Local News
Port Allen, Louisiana
Police raided two Port Allen massage parlors on Monday morning, all in an attempt to shut down what may be a sex trafficking ring. Read more here.
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National News
Steubenville, Ohio
Four more school officials have been indicted in connection with the investigation into the rape of a 16-year-old girl at a party last year in the Steubenville high school rape case. See more here.
Alabama
Courtney Andrews was raped twice by her neighbor when she was 14, yet her rapist received a light sentence, prompting Andrews to go public.
Andrews explains why she felt the need to go public: “I just felt like if it happened with me, then it probably happens with other people,” she said. “If no one has really stood up and said anything about it, then maybe no one ever will if I don’t. So I felt like it would be an injustice to other people if I didn’t… I knew I just had to do what I had to do.”
Click here for more.
International
Ecuador
Gay ‘cure clinics’ in Ecuador use rape and torture as corrective measures in an attempt to turn them straight, an act of ‘social cleansing’.
The government has reported “therapies” ranging from electric shock treatment to submersion in ice-cold water. There is also use of psychological torture. One lesbian whose own family arranged for her abduction after finding out she was gay, said that the clinic “told me I was bad, I was hurting my family, I was being manipulated by my girlfriend, that God made woman for men.”
Paula Ziritti, 24, who escaped after two years in one such facility, told of three months when she was shackled in handcuffs while guards threw water and urine on her. She also described numerous accounts of physical and sexual abuse.
Thankfully many of the clinics are being shut down by the government. See here and here for more.
Syria
Rape is often used as a weapon of war. Women in Syria have been raped in detention, used as human shields during military operations and kidnapped to pressure and humiliate family members, a new report said on Monday.
Syria’s brutal war “created a context ripe for violence against women, including sexual violence.” Read here for more.
Educational
“Sons”
Terisa Siagatonu and Rudy Francisco performing for Hollywood’s Da Poetry Lounge during semifinals at the 2013 National Poetry Slam, speaking out about rape culture.
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