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Many people watching UK television drama National Treasure will have made their minds up about the guilt or innocence of the protagonist well before the end of the series. In episode one we learn that this aging celebrity has ‘slept around’ throughout his long marriage but when an allegation of non-recent sexual assault is made he strenuously denies it.

The post What if they are innocent? Justice for people accused of sexual and child abuse appeared first on OUPblog.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (#SAAM), and today (April 27) is #DenimDay. I’m wearing denim to show my support for other survivors, and to take a stand against our rape culture.

As an incest, rape, and cult survivor, I was frequently told by my abusers that the rapes I endured were my fault. That I wanted it, or asked for it, or somehow made it happen. But it was never my fault or my choice. And if you’ve been raped or sexually assaulted, it’s not yours, either. No matter what you were wearing. Rape is always the rapist’s fault.

Being raped is devastating enough. But on top of that, survivors often get shamed, blamed, told to keep quiet, told they are ruining the rapists’ life, or are not believed. Speaking out shouldn’t be so hard; being listened to and believed is part of the healing process. We live in a rape culture that blames and belittles survivors, sexualizes young girls and boys, and encourages denial. This deepens the emotional scars from sexual assault.

I hope you’ll join me in supporting other survivors, believing them, and speaking out when you hear jokes or attitudes that blame, shame, or silence survivors.

I speak out against rape culture and support other survivors through my books–writing emotionally and honestly from my experiences as an incest, rape, torture survivor–and through my online presence. I hope you’ll find your own way to speak out and help others. One way to start is to take the pledge.

If you need support, you can call, email, text, or chat:
RAINN.org
WomenHelpingWomen.org
Male Rape and Sexual abuse Survivors

#DenimDay #DenimDayAuthors #NoExcuses #IWearDenim #TakeThePledge
#WeBelieveSurvivors #IBelieveSurvivors #ISupportYou #Survivor

Protecting children from maltreatment is one of the most challenging responsibilities in social and health services. Most CPS investigations and resulting service delivery are helpful to children and families and occur without incident.

The post Rising to the challenge: innovations in child protective services appeared first on OUPblog.

Hampshire Constabulary are the latest in a long line of police forces obliged to apologise to a victim of crime for failing to investigate an allegation properly. In this case, a young woman accused a man of rape. She was not believed; forensic examination of clothing was delayed; in the meanwhile, the complainant was threatened with arrest for ‘perverting the course of justice’ and she attempted suicide. Eventually, following belated forensic analysis, the man was arrested and has since then been convicted.

The post Believing victims appeared first on OUPblog.

STAINED comes out in paperback today! I’m excited and happy. (Grinning) Like I did with SCARS, I drew on some of my own trauma and healing to write STAINED.

In STAINED, Sarah thinks she knows what fear is-until she’s abducted. Now she must find a way to save herself.

Sarah is a strong girl character who grows to recognize her own strength. And just like I had to, Sarah must rescue herself over and over again until she’s finally safe. I know that you can save yourself, too, if you need to. You are stronger than you know.

I’ve been so excited that I had to take another pic with my “Sometimes you have to be your own hero” T-shirt–the tagline from STAINED and a theme in most of my books–and the paperback copy of STAINED in my hand. (Grinning)

My lovely 94-year-old neighbour Nan took the photo, and though you can’t see her, Petal is on the sofa behind me. (Smiling)

If you want one of the special message T-shirts or hoodies you can order at http://www.teespring.com/cherylrainfield and when there are 20 orders they will print again.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Speak out when you can. Support survivors. Take gentle care of yourself. I do. smile emoticon

-Cheryl Rainfield, author of SCARS, STAINED, and HUNTED, and incest, rape, and torture survivor.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Speak out when you can. Support survivors. Take gentle care of yourself. I do. smile emoticon

-Cheryl Rainfield, author of SCARS, STAINED, and HUNTED, and incest, rape, and torture survivor.

Four people with radically different outlooks on the world meet on a train and start talking about what they believe. Their conversation varies from cool logical reasoning to heated personal confrontation. Each starts off convinced that he or she is right, but then doubts creep in. During February, we will be posting a series of extracts that cover the viewpoints of all four characters in Tetralogue. What follows is an extract exploring Sarah's perspective.

The post Trains of thought: Sarah appeared first on OUPblog.

I love a good suspense book. Maybe because most of my life was so full of terror and pain; I can relate to the threats, and I love it when a good person wins out, and people who hurt others get justice. But I won’t ever buy a John Grisham book.

Why? Because John Grisham said that people who watch and download child porn should not be jailed and that “current sentencing policies failed to draw a distinction between real-world abusers and those who downloaded content, accidentally or otherwise.”

Wow. Excuse me while I take some deep breaths.

People who watch and download child porn are what drive the child-porn industry. Watching child porn is still exploitation. A child was abused and dehumanized to make that child porn that someone is sitting in their cozy house watching, getting off on. And suggesting that some men might download child porn by “mistake” or while drunk is excusing the behavior. It doesn’t recognize the culture we live in that encourages rape and child exploitation. It’s not thinking about the children that were used to create the child porn, the pain and trauma they endured. It’s severely lacking in compassion for victims, for anyone who isn’t a white male (John’s friend who he was identifying with) and that worries me.

Have I mentioned that my parents made child porn using me and other children, to make money to help fund the cult they belong to? I was regularly raped, forced to engage in sexual acts, and dehumanized in some very humiliating, degrading, sickening scenarios, all while being filmed, for men (and women) who would pay for the video or photos.

It left emotional scars, along with the other abuse and torture I endured, that stay with me today. While I have finally learned to be pretty okay with a camera (especially cell phone cameras that don’t look like traditional cameras), for years I couldn’t bear being photographed or filmed. I still get triggered into traumatic memories every time I have to do a TV interview or too many people ask to take my photo in a short period of time. And the child porn messed up my body image, my comfort with my own sexuality, and left me fearful, mistrusting, and hating my own body and sexuality. It also, along with all the other abuse, left me with many psychological effects, including severe depression, anxiety, PTSD, dissociation, and other effects.

The effects of child porn, abuse, rape, trauma, and exploitation is what I try to help others understand, on a gut and emotional level, through my books. I try to help people understand the severity of the effects, and also that healing is possible. I wish everyone who thought that child abuse or child porn was okay had to experience, just briefly through a good book, what it’s actually like. Perhaps they wouldn’t be so quick to encourage it to happen.

Child porn isn’t okay. Watching it isn’t okay. Making it isn’t okay. And while I don’t think people who watch, download, and/or buy child porn should get a higher sentence than people who create it, I do think there should be consequences. It’s never okay to exploit children (or anyone else). It’s never okay to use and harm others for your own pleasure.

So I will never buy a John Grisham book. I will never recommend his books to any of my friends. And I hope you will think twice about buying his books, or that you will consider donating to an organization that supports survivors, such as RAINN or your local rape crisis center, or an organization that fight child porn and child exploitation. We can make a healing, positive difference in this world. And it starts with compassion.

Recently a 22-year-old man killed his roommates, then shot and murdered a number of women, and wounded others, because he felt he’d been rejected sexually and was furious that he was still a virgin. He called it his “war on women.”

According to LA Times, in a video he made before the attacks (now removed from YouTube) he said: “”I’m 22 years old and still a virgin, never even kissed a girl. And through college, 2 1/2 years, more than that actually, I’m still a virgin. It has been very torturous,” he said. “The popular kids, you never accepted me and now you will all pay for it. Girls, all I ever wanted was to love you, be loved by you. I wanted a girlfriend. I wanted sex, love, affection, adoration.”

Wow. Scary.

It’s like the Montreal Massacre. A man killing women for being women. For not giving them what he wanted. Another tear through our society, our souls. This horrifies me. It should horrify you, too. Men are not automatically owed sex or praise or anything else by women just because they are men. But our culture encourages and promotes the sexualization and objectification of women and girls–and the dominance and “superiority” of men. Still. To this day.

Most women have experienced some form of sexual assault in their lives–many from men they know. At least 1 in 3 girls have been sexually abused or raped, and I think that is a very conservative estimate, given how frightening and hard it is to talk about, and how often people don’t believe a child when they speak out.

Yes, boys are sexually abused, too. But what we’re talking about right now is the misogyny–the hatred of women–that is steeped into our society, so that most young women can’t walk down a street without being harassed, or fearing sexual assault. Where women are expected to put out. Where women are still blamed for rape, and where rapists are still let free and not punished for their crimes. Where girls and women are still considered second class.

If you’re on social media, especially Twitter, you may have seen #YesAllWomen trending. It’s in response to these recent murders, and also to the hatred and violence against women that is such a part of our culture. Gina Dening wrote about this beautifully: “Because every woman has a story about being a victim. Every woman has a story of a time when she needed to decide between fight and flight.” Read her post. It says SO much more–so perfectly.

I also really appreciated and loved Chuck Wendig’s post Not All Men, But Still Too Many Men on how men saying “not all men” are missing the point, and that our society is built on violence against women. We KNOW not all men are rapists or bullies or murderers or child molesters. But for so many women, we have to face or have had to face threats from men all our lives.

I did. I experienced daily and nightly rape by my father, other family members, and his friends. He used me in child porn and child prostitution to gain money and prestige among his friends and among the cult he and my mother were a part of. Rape, abuse, and torture were my normal growing up–for most of my life. I lived in fear and terror. And yet I always fought it.

I argued with my high school sociology teacher, telling her and the class that women were not ever to blame for rape, not even if they walked down a dark alley alone or wore skimpy clothes. I was verbally shot down by my teacher. I fought back against my abusers, always–but also tried to stay alive. I didn’t think I would survive and become an adult–but I’m glad I did. It’s gotten a lot better.

But I still am not comfortable in my body. I still am afraid out on the streets after dark. I still experience harassment as a woman and a lesbian. I am still affected in so many ways by the rape and abuse and objectification I experienced as a child and teen and even later.

So I am thrilled to see #YesAllWomen trending–thrilled to see women speaking out about the violence and harassment they experience, thrilled to see men and women listening, and many responding positively. I believe so strongly in the healing power of bringing painful things to light, of talking about them, and of working to create change. I believe we can make positive change together…even if it takes a very long time. And I still hope for a day when the hatred will end.

It’s what I work towards through my books. Through speaking out on social media. Through the way I live my life. And it’s what I hope you’ll work towards, too. Greater compassion. Equality. An end to the violence and hate. All of us being able to live without fear.

I know. It sounds like a dream far too big, impossible, to happen. But I still hope for it. I have to. I hope you will, too. And I hope you’ll also speak out.

Other YA authors are tweeting and writing about #YesAllWomen:

And Kim Baccelia has written about it in her post

There are also many articles about #YesAllWomen in the media, including:
Time

buzzfeed

and many others.

And you can search for the latest #YesAllWomen hashtags on Twitter.

By Ross E. Cheit

It was the longest criminal trial in American history and it ended without a single conviction. Five people were charged with child sexual abuse based on extremely flimsy evidence. Some parents came to believe outlandish stories about ritual abuse and tunnels underneath the preschool. It is no wonder that the McMartin Preschool case, once labeled the largest “mass molestation” case in history, has come to be called a witch-hunt. In a commentary to a Retro Report in the New York Times earlier this month, Clyde Haberman, former Times reporter, repeated the view that the McMartin case was a witch-hunt that spawned a wave of other cases of “dubious provenance.” But does that description do justice to the facts?

A careful examination of court records reveals that the witch-hunt narrative about the McMartin case is a powerful but not entirely accurate story. For starters, critics have obscured the facts surrounding the origins of the case. Richard Beck, quoted as an expert in the Retro Report story, recently asserted that the McMartin case began when Judy Johnson “went to the police” to allege that her child had been molested. Debbie Nathan, the other writer quoted by Retro Report, went even further, asserting that “everyone overlooked the fact that Judy Johnson was psychotic.”

Both of these claims are false.

Judy Johnson did not bring her suspicions to the police; she brought them to her family doctor who, after examining the boy, referred him to an Emergency Room. That doctor recommended that the boy be examined by a child-abuse specialist. The pediatric specialist is the one who reported to the Manhattan Beach Police Department that “the victim’s anus was forcibly entered several days ago.”

Although Judy Johnson died of alcohol poisoning in 1986, making her an easy target for those promoting the witch-hunt narrative, there is no evidence that she was “psychotic” three years earlier. A profile in the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, published after Johnson died, made it clear that she was “strong and healthy” in 1983 and that she “jogged constantly and ate health food.” The case did not begin with a mythical crazy woman.

Retro Report also disposed of the extensive medical evidence in the McMartin case with a single claim that there was no “definitive” evidence. But defense lawyer Danny Davis allowed that the genital injuries on one girl were “serious and convincing.” (His primary argument to the jury was that much of the time that this girl attended McMartin was outside the statute of limitations.) The vaginal injuries on another girl, one of the three involved in both McMartin trials, were described by a pediatrician as proving sexual abuse “to a medical certainty.” Were the reporter and fact-checkers for Retro Report aware of this evidence?

None of this is to defend the charges against five (possibly six) teachers in the case. Nor is it an endorsement of claims, made by some parents, that scores of children had been ritually abused. Rather, it is a plea to treat the case as something that unfolded over time and the children as individuals, not as an undifferentiated mass. As it turns out, there are credible reasons that jurors in both trials voted in favor of a guilty verdict on some counts. Those facts do not fit the witch-hunt narrative. Instead, they portray the reality of a complicated case.

When the story of prosecutorial excess overshadows all of the evidence in a child sexual abuse case, children are the ones sold short by the media. That is precisely what Retro Report did earlier this month. The injustices in the McMartin case were significant, most of them were to defendants, and the story has been told many times. But there was also an array of credible evidence of abuse that should not be ignored or written out of history just because it gets in the way of a good story.

The witch-hunt narrative has replaced any complicated truths about the McMartin case, and Retro Report, whose mission is to bust media myths, just came down solidly on the side of the myth. It wasn’t all a witch-hunt.

Ross E. Cheit is professor of political science and public policy at Brown University. He is an inactive member of the California bar and chair of the Rhode Island Ethics Commission. His forthcoming book, The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children (OUP 2014), includes a 70-page chapter on the McMartin case.

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Image credit: “Face In The Shadow” by George Hodan c/o PublicDomainPictures. Public domain via pixabay.

The post Unlearned lessons from the McMartin Preschool case appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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Today author S. Bergstrom talks to us about human trafficking–an inhumane practice that happens all too often–as well as his new book The Cruelty. Human trafficking is very close to what I went through myself as a child and teen through the cult, so it really affects me. No human should be treated this way. I’m very glad S. Bergstrom is speaking out, and helping people become more aware through his book. I’m glad to be part of his tour. I hope you are moved by his post, as I was.

Jasmine of Berlin
by S. Bergstrom, author of The Cruelty.

The girl wears her hair in schoolgirl braids tied with pink ribbon. An attempt, I suppose, to look even younger than her seventeen or eighteen years. Despite it being a brutally cold Berlin night in February 2012, she wears a very short skirt and I can see bruises the color of eggplant on her bare legs.

After scanning the bar for a few seconds, the girl takes a seat next to me. The bartender gives her a look and doesn’t bother asking if she wants anything to drink. She is, evidently, known here. Jasmine is how she introduces herself, and that’s what I call her for the remainder of the ten second conversation that follows. If possible, her German is more basic than mine, and filled with enough Russian vowels and rolled r’s that I have to assume she’s from one of the former Soviet Republics.

“Why you here alone?” she asks.

“Waiting on a friend,” I answer. “Why are you here alone, Jasmine?”

She looks at me in a way that means I’m impossibly stupid or impossibly cruel for making her say it out loud. “Sex for money,” she says. “Do you want? Very cheap.”

I tell her no and reiterate that I’m waiting for a friend. She gets up without another word and approaches two middle-aged business men drinking at the other end of the bar. No more than a minute passes before she leaves with one of them, the man’s arm around her waist.

This is not a remarkable story. I’m not even sure I mentioned to the friend who came in a few minutes later. To men especially, it’s all pretty familiar. Travel enough by yourself and approaches such as these happen too often to count. It happens not just in Europe, of course, but in North America, too. Miami. New York. Toronto. Topeka. But it’s precisely because it’s unremarkable and universal that it’s so tragic.

Jasmine—or Anna, or Olga, or Sveta, or whatever her real name is—did not end up in Berlin by accident. If you travel extensively in this part of the world, you know it’s not too far a logical leap to guess at the story that came before her arrival in Germany’s capital. Jasmine was, very likely—in fact, almost certainly—the victim of human trafficking.

Trafficking in human beings for both sex and labor happens everywhere, but it’s most obvious in places like Berlin where the impoverished East borders the relatively more prosperous West. Class distinctions there are sharp and it’s a mecca for immigrants, mainly from Turkey, but from former Soviet satellite states, too. It’s these latter countries—particularly the poorest of the poor, such as Moldova—that are the epicenters of human trafficking in Europe.

In such countries there is little industry or infrastructure. But what these places do have in abundance is young people on whom human traffickers prey by promising them lucrative, easy work abroad. It often begins with the offer of a waitressing gig in Dubai, or modeling job in Paris. Such connections are often made through brokers who advance sums of money to the young woman’s family. Sometimes it’s even a relative—an uncle or cousin abroad who’s made arrangements with his acquaintances there.

What happens next varies in specifics, but typically ends the same way. Upon arriving in a new country, the victim’s passport is confiscated and the true nature of the work she’ll be doing is finally disclosed. Leaving is impossible without her passport, and threats to quit are countered by threats to either her life, or the lives of her family back home. There is also the issue of spurious “debt,” which the victim has accrued both through the advance often paid to her family, and the purported costs of transport, lodging, and other “fees” such as bribes to officials for work visas which almost never materialize. This debt, along with the interest it accrues, is typically so inflated that there is no realistic way for the women to repay it.

Those brave enough to escape this life often find themselves victimized again by the legal system in their host country. While tremendous gains have been made in much of Europe in recognizing these women as victims rather than criminals, this is not the case in many Middle Eastern or Asian countries. Branded as criminals both for the work they performed and their lack of documentation, the victims of human trafficking often face prison sentences and further abuse at the hands of the police.

The idea of slavery is, today, almost universally repellent. But then, so is war. So is starvation. Yet these things go on anyway. Some time ago, when I approached a magazine to write an article about sex trafficking, the editor’s face contorted in visible disgust. “No one wants to read about that,” she said. I explained to her that according to the United Nations, there were more human beings enslaved in the 21st Century than there were at the height of the Atlantic slave trade. She only shrugged. “My readers can’t do anything about it,” she said.

Mostly, that editor is right. Human trafficking, whether for sex or labor, is a decentralized problem. There is no single nation from which the women come, and no single nation that is their destination. Thankfully, through the attention of the UN and many NGOs, reforms are taking place worldwide that enact tougher penalties for the traffickers themselves while providing support for the victims. We can only encourage the spread and strict enforcement of these laws, all the while raising awareness whenever possible and with whatever media is at hand. Is that enough? Will such reforms work? I don’t know. Neither does anyone.

I thought about Jasmine as I wrote my novel The Cruelty, where the woman I knew for all of ten seconds became Marina, guide and benefactor to my protagonist. It was a hopeful gesture, but ultimately a meaningless one. In the book, Marina survives. She defeats the man responsible for her bondage, triumphing over him. But in real life I’m not sure Jasmine fared so well.

S. Bergstrom is a writer and traveler fascinated by the darker, unloved corners of world’s great cities. His books and articles on architecture and urbanism have been widely published in both the United States and Europe. The Cruelty is his first novel. He can be reached at sbergstrom.com or on Twitter @BergstromScott

When her diplomat father is kidnapped and the U.S. government refuses to help, 17-year-old Gwendolyn Bloom sets off across the dark underbelly of Europe to rescue him. Following the only lead she has—the name of a Palestinian informer living in France—Gwendolyn plunges into a brutal world of arms smuggling and human trafficking. As she journeys from the slums of Paris, to the nightclubs of Berlin, to the heart of the most feared crime family in Prague, Gwendolyn discovers that to survive in this new world she must become every bit as cruel as the men she’s hunting.

You can find S. Bergstrom on:
Author Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
Goodreads
Virtual Tour Page

This is a sketch for a short story called, The Boy In The Leaves, which will be in my short story collection: SHORT STORIES AND OTHER IMAGININGS FOR THE READING SPOT.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month in the US–and, I hope, this will spread to other countries.

Dr Cindee Grace (a naturopath) is offering her ebook Holistic Self-Care for Post Traumatic Stress and Dissociative Identity for free, and encouraging others to spread the word.

To me, this fits in perfectly with Child Abuse Prevention Month, since many survivors of abuse experience PTSD, and survivors of ritual abuse often experience DID. So, if you’re a survivor, know someone who is, or know someone who works with survivors, consider letting them know about this ebook.

I haven’t yet read the book, just scanned the first few text pages (which are anti psychiatry drugs and pro holistic approaches and natural health). As with everything, judge the usefulness of the information to you, yourself.