Category: Violence

Attacker Assaults Three Men, Blames Suppressed Transgender Identity | Women Are Human

IE — Dublin. On December 7, 2017, Sean Kavanagh punched a bartender and threw a bottle at an event manager while being kicked out of the Malt House Bar for knocking over several glasses. Once outside the bar, Kavanagh tried to run back in, at which point a family friend, Thomas Coogan, tried to stop him. Kavanagh punched Coogan in the face, fracturing Coogan’s skull and causing bleeding to the brain; Coogan spent several days in intensive care.
At some point after the bar assaults, Kavanagh began identifying as a woman called Shauna, and now has a gender recognition certificate, which was provided to the court.
Noctor argued in court that Kavanagh is “vulnerable” and would find prison particularly difficult, referencing international research that “has found transgender women in particular are a vulnerable group in prison”.

Noctor referred to two males currently being held in women’s jails in Ireland, who must be kept separate from the rest of the prison population. The two males in women’s prisons are: Barbie Kardashian, who has demonstrated a pattern of extreme physical and sexual violence towards women An unnamed pedophile, who was convicted of 10 counts of sexual assault and one count of cruelty against a child .

Source: Attacker Assaults Three Men, Blames Suppressed Transgender Identity | Women Are Human

Cyber bullies forced to apologise to victims under ‘world-first’ safety laws

Cyber bullies could face $110,000 fines, and adults bullying children online could be obliged to apologise to their victims, under an online safety act.

Source: Cyber bullies forced to apologise to victims under ‘world-first’ safety laws

Leaders must boycott G20 summit over Saudi rights abuses | Law | The Times

Saudi Arabia will host the G20 summit starting on Saturday, a date that marks almost a month since Loujain al-Hathloul, a local women’s rights activist who has been in prison for two years, started a hunger strike to protest against being barred from seeing her family.

Hathloul is not the only activist suffering at the hands of the Saudi government. She was one of several women arrested at different points in 2018 for fighting for women’s rights. While some have now been released pending trial, Nouf Abdulaziz, Aida al-Ghamdi, Mayaa al-Zahrani, Samar Badawi and Nassima al-Sadah remain detained in unacceptable conditions.

They have suffered enormous injustice at the hands of the Saudi government, especially since Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, assumed the reins of control. In a cruel twist, shortly after they were arrested, it was announced that one of the things they were fighting for — the right to drive — would be granted.

In a recent report for the human rights institute of the International Bar Association, I urged participant states to demand the immediate release of these women. The country’s leaders should refuse to attend the summit until this is done. A boycott will send the clear message that human rights abuses will no longer be tolerated.

Saudi Arabia should not have been allowed to host the summit after the murder of Khashoggi. We cannot allow the detention and torture of women activists to become another transgression that the world is willing to ignore. There must come a point at which impunity for crimes must end and that point has arrived.

Source: Leaders must boycott G20 summit over Saudi rights abuses | Law | The Times

Mexico police open fire on femicide protest in Cancún | Global development | The Guardian

 

Human rights activists in Mexico have expressed indignation after police opened fire on protesters who tried to force their way into Cancún city hall during a demonstration against the country’s femicide crisis.

Four journalists were injured in the incident late on Monday, including two who suffered bullet wounds. Eight protesters were reportedly detained after the shooting.

The demonstration was called after the dismembered body of 20-year-old Bianca “Alexis” Lorenzana, was found, days after she disappeared. It was the latest in a string of grisly crimes against women and girls in the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo.

Approximately 10 women are murdered in Mexico each day, prompting protests by an increasingly outspoken feminist movement over successive governments’ apparent inability to stem the violence.

Source: Mexico police open fire on femicide protest in Cancún | Global development | The Guardian

Transgender Activist Ordered To Stand Trial For Oakland Triple Murder – CBS San Francisco

A transgender activist and former teacher was ordered Wednesday to stand trial on three counts of murder for the shooting and stabbing deaths of a teenage man and two women in East Oakland in November 2016.

Dana Rivers, 63, of San Jose, is scheduled to return to Alameda County Superior Court on March 21 to have her trial date set.

She’s accused of killing 19-year-old Toto M. Diambu, who was also known as Benny Diambu Wright, 57-year-old Patricia Wright and 56-year-old Charlotte Reed.

Oakland police who came to the gruesome scene said Rivers was covered with blood, was holding a gasoline canister and was about to flee when she was arrested by officers who responded to reports of gunfire at a house in the 9400 block of Dunbar Drive at about 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 11, 2016.

Source: Transgender Activist Ordered To Stand Trial For Oakland Triple Murder – CBS San Francisco

Rivers was an organizer and participant in “Camp Trans”, the largest organized protest in transgender history. Camp trans was a campaign against the rights of lesbians to hold an annual women-only music festival called “Michfest” on private land.

After 40 years Michfest buckled under the pressure of the boycott and ceased to exist in 2016.

A few months later, in November 2016, David Warfield/Dana Rivers went on to brutally batter, then stab, shoot, and burn two women who were long time Michfest attendees and their adopted son. David/Dana was charged with stabbing, shooting, and beating Patricia Wright and Charlotte Reed and their son Benny, and then burning them.

Source: https://www.gendertrending.com/2019/08/13/media-blackout-on-dana-rivers-michfest-murder-trial/

 

Deaths in custody: David Dungay’s mother tells NSW parliament ‘the system is broken’ | Indigenous Australians | The Guardian

The mother of David Dungay, an Aboriginal man who died after being held face down by five Sydney prison guards, said it was a “slap in the face” that the public prosecutor would not investigate whether criminal offences might have been committed by the officers involved.

Aboriginal women who are fleeing domestic violence and find themselves homeless are reluctant to access support services for fear of losing their children to the foster care system, they said.

“It’s harder for women to get support these days,” the Women’s Legal Service’s First Nations community officer, Gail Thorne, said.

The Redfern Legal Centre lawyer Samantha Lee said it was common for Aboriginal women who call the police to report domestic violence to end up in custody themselves.

“The police then go to speak to the husband and they form the view that they are going to take the husband’s story and put that ahead of the woman’s story, and what they do is end up arresting the person who has called triple zero and place them into custody.

“One of the problems is [police] are quick to judge and usually they are very quick to judge First Nations people and women.”

The parliamentary inquiry has been set up to look into “the unacceptably high level” of Aboriginal people in custody, the suitability of the organisations that investigate deaths, and how they could be improved.

Source: Deaths in custody: David Dungay’s mother tells NSW parliament ‘the system is broken’ | Indigenous Australians | The Guardian

Transgender Serial Killer Who Took Selfie in Dress of Murder Victim Will Seek Gender Surgery on Release | Women Are Human

AU — New South Wales. A serial killer who photographed himself wearing the dress of the fiancée he had just bludgeoned to death is due for release into society. The killer, who began referring to himself in the feminine during his prison stay, is expecting to receive taxpayer-funded gender-affirming plastic surgery following release.
Reginald Arthurell has served 23 years of the 24-year sentence he was handed after murdering 54-year-old Venet Raylee Mulhall in 1995.

Mr Arthurell was an inmate with two manslaughter convictions on his record when, through letters, he charmed Ms Mulhall, a devout Christian serving in the Prison Fellowship. The convict was baptized in prison after claiming he had found God due to Ms Mulhall’s influence. A divorced mother of four, Ms Mulhall was five years Mr Arthurell’s senior, with a face left permanently paralyzed and disfigured by an operation to remove a brain tumor. She helped Mr Arthurell secure parole, agreeing to have him released into her care.

Source: Transgender Serial Killer Who Took Selfie in Dress of Murder Victim Will Seek Gender Surgery on Release | Women Are Human

Hundreds of women detained in latest Belarus protests

Thousands of women marched in protests in Minsk over the weekend, calling for the resignation of President Alexander Lukashenko.

Since the country’s election on August 9, mass protests, attended mostly by women, have been weekly occurrences in the Belarusian capital of more than 2 million people.

Critics of Lukashenko’s leadership purport that voting was rigged and that opposition rival Svetlana Tikhanovskaya should have been rightfully elected. Fearing for her safety, Tikhanovskaya has since taken refuge in Lithuania.

Source: Hundreds of women detained in latest Belarus protests

300 years on, will thousands of women burned as witches finally get justice?

It spanned more than a century and a half, and resulted in about 2,500 people – the vast majority of them women – being burned at the stake, usually after prolonged torture. Remarkably, one of the driving forces behind Scotland’s “satanic panic” was no less than the king, James VI, whose treatise, Daemonologie, may have inspired the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Now, almost 300 years after the Witchcraft Act was repealed, a campaign has been launched for a pardon for those convicted, an apology to all those accused and a national memorial to be created.

“In Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh, there are monuments to all sorts of men on horseback, and even a full-size statue of a named bear. But there is nothing to commemorate the hundreds, if not thousands, who died as a result of one of the most horrible miscarriages of justice in Scottish history,” Mitchell said.

Those arrested under the Witchcraft Act were usually tortured into making confessions. Women, who made up 84% of the accused, were not permitted to give evidence at their own trials. Those convicted were strangled and burned at the stake so there was no body to bury.

Source: 300 years on, will thousands of women burned as witches finally get justice? | Scotland | The Guardian