case and will be retrying this case.” Prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office will once again make the case that …