sexual assault

the Web Editors 10-05-2016

McLane Stadium at Baylor University. Image by Rockin'Rita / Flickr.

Baylor University’s former Title IX coordinator, Patty Crawford — who maintained the post during the recent campus sexual assault crisis that resulted in the ouster of president Ken Starr, football coach Art Briles, and athletic director Ian McCaw — resigned earlier this week after filing complaint against the school and refusing to sign a confidentiality agreement. Crawford's resignation came the same day two more women joined a class-action lawsuit against the school for failing to adequately address sexual assault allegations, bringing the total number plaintiffs to eight.

Avery Davis Lamb 9-12-2016

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Brock Turner’s case is not an isolated incident of a poor judge or a flawed judicial system. The roots of Brock Turner’s three month sentence goes deeper than the courtroom in Santa Clara, Calif. These roots extend deeply into the soil of power, privilege, and patriarchy — systems actively formed, in part, by misdirected Christianity. Eldredge, Harris, Driscoll, and Piper are only four recent examples of a harmful narrative that has been preached for centuries.

the Web Editors 9-08-2016

Drop of Light / Shutterstock.com

In a 399-0 vote, a bipartisan bill to ensure sexual assault survivors in federal criminal cases have rape kits administered in all cases passed on Tuesday. According to The Hill, the bill also protects survivors from having to pay for any evidence collection and survivors would be allowed to request preservation of any evidence for the maximum statute of limitations.

 

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The conversation — tagged #KissShameBye and hosted by the No Shame Movement — explored purity culture and its impacts on sex, dating, and marriage. Participants discussed one “source text” for purity culture in particular — I Kissed Dating Goodbye, a hugely popular book among young evangelicals, published 20 years ago, that advocates against dating before marriage and underscores themes of purity, defilement, saving oneself for marriage, and losing one's self-worth if engaged in anything other than hetero marital physical contact.

Yuan Zhiming. Image via China Soul for Christ Foundation / RNS

After applying for an internship with the China Soul for Christ Foundation, a 23-year-old university student found herself in a Paris hotel bed with the foundation’s famous founder, Yuan Zhiming, according to a new independent investigation.

The unnamed woman’s story is laid out in the investigation by GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), a Virginia-based nonprofit founded by one of Billy Graham’s grandsons, Boz Tchividjian.

Kimberly Winston 7-08-2016

Image via Les Innocentes / RNS

A new film opening July 8 focuses attention on a long-ignored war crime — the sanctioned and systematic rape of Polish nuns during World War II.

The Innocents (Les Innocentes) tells the story of a young French doctor who is called to a Polish convent to aid a young novice in a breech labor. She discovers that Soviet soldiers, with the approval of their officers, raped dozens of the nuns during the occupation, leaving five of them pregnant.

the Web Editors 6-15-2016

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The judge who sentenced Brock Turner to a mere six months in prison for three counts of sexual assault has been removed from a new case involving sexual assault, reports NBC News.

Prosecutors in California used a procedure that often comes into use when a judge’s impartiality is under question. But, according to the district attorney, the move came amid concerns over a recent stolen mail case.

the Web Editors 6-09-2016

Photo from Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office

Former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner made headlines when he received a six month prison sentence for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Turns out, he will only serve half of his already very short sentence, reports Mic.

A document on the Santa Clara County Department of Corrections lists his release date as Sept. 2, 2016.

Sandi Villarreal 6-02-2016
Photo by Shehan Jeyarajah

Candlelight vigil in front of the Albritton House on the Baylor University campus on Feb. 8. by Shehan Jeyarajah

So the story, as presented, has been either one of the downfall of a Cinderella sports team or one of political hypocrisy. And left behind are the stories of women whose lives were forever changed and subsequently ignored, first by the administration and now by the media.

the Web Editors 5-27-2016

1. Killing Dylann Roof

Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Obama administration’s decision to seek the death penalty for the Charleston shooter: “The hammer of criminal justice is the preferred tool of a society that has run out of ideas.”

2. At Baylor, the Real Story Isn’t Hypocrisy. It’s the Victims of Sexual Assault.

“... this is a story much larger than Ken Starr and Baylor. This story is about power, and money, and institutions that claim to be faith-based but refuse to stand for victims and against violence.”

3. There’s a Software Used Across the Country to Predict Future Criminals. And It’s Biased Against Blacks.

Lives in the hands of algorithms—

the Web Editors 5-24-2016

A judge has ordered that Bill Cosby stand trial for charges in a case of sexual assault. According to Reuters, a Pennsylvania judge decided "that there was enough evidence for the entertainer to be criminally tried on charges that he attacked a woman in 2004 after giving her drugs."

The woman is Andrea Constand, a former Temple University staff member who alleges that Cosby gave her pills and assaulted her in his home in 2004. More than 40 women have come forward with similar allegations, but Constand's case is the only one that has resulted in criminal charges filed; in fact, for many, the statute of limitations prevents it.

the Web Editors 5-20-2016

Image via Youtube

Sexual assault in the military has been a major issue for decades, and not only are the victims traumatized — they’re punished for speaking out. Human Rights Watch issued a new report and short documentary exposing how sexual assault and harrassment survivors have been discharged for "personality disorder."

Image via REUTERS/Jim Urquhart/RNS

Better dead clean, than alive unclean.

That Mormon mantra apparently was ringing in a young Brigham Young University student’s mind in 1979 as she leapt from a would-be attacker’s car on the freeway.

According to the Broken Silence survey (commissioned by Sojourners and IMA World Health), faith leaders play a key role in preventing and responding to such violence. Though a majority of respondents reported feeling ill-equipped to deal with issues of sexual and domestic violence in their congregations and communities, an overwhelming majority of faith leaders (81 percent) indicated that they would take appropriate action to reduce such violence if they had the training and resources to do so.

This gap is precisely why seminaries and divinity schools are essential to addressing domestic abuse and sexual assault. Your theological schools can and must take the lead on educating more faith leaders about sexual and gender-based violence.

the Web Editors 2-29-2016

Screenshot via Gossip Cop

In a powerful introduction to an even more moving song from Lady Gaga, Vice President Joe Biden appeared at the Oscars Feb. 28 in a plea to “change the culture” and ensure that “no abused woman or man…ever feel they have to ask themselves ‘what did I do?’” 

Sandi Villarreal 2-10-2016

Candlelight vigil in front of the Albritton House on the Baylor University campus on Feb. 8. by Shehan Jeyarajah

On Feb. 9, the day after more than 200 Baylor students, alumni, faculty, and staff gathered in front of university President Ken Starr’s campus residence for a candlelight vigil honoring the community’s sexual assault survivors, Starr released a statement on the school’s website saying, “We hear you loud and clear.”

Starr was not present for the vigil — according to an inquiry to the media communications office, he was in Washington, D.C., on university business.

His brief statement read: “You want us to continue to improve. And you want definitive, responsible actions after we receive the insights and recommendations from Pepper Hamilton. You have my word on both.”

Sandi Villarreal 2-08-2016
Baylor University

Baylor University, by Danny Huizinga / Flickr.com

A group of Baylor University students and alumni will gather for a candlelight vigil outside university President Ken Starr’s home on Feb. 8 in an effort to urge changes to how the school handles sexual assault.

The vigil is being organized by Stefanie Mundhenk, a recent graduate who described her own experience through the school’s Title IX process in her personal blog. Mundhenk’s account — coupled with a recent ESPN report accusing the school of mishandling cases of sexual assault by Baylor football players, and subsequent CBS Sports commentary calling on President Ken Starr to “stop stonewalling” about the rape cases — sparked outrage among Baylor alumni, many of whom responded in an open letter to the university administration over the weekend. Since the open letter was shared on Saturday, the list of signatories has risen from 50 to more than 1,300.

Greg Williams 2-01-2016
Asking for it: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture- and What We Can Do About It

IN THE COURSE of a few months in the past year, I learned that three women and men close to me had been sexually assaulted—as children and as adults. Hearing their stories broke me out of many of the lies surrounding rape that I had fallen into without even realizing it.

Kate Harding’s Asking for It attacks the same lies and misconceptions. She explores how we, as a culture, embrace myths surrounding rape and sexual assault. Theoretically, we think of rape as a terrible crime that takes away people’s right to choose what to do with their bodies—but practically we have trouble believing that it actually happens, or if it does that it is really that bad. We joke about rape, we believe it is caused by women acting like “sluts,” or act like the only kinds of rape that really matter are those in which a white woman is attacked by a brown man. We normalize assault and minimize it.

We have built a society and criminal justice system that protect abusers and place the responsibility on women to avoid being assaulted rather than on men to not attack.

Sadly, none of this is surprising, but Harding’s exploration of these familiar truths is biting and unrelenting.

She is offensive at times, but about things we should be offended about. When I recoil at her describing a rape by saying he “put his dick in her,” I realize how much I should be disgusted by the assault itself. We can numb ourselves by using clinical language to talk about rape and sexual assault, but Harding refuses to give us distance from the violence of these attacks.

Harding suggests practical changes that we can make—such as educating our kids, reforming our criminal justice system, and changing our language. These practical measures consist of the minimum on which we all ought to agree: My conservative friends, together with my progressive ones, can agree that rape jokes are offensive, hurt people, and contribute to a society in which people are more easily hurt. As Harding notes, even when we have radically different ideas about the proper scope of sexual activity, we should all agree that clear consent is necessary for a healthy sexual relationship.

the Web Editors 1-21-2016

Daniel Holtzclaw after 18 guilty verdicts were read. Screenshot via @BillSchammert/Twitter

The former Oklahoma City police officer Daniel Holtzclaw has been sentenced to 263 years in prison for raping and sexually assaulting eight women and girls. Holtzclaw, who is white and Japanese, intentionally sought out black women in poor areas as his victims.

the Web Editors 12-30-2015

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Bill Cosby has been charged for sexual assault, reports the Los Angeles Times. The charge — of aggravated indecent assault, against alleged victim Andrea Constand in 2004 — comes with an arrest warrant. Though Cosby's decades of assault came to light in a high-profile series of revelations this year, this is the first time criminal charges have been filed against the comedian. He is expected to be arraigned at 4 p.m. on Dec. 30.