Right now, federal law does not require health or sex education to include sexual assault prevention – but that could change with a new bill introduced by Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Tim Kaine (D-VA).

via Gary Knight

The Teach Safe Relationships Act of 2015, which was introduced earlier this month, would require all public secondary schools in the country to include teaching “safe relationship behavior” in order to help prevent domestic violence and sexual assault. Women between 16 and 24 experience the highest rate of intimate partner violence, making the bill particularly important in ending an epidemic of sexual violence.

McCaskill, who has also pushed legislation to combat military sexual assault, noted that sexual assault prevention starts young. “One thing we’ve learned in our work to curb sexual violence on campuses and in the military is that many young people learn about sex and relationships before they turn 18,” she said in a recent statement. “And one of the most effective ways to prevent sexual violence among adults is to educate our kids at a younger age.”

She was echoed by Kaine. “Education can be a key tool to increase public safety by raising awareness and helping to prevent sexual assault and domestic violence, but many students are leaving high school without learning about these crimes that disproportionately impact young people,” he said in a press release. “With the alarming statistics on the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses and in communities across the country, secondary schools should play a role in promoting safe relationship behavior and teaching students about sexual assault and dating violence.”

The Act came after Sen. Kaine met with members of One Less, a University of Virginia group that advocates for rape and sexual assault survivors. UVA’s policies surrounding campus sexual assault have been in the spotlight since Rolling Stone released an article about the college’s mishandling of a gang rape.

Media Resources: The Huffington Post 2/3/2015; Sen. Claire McCaskill Press Release 2/3/2015; Tim Kaine

bjwordpressdivider

Study: College athletes are more likely to gang rape

Nine things you may not have known about college sexual assault, according to an insurance company

February 26, 2015 7:45PM ET

by Claire Gordon

In the world of higher education, sexual assault is a legal minefield. Alleged victims and accused rapists alike claim their colleges botch cases – charging breach of contract, negligence, discrimination, defamation and due process violations – and in numbers like never before.

For United Educators, which offers liability insurance to schools, student-on-student sexual assault represents the third-costliest category of claims, behind employment practices and slips, trips and falls.

Last month, the company released an analysis of all the sexual assault reports at its client colleges from 2011 to 2013, excluding ones that involved faculty. The final data set was 305 cases from 104 colleges and universities. (See its last report on campus sexual assault here.) And unlike most campus assault surveys that are based on self-reports, UE has information on both the alleged victims and the men they accused (99 percent of perpetrators in the study are men) and how the schools responded. It’s the kind of study only an insurance company could do.

Here are nine of UE’s conclusions that jumped out from the report:

Athletes are more likely to gang rape

College athletes aren’t accused more often of rape, according to this data. They represent 15 percent of accused perpetrators in the study, roughly their slice of the student population, according to UE. But they made up 40 percent of multiple-perpetrator attacks reported to schools. In other words, athletes were almost three times as likely to be involved in gang assault. The report points to a “culture that promotes hyper-masculinity, sexual aggression and excessive alcohol consumption.” In all, 10 percent of the sexual assault reports UE examined involved more than one perpetrator. But this could be an overrepresentation of their actual proportion on campus, as alleged victims may be more inclined to report these kinds of attacks.

99PercentAssaultsByMen

Fraternity members are more likely to serial offend

Like athletes, fraternity members weren’t more likely to be accused of sexual assault, according to this analysis. Fraternity members made up 10 percent of accused perpetrators in the study, approximately the same percentage of college men who go Greek. But they made up 24 percent of repeat perpetrators. (Athletes made up another 20 percent.) All in all, 1 in 5 alleged assailants in the study were repeat offenders.

20PercentRepeatOffenders

Drinking increases a man’s likelihood of raping

Alleged perpetrators, like alleged victims, were drinking in a majority of incidents analyzed. In 11 percent of “physical force” assaults, the perpetrator was drinking and the victim was not. That was also true for 7 percent of “failed consent” cases, where the man is accused of inferring consent from silence or lack of resistance.

MethodsOfSexualAssualt

According to UE, this suggests that drinking enables some students “to more easily use force to obtain sex when their partner refuses” and “contributes to misinterpreting sexual interest or ignoring their partner’s hesitation.”

It’s not a campus assault problem; it’s an underclassman assault problem

It’s well-known that freshman girls are the most vulnerable to sexual assault; their first few weeks on campus are grimly dubbed “the red zone.” But the numbers are staggering. More than half of alleged victims in these reports were freshmen; adding in sophomores brings the total close to three quarters. And of reported gang assaults, freshmen accounted for 88 percent of the alleged victims.

FreshmenandSophmores

Many didn’t call it rape

Some sexual assault studies, such as 2007’s government-backed Campus Sexual Assault study, which produced the famous statistic that 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted in college, have been criticized for avoiding the terms “sexual assault” or “rape” in their survey questions and using the legal definitions instead, turning droves of young women into statistical “victims” who never considered themselves victims at all.

DelayedReporting

Every study that’s looked at this point has found that college women who’ve been legally raped often don’t label what happened to them as rape. This fact is damning, infuriating or dismaying, depending on whom you ask. In the UE report, 4 in 10 alleged victims delayed reporting to their schools an average of 11 months; most of these students only labeled their experience sexual assault after talking to friends or attending a training session. A good portion of their alleged perpetrators likely didn’t consider it sexual assault either, according to other research.

Colleges clear the perpetrators in 36 percent of decisions

Under the Title IX federal civil rights statute, schools are required to use a “preponderance of the evidence” standard in their adjudications, or “more likely than not” – a far lower standard than beyond a reasonable doubt. Still, in UE’s sample, more than one-third of alleged victims don’t persuade their college’s disciplinary board.

Assuming (safely) that more than one-third of alleged victims did not concoct allegations, this means many women were either treated unfairly, or there wasn’t enough evidence to tip the scale against the accused. UE emphasizes the point:

“[Colleges and universities] respond to cases of sexual assault that the criminal justice system often considers too difficult to succeed at trial and obtain a conviction… involv[ing] little or no forensic evidence, delays in reporting, use of alcohol, and differing accounts of consent.”

Of students found responsible, 43 percent are expelled

A string of media reports have highlighted what are seen as extremely light sanctions for some alleged rapists, like writing a book report or watching an educational video. But the insurance company study suggests this isn’t commonplace. Of men found responsible for sexual assault, 82 percent were suspended or expelled. On the flipside, 18 percent of men found responsible for an assault were allowed to continue their studies uninterrupted and 57 percent were allowed to graduate.

Alleged perpetrators file more lawsuits than alleged victims

Of the cases analyzed by UE, alleged perpetrators filed 50 percent more lawsuits than alleged victims. The specter of alleged offender lawsuits has made some schools squeamish about finding men responsible and sanctioning them. In the harshest calculus, some schools may consider it cheaper to hurt the alleged victim. But in UE’s numbers, that math doesn’t work, at least not anymore.

VicitmAllegations

Alleged victims are more of an insurance liability

Litigation brought by victims accounted for a whopping 84 percent, or $14.3 million, of the total payouts in this study. How is this possible? It could be that victims’ lawsuits see greater payouts. (UE wouldn’t break down that data.) But it’s also thanks to students filing Title IX complaints with the federal government. Schools faced more Title IX complaints than perpetrator and victim lawsuits combined, UE found, and all of them were brought by victims. Across the country, close to 100 colleges and universities are under federal investigation for Title IX sexual violence issues.

A school has never lost its federal funding for violating Title IX (the most severe theoretical punishment), but that doesn’t mean the costs of a Title IX complaint aren’t real. There are lawyers to pay along with the cost of reforms prescribed by the government. Plus, there are damages UE doesn’t tally: administrators’ time, crisis PR teams, drops in alumni donations and high schoolers deciding not to apply.

“Women have leveraged very low cost ways to get administrators to pay attention,” according to Brett Sokolow, the CEO of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, who’s been helping colleges grapple with campus assault for 15-plus years. “It’s very clever. And it’s very costly.”

February 27, 2015 by IdealisticRebel

You Have to Be Carefully Taught

My youngest grandson is 5 years old, and in pre-school. He has lived his entire life in conservative areas, first in Arkansas, now in Oklahoma. I talked to his mother today, and she told me that when he came home from school today, the following conversation took place:

“Mom, Mr. Obama is our President, did you know that?”

“Yes, honey, I did know that. Did you know that he’s our First President of Color?”

“No, mommy! He’s not the First President! And he’s not the President for Color, he’s the President of All of Us!”

A 5-year-old can get that, but Congress, or at least many Republicans, apparently can’t.

Obama is the first President of Color, but to the youngest generation, that doesn’t matter. What matters is: He’s President of America. Period.

Color is irrelevant, at my grandson’s age, because at 5, he has not been taught to hate people who look differently than he does, or who worship differently than he does, or who worship not at all. At 5, we’re all just People. Nothing more, nothing less. Just People.

Think of what a wonderful world it could be, if he were never taught that all people whose skin has a different hue are dangerous or stupid or lazy or out to get him in some undefined way. Think of what a wonderful world it could be, if he were never taught that his God hates the way other people worship the same God and that they will be punished for believing differently. Think of what a wonderful world it could be, if he were never taught that all people in foreign lands, or whose parents or grandparents come from foreign lands, want to destroy our country, or hurt his family.

What would the world be like if we never taught our children to hate, or to fear or to be intolerant and prejudiced? Can you imagine such a world?

It’s hard, looking at the news and beheadings and bombings and riots and protests, to imagine a world without hatred being taught to children.

But I, for one, think it’s worth trying.

bjwordpressdivider

Let us teach all children that they are beautiful and intelligent. Let us teach them that they have good ideas. Let’s not discourage them from having friends who are different. Let us live in such a way that they will have good role models. Let us stop Nazi imitators and the KKK. Let us punish them for every crime they commit.

Let us teach that every color in the woods, the beach, in our gardens, or in our skin, is there because of the way light rays bend. Let’s show them that there is beautiful color everywhere in the world. No color is more important than another and no color is to ever be hated.

If you really stop and think about it, what color is Divinity? Caucasian, black, brown, asian, or a blending of colors like my paint palette? What if Your God and or mine has no color? What if God, Divinity is pure energy and is colorless?

What a person is and how they live their lives is what is really important. Good people are not Caucasian, partly good are not Asian and Black people are not bad people.

Black lives matter, Hispanic lives matter, Jewish lives matter, Indian lives matter, Indigenous lives matter, Caucasian lives matter, Middle Eastern lives matter.

ALL LIVES MATTER

bjwordpressdivider

Namaste, Barbara

prayer3

bjwordpressdivider

artist pallette

My artist pallette. This is how life looks to me. MultipleRacesChildren

February 26, 2015 by IdealisticRebel

Marvin Gaye’s voice

bjwordpressdivider

February 26, 2015 by IdealisticRebel

No immediate cause

WITH NO IMMEDIATE CAUSE

–Ntozake Shange

every 3 minutes a woman is beaten

every five minutes a

woman is raped/every ten minutes

a lil girl is molested

yet i rode the subway today

i sat next to an old man who

may have beaten his old wife

3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago

he might have sodomized his

daughter but i sat there

cuz the young men on the train

might beat some young women

lat4r in the day or tomorrow

i might not shut my door fast

enuf/push hard enuf

every 3 minutes it happens

some woman’s innocense

rushes to her cheeks/pours from her mouth

like the betsy wetsy dolls have been torn

apart/their mouths

menses red & split/every

three minutes a shoulder

is jammed through plaster and the oven door/

chairs push thru the rib cage/hot water or

boiling sperm decorate her body

i rode the subway

today

& bought a paper from a

man who might

have held his old lady onto

a hot pressing iron/i don’t know

maybe he catches lil girls in the

park and rips open their behinds

with steel rods/i can’t decide

what he might have done i only

know every 3 minutes

every 5 minutes every 10 minutes/so

i bought the paper

looking for the announcement

the discovery/of the dismembered

woman’s body/the

victims have not all been

identified/today they are

naked and dead/refuse to

testify/one girl out of 10’s not

coherent/i took the coffee

& spit it up/i found an

announcement/not the woman’s

bloated body in the river/floating

not the child bleeding in the

59th street corridor/not the baby

broken on the floor/

“there is some concern

that alleged battered women

might start to murder their

husbands & lovers with no

immediate cause”

i spit up i vomit i am screaming

we all have immediate cause

every 3 minutes

every 5 minutes

every 10 minutes

bjwordpressdivider

everynineseconds

February 26, 2015 by IdealisticRebel

Bahrain’s immigrant workers in trouble

Dear Kitty. Some blog

This is a video by Yousif Hassan and his friends on migrant workers in Bahrain.

From the Washington Post in the USA:

Watch: A Bahraini tries living a day in the life of a migrant worker
By Adam Taylor
February 25 at 12:05 PM
More than half of the 1.4 million people living in Bahrain are thought to be migrant workers, journeying from South Asia and elsewhere to the Persian Gulf state because of economic factors. Many end up in low-paid, menial work once they are there, living a very different life compared with the Bahrainis around them.

The Washington Post should rather say: some of the Bahrainis.

Last week, a young Bahraini named Yousif Hassan decided to show the gulf between his life and that of migrant workers, by living a “day in the life” of a low-paid convenience store worker. With the help of some friends, he filmed his day.

View original post 397 more words

February 25, 2015 by IdealisticRebel

If Death Were a Woman

This poem grabbed me. I wasn’t thinking about Death, but the beauty of the words — the possibility of it — captured my imagination today.

We all will face Death, one day — some of us sooner than others — but how we face it, how we accept it or fight it, can be as important as how we live on the way there.

Death is scary. It isn’t something I want to do, any time soon — I have grandchildren to watch grow up, great-grandchildren to welcome many years from now — but when it comes, it would be nice to think it would be like this poem. Nice to think that those I’ve loved and lost were welcomed to the Other Side in so gentle and beautiful a fashion.

Namaste,

Barbara

bjwordpressdivider

If Death Were a Woman

–Ellen Kort

I’d want her to come for me smelling of cinnamon

wearing bright cotton purple maybe hot pink

a red bandana in her hair She’d bring

good coffee papaya juice bouquet of sea grass

saltine crackers and a lottery ticket We’d dip

our fingers into moist pouches of lady’s slippers

crouch down to see how cabbage feel when wind

bumps against them in the garden We’d walk

through Martin’s woods find the old house

its crumbling foundation strung with honeysuckle vines

and in the front yard a surprise jonquils

turning the air yellow glistening and ripe

still blooming for a gardener long gone

We’d head for the beach wearing strings of shells

around our left ankles laugh at their ticking

sounds the measured beat that comes with dancing

on hard-packed sand the applause of ocean and gulls

She’d play ocarina songs to a moon almost full

and I’d sing off-key We’d glide and swoop

become confetti of leaf fall all wings

floating on small whirlwinds never once dreading

the heart-silenced drop And when it was time

she would not bathe me Instead we’d scrub the porch

pour leftover water on flowers stand a long time

in sun and silence then holding hands

we’d post for pictures in the last light

bjwordpressdivider

beALamp

February 24, 2015 by IdealisticRebel

This is Not the Way to Peace

kidnappedMissionary

Lagos, Nigeria (CNN)

An American missionary in Nigeria has been kidnapped in what authorities call a “purely criminal” act.

Kogi state Police Commissioner Adeyemi Ogunjemilusi says five men kidnapped the woman from her workplace and are demanding a ransom of 60 million Naira ($301,500).

The Free Methodist Church has identified the woman as the Rev. Phyllis Sortor, a missionary based at the Hope Academy compound in Kogi state.

Kogi state is located away from the areas where Boko Haram operates, making it likely that the kidnapping is not related to terrorism. But there is also the possibility that an offshoot group could have kidnapped Sortor, or that she might be sold to another group. Police have not said if they suspect a certain group or band of criminals.

Sortor was kidnapped on Monday, Ogunjemilusi said.

The U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and the FBI have been notified of the incident, the Free Methodist Church said.

Sortor runs a nongovernmental organization that educates nomadic Fulani children, the police commissioner said.

According to her biography on the church’s website, Sortor is the financial administrator of Hope Academy.

“A special friendship with a clan of nomadic Fulani has given Phyllis the opportunity to open additional schools for Fulani children and their parents,” the website says.

The commissioner said five men scaled the wall of the school where Sortor’s office is and “whisked her away,” jumping back over the wall and fleeing to the nearby mountains.

Two of the men were masked, and they fired shots into the air to scare people away during the kidnapping, Ogunjemilusi said.

CNN’s Christian Purefoy reported from Lagos and Mariano Castillo wrote the story in Atlanta. CNN’s Shawn Nottingham contributed to this report.

It is my prayer that this missionary and the 100 Christians taken by ISIS will be released. If not may angels surround them

February 23, 2015 by IdealisticRebel

Solidarity across Religions

Norway’s Muslims form protective human ring around synagogue

OSLO Sat Feb 21, 2015 3:43pm EST

Muslims join hands to form a human shield as they stand outside a synagogue in Oslo

Muslim women join hands to form a human shield as they stand outside a synagogue in Oslo

Muslims join hands to form a human shield as they stand outside a synagogue in Oslo February 21, 2015.

CREDIT: REUTERS/HAKON MOSVOLD LARSEN/NTB SCANPIX

(Reuters) – More than 1000 Muslims formed a human shield around Oslo’s synagogue on Saturday, offering symbolic protection for the city’s Jewish community and condemning an attack on a synagogue in neighboring Denmark last weekend.

Chanting “No to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia,” Norway’s Muslims formed what they called a ring of peace a week after Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, a Danish-born son of Palestinian immigrants, killed two people at a synagogue and an event promoting free speech in Copenhagen last weekend.

“Humanity is one and we are here to demonstrate that,” Zeeshan Abdullah, one of the protest’s organizers told a crowd of Muslim immigrants and ethnic Norwegians who filled the small street around Oslo’s only functioning synagogue.

“There are many more peace mongers than warmongers,” Abdullah said as organizers and Jewish community leaders stood side by side. “There’s still hope for humanity, for peace and love, across religious differences and backgrounds.”

Norway’s Jewish community is one of Europe’s smallest, numbering around 1000, and the Muslim population, which has been growing steadily through immigration, is 150,000 to 200,000. Norway has a population of about 5.2 million.

The debate over immigration in the country came to the forefront in 2011 when Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people and accused the government and the then-ruling Labour party of facilitating Muslim immigration and adulterating pure Norwegian blood.

Support for immigration has been rising steadily since those attacks, however, and an opinion poll late last year found that 77 percent of people thought immigrants made an important contribution to Norwegian society.

(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Pravin Char and Stephen Powell)