Category: Sexual Violence

New York court overturns Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction

A New York court has overturned Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction from 2020, ruling that the judge who oversaw the conviction unfairly allowed the testimony of women whose allegations were not part of the case.

The 4-3 decision from the New York Court of Appeals called the case “highly prejudicial” against Weinstein.

Back in 2020, the disgraced Hollywood producer was convicted of a first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has said it plans to retry the 2020 case in the wake of the successful appeal.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the majority opinion “perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability.”

Thursday’s ruling to overturn Weinstein’s 2020 conviction comes more than six years after allegations against him were first brought to light in reports from The New York Times and The New Yorker.

Weinstein has also been convicted of another rape in Los Angeles in 2022. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison for this conviction.

Source: New York court overturns Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction

Sexual assault victims give evidence in court, but alleged perpetrators don’t have to. Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case shows why that needs to change

In essence, the right to silence is the right for an accused person not to incriminate themself through their own testimony. In Australia, it is mostly seen as a central part of the presumption of innocence for serious crimes. It is widely used.

At first glance, this seems fair enough. The prosecution should have to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt to avoid wrongful conviction. The right to silence can protect against abuses of process by the state against the individual.

Yet, like many sexual assault and child sexual abuse cases, this trial boiled down to an accusation and a denial: one person’s word against another. It was key to Channel Ten’s legal case, seeking to defend the claims it reported as true.

Given the nature of sex crimes, which mostly happen in private, there is often no hard evidence. There is no CCTV footage or “third party” witness. There is often no paper trail or easy basis for DNA testing where the accused is known or the case is about consent.

What ultimately brought Lehrmann undone in this civil trial was that he chose to give evidence in defence of his reputation. He likely chose to testify because under New South Wales defamation law, the person alleging they’ve been defamed has the onus of proving the statements were, in fact, defamatory. For five days, the open court heard and felt the quality of his evidence and character.

This case was a rare chance to see what happens when everyone tells their story about an alleged rape. The decision is a basis from which legal reformers and academics should be seriously questioning the role of the right to silence in sex crime cases.

Source: Sexual assault victims give evidence in court, but alleged perpetrators don’t have to. Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case shows why that needs to change

Femicides: Belgium still failing to collect data despite pioneering law

Across Europe, more than 14,000 women were intentionally killed for being a woman between 2012 and 2022.

 

However, this figure is likely an underestimation of reality, as few countries recognise femicide, resulting in many deaths being written off as “ordinary” murders. Belgium signed the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (better known as the Istanbul Convention) in 2016, which requires signatories to collect statistical data on gender-based violence.

 

Belgium last year positioned itself at the forefront of the battle against gender-based violence with a new law, the Stop Feminicide Law, in which the legal definition of femicide was enshrined and boosted protections for victims.

 

Recognising that, to fully understand the phenomenon and its scale, more accurate official statistics were needed, the country also vowed to improve the collection of statistics on the phenomenon. Belgium is one of the worst performers when it comes to femicide data collection, but suddenly became one of Europe’s legislative pioneers in the fight against this crime.

 

However, almost one year later, Le Soir reported that, while the Federal Government does collect general data on cases of domestic violence, as well as on suspects of domestic violence and their gender, no figures on femicide victims could be provided, not by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, nor by the Federal Police.

 

Source: Femicides: Belgium still failing to collect data despite pioneering law

The five demands of the No More national rallies happening this weekend

Rallies calling for government action on violence against women are happening in a dozen locations across the country over the weekend.

The No More National Rally Against Violence, starting in Ballarat this Friday at 5pm, was organised in response to the targeted attacks on women in Bondi Junction on April 13, as well as the concerning growth of gender-based violence in Australia.

Just 17 weeks into the year, 25 women have been killed in 2024 at the hands of male-perpetrated violence, according to Destroy the Joint’s Counting Dead Women.

Sarah Williams, founder of advocacy organisation What Were You Wearing, is the woman behind it all. She, along with several other organisations, have developed five key demands for action to come from the No More national rallies.

(1) Declaration of national emergency

(2) Media regulation on publishing images of victims

(3) #BelieveMe: Mandatory victim blaming prevention training

(4) Alternative reporting options; DFV specialist courts

(5) Better funding

he No More national rallies are happening in 12 locations this weekend. Williams calls on everyone, especially politicians and including men, to attend.

  • Ballarat, VIC: Friday 26th April 5pm @ Bridge Mall – Town Hall
  • Newcastle, NSW: Friday 26th April 6pm @ Newcastle Museum – Nobby’s Foreshore
  • Sydney, NSW: Saturday 27th April 1pm @ Belmore Park Haymarket – Hyde Park
  • Adelaide, SA: Saturday 27th April 11am @ Parliament House
  • Melbourne, VIC: Sunday 28th April 10am @ State Library – Federation Square
  • Bendigo, VIC: Sunday 28th April 11am @ Rosalind Park
  • Geelong, VIC: Sunday 28th April 11am @ Market Square Mall
  • Coffs Harbour, NSW: Sunday 28th April 11am @ Coffs Jetty Foreshore
  • Perth, WA: Sunday 28th April 12pm @ Forrest Pl – Parliament House
  • Sunshine Coast, QLD: Sunday 28th April 11am @ Foundation Square – Cotton Tree Park
  • Brisbane, QLD: Sunday 28th April 11am @ King George Square
  • Canberra, ACT: Sunday 28th April 2pm @ Parliament House

Source: The five demands of the No More national rallies happening this weekend

Bondi Junction attack: Women are sick of being afraid | The Saturday Paper

How could anyone stab a nine-month-old baby?

Why would a man target women going about their business in a shopping centre?

The man stabbed to death four other women – a university student, an artist, an architect and mother of two, an ecommerce assistant who was happily planning her wedding. Tragically, a 30-year-old refugee working his first day shift as a security guard at the centre was also killed.

Most of the people injured and hospitalised in the attack were also female, prompting the commissioner of New South Wales Police Force, Karen Webb, to say it was “obvious” the offender targeted women and avoided the men.

What was obvious to the most senior police officer in the state had not been so plain to armchair detectives, who jumped to incorrect conclusions about the offender’s motivation – that he was an Islamic extremist; that he was a young Jewish man, wrongly identified in media.

There was also, later, a focus on the perpetrator’s mental health – he’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The mental health system in this country has been beset with problems for years, but as Professor Patrick McGorry, who has worked with people with schizophrenia for three decades, told the ABC’s Rafael Epstein, people with this diagnosis are less likely to commit acts of violence, not more.

Further, we typically don’t see acts of mass violence being perpetrated by mentally ill women.

Extreme acts of violence of any type perpetrated by women are extraordinarily rare.

On the other hand, our nation’s memory is stained by horrific attacks by male perpetrators – from the Bourke Street Mall car killings, to the Lindt Cafe siege, to Port Arthur, to the Hoddle Street massacre, to the Belanglo State Forest backpacker murders and now Bondi Junction.

Regardless of the sex of the victim, Australian Bureau of Statistics research shows 95 per cent of Australians who experience violence suffer at the hands of a male perpetrator.

When women are angry, or isolated, or depressed, or distorted by extremist ideology, or mentally ill, the statistics show that, overwhelmingly, they don’t resort to violence.

It is only if men take the burden of male violence away from always being a problem for women, if they look into their hearts and acknowledge there is a problem, that we will ever move forward.

Source: 12ft

The Hidden ‘Genocide’ of the Family Courts | by Bandy X. Lee | Mar, 2024 | Medium

In the U.S. Family Courts, the most heinous human crimes imaginable — the torture, maiming, and murder of innocent children — are occurring at industrial scale, with hundreds of new cases of children per day, day after day, year after year, over decades, in all fifty U.S. states. Yet, these children are not the primary targets, but their loving mothers (and occasionally loving fathers) who, as they witness the destruction of their children — murdered at a rate of one every six days — die from grief, suicide, cancer, heart attack, or “broken heart syndrome.” As happens with systematic genocide, the organizers of these massacres are not punished according to the law with death penalties and life imprisonments but rewarded with promotions and multiple billions of dollars a year.

Every victim litigant was a healthy, normal, and capable, even thriving suburban mother until she entered Family Court; every mother never believed something like this could happen to her, until she found herself entrapped in a predatory system whose goal was complete decimation of her. The obvious purpose is to render her incapable of fighting back or becoming an effective whistleblower.

The recent deaths of Catherine Kassenoff — a former special counsel to the New York State governor — and of Sinéad O’Connor — a highly-successful Irish singer — illustrate that legal competence and talented capabilities make matters worse, not better, for mothers in Family Courts.

Because Family Courts, by enabling or at best not holding accountable abusive personalities, have the effect of ballooning their entitlement, expectations, delusions of grandeur, and unlimited violence. These individuals, able to weaponize the legal system to enslave, torture, disfigure, and decimate their victims under “legal protection,” are actors in the larger Family Court carnage for profit that has now become an industrial organization of genocide.

Source: The Hidden ‘Genocide’ of the Family Courts | by Bandy X. Lee | Mar, 2024 | Medium

FURRY INFESTATION: Middle School Students Walk Out in Protest After School Leaders Allow “Furries” to Terrorize Them – They BITE, SCRATCH, BARK, CHEW ON STICKS, HAVE A KITTY LITTER BOX in Bathroom (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

Middle school students at Mt. Nebo School in Payson Utah held a walk out protest today against unhinged school officials that allow “furries’ to terrorize them at school.

The students report in the video below that the “furries” bite, scratch, and bark at them. The furries also chew on sticks in class and a kitty litter box was set up in the girls restroom for them to use.

In the video by LifeIsDriving the children also note that they are required to keep a distance from “furries,” whereas the same rule does not apply for the “furries.”

The protesting youth believe that the school’s tolerance stems from the principal, whose child happens to be a “furry.”

This is insane. The children are the adults here.

Source: FURRY INFESTATION: Middle School Students Walk Out in Protest After School Leaders Allow “Furries” to Terrorize Them – They BITE, SCRATCH, BARK, CHEW ON STICKS, HAVE A KITTY LITTER BOX in Bathroom (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

Protecting sexual offence victims’ private information in court through independent legal representation

The Australian-first study that explores how sexual offence victim-survivors’ private information – medical and counselling notes, prior sexual experiences, and digital communications, such as phone records – can be better protected in court through independent legal representation (ILR).

Source: Protecting sexual offence victims’ private information in court through independent legal representation

Recorded sexual offences among juveniles in Australia | Australian Institute of Criminology

This study analyses Australian Bureau of Statistics data to examine trends in the rate of juveniles being proceeded against by police for sexual offences in Australia, from 2008–09 to 2020–21. Over the 13-year period, the rate of recorded sexual offences committed by juveniles per 100,000 population was consistently higher than the rate for adults. While recorded assaultive sexual offences committed by juveniles decreased during this period, recorded non-assaultive sexual offences increased notably, and were still increasing at the end of the study period. The study highlights the need for increased focus on early intervention (from the age of 13 onwards) and prevention efforts targeting non-assaultive sexual offending by both sexes and assaultive sexual offences by male juveniles in Australia.

Source: Recorded sexual offences among juveniles in Australia | Australian Institute of Criminology