All posts tagged "Victims"

Several women who were victimized by deceased child predator Jeffrey Epstein are now accusing President Donald Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) of publicizing their identifying information on purpose.

That's according to a Wednesday article in the Wall Street Journal, which reported that the DOJ failed to redact of dozens of women's names from emails it received from Epstein's estate. One spokeswoman for the House Oversight Committee — which released the emails earlier this month — said the committee's subpoena specifically instructs the DOJ to redact victims' names, though one document shows the full names of 28 victims.

"Many of the victims believe this is being done intentionally," wrote attorneys Bradley Edwards and Brittany Henderson, who represent hundreds of Epstein's accusers....

The Pentagon, under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, is reportedly planning to scrap regulations meant to help victims of sexual assault in the military, according to reporting in The Intercept.

The action is in response to President Donald Trump's executive order slashing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in government agencies.

According to The Intercept, Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg called on top officials and "ordered them to comb through their organizations’ regulations — identified in a spreadsheet attached to the memo — and specify whether any rules flagged in the executive order apply to them and indicate whether they should be altered or rescinded."...

Tracy Clark-Flory has an awesome piece up at Salon about the proliferation of "how not to get raped" tips, and why they are so messed up. And yes, she quotes me in it, but that's only one reason (along with quotes from other feminist bloggers) that I liked it. She really does a nice job of explaining why people proliferate these tips, most of which are unworkable or not useful anyway, but explaining why it's just such a bad idea. The reason is straightforward: these "tips" are actually a list of reasons that it's okay to rape someone. If the tip is, "Don't wear miniskirts", that ends up saying to rapists, juries, and cops, "If she was wearing a miniskirt, she had it coming." Rapists basically use these tips as a checklist for what to look for in potential victims, for the same reason that burglars wear gloves and masks: it's a keep-yourself-from-going-to-jail strategy. If you attack drunk women, women who have a history of having (gasp!) sex, women who are wearing miniskirts after dark, then your chances go up of not getting caught. Your victims will be afraid to come forward, the cops won't take it seriously, juries will let you off. So every time you pass around a "how not to get raped" list, you're saying to rapists, "Here are the women you can rape and we, as a society, will allow it." That the list of "tips" often involve things that are basically impossible to avoid while living a halfway decent life just adds insult to injury. It's worth noting that "tips to avoid rape" tend to overlap neatly with "list of things that society believes makes you a bad girl in violation of ancient chastity norms that should have gone completely out of date already". 

On eve of pope's visit, victims of childhood abuse demand Vatican hand over records on priests