Donald Trump (left) is accused of raping a 13-year-old girl at the home of fellow billionaire Jeffery Epstein (who is currently a registered sex offender). Epstein was known for throwing sex parties with under-aged girls for his wealthy friends and has faced numerous lawsuits alleging rape of young girls. Trump now claims he had "no relationship" with Epstein, but once said that he knew Epstein for 15 years: "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
By Emily Shugerman
The plaintiff alleges that, throughout the summer of 1994, she was imprisoned and raped at parties hosted by finance billionaire Jeffery Epstein.
Doe's attorney, Thomas Meagher, told Revelist that Doe left home at age 13 to attempt a modeling career in New York City. While struggling to get started in the industry, one of Epstein's associates—who has now submitted an affidavit in Doe's case against him—spotted her. The associate told Doe that she could be paid to attend parties hosted by Epstein, and that they would help to advance her career. She attended several such parties that summer.
Doe claims she encountered Trump at four of these parties, where he "initiated sexual contact" each time. In the fourth and final encounter, she alleges Trump tied her to the bed, exposed himself, and raped her.
"During the course of this savage sexual attack, Plaintiff loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop but with no effect," the suit alleges. "Defendant Trump responded to Plaintiff's pleas by violently striking Plaintiff in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted."
After the encounter, the plaintiff alleges that Trump threatened to kill her family if she told anyone about it. Doe remained silent for 12 years, before this year's campaign made facing her past with Trump "unavoidable."
[...]
Jeffrey Epstein—the man accused of imprisoning Doe—also happens to be a registered sex offender, who has already been accused of keeping women as "sex slaves" for himself and his wealthy friends. Such influential friends include Bill Clinton, Stephen Hawking—and yes, Donald Trump.
Like most high-profile scumbags, Epstein kept a "little black book" of his clients and friends. Though Trump’s attorney claimed he had "no relationship” with Epstein, his notebook, obtained by the FBI, lists 14 contact numbers for the Republican candidate.Epstein even admitted to "socializing" with Trump while on trial in 2010. But he curiously plead the fifth when asked if he had ever socialized with the businessman around minor-aged girls.
By Rachael Revesz
Allegations of sexual assault against Donald Trump have resurfaced as the Republican prepares to face a series of primaries on March 1, otherwise known as Super Tuesday.
The Guardian reported that a woman, who The Independent has chosen not to name, is sticking by her allegations that the presidential hopeful forced the woman, whose boyfriend had just struck a business deal with him, into a hotel room and touched her intimately without consent.
She also alleges that he “groped” her on several occasions and engaged in “hostile and offensive sexual behavior” towards her between 1992 and 1997.
The woman alleged that the incident had left her “emotionally devastated and distraught.” She dropped the $125 million lawsuit one month after filing it.
The case coincided with another legal dispute against Mr. Trump, lodged by her former boyfriend over an alleged breach of contract relating to their beauty pageant business venture.
Mr. Trump denied the allegations and claimed at the time that the lawsuit alleging sexual assault was intended to make him settle the business dispute, which he reportedly did later that year for a six-figure sum.
By Reuters
Two Los Angeles Police Department officers have been charged with repeated sexual assaults on four women while on duty in their squad car and elsewhere, prosecutors and police said on Wednesday.
The veteran officers, James Nichols, 44, and his partner, Luis Valenzuela, 43, were arrested on Wednesday and were slated to be arraigned on Thursday, with prosecutors expected to ask that bail be set at nearly $4 million for each man, according to the district attorney’s office.
An 18-count criminal complaint filed on Tuesday charges both officers with numerous instances of forcible rape, rape by threat to arrest or deportation, sexual battery and forcible oral copulation, among other offenses.
The complaint says the two were armed during the majority of the alleged assaults and that most occurred while they were on duty. Valenzuela was also charged with one count of assault with a firearm for allegedly pointing a gun at one of the victims.
If convicted, the two men each face a maximum sentence of life in prison, the district attorney’s office said. They have been suspended without pay since 2013, according to police.
The four women, who were not identified, had all been arrested at various times by Nichols and Valenzuela during drug busts, the D.A.’s office said in a statement.
They ranged in age from 19 to 34 at the time of the alleged assaults, which according to prosecutors began in December 2008 and continued through March 2011.
"Officer" Eduardo Cornejo was moonlighting as a pimp.
He was ferrying prostitutes to hotels in New Jersey,
Staten Island, the Bronx and Long Island, according to
FBI agents who arrested him.
By RICK ROJAS and AL BAKER
Eduardo Cornejo had been an officer in the New York Police Department for more than a decade. But in a phone call one night last month, the authorities said, he hinted at his other, more nefarious work.
“That might make it hot, though, standing outside with a bunch of girls,” Mr. Cornejo said, a reference, according to the authorities, to dividing money among the prostitutes he is accused of employing outside a Long Island motel. “They’re going to know what’s up real quick.”
But investigators were already aware of the operation, the authorities said on Tuesday. They were listening to the phone call — his line had been wiretapped — and had been tracking his movements for months after an anonymous tipster said Mr. Cornejo was a pimp for at least one woman.
In all, the authorities said, he had employed at least 10 prostitutes. Investigators followed him to motels across the region, and the authorities described his efforts as something of a second job, starting many evenings as soon as his shift ended with the Police Department.
Mr. Cornejo, 33, was charged on Tuesday with transporting women in interstate commerce to engage in prostitution, a federal offense, for ferrying women to motels in New Jersey and on Staten Island and Long Island, according to the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District.
He was arrested after a joint investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, which reviews police conduct.
“Cornejo not only abused the public trust given to him as an N.Y.P.D. officer, but he showed no human decency when he facilitated the exploitation of women for profit,” Diego Rodriguez, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s field office in New York, said in a statement. “Police officers, like all public servants, are held to a higher standard, and should not violate the very same laws they are supposed to enforce.”
Mr. Cornejo was fired by the Police Department on Jan. 16 because he failed a random drug test, Stephen P. Davis, the department’s chief spokesman, said.
Jason Melo (right) made a big mistake humiliating his girlfriend in front of the world.
By Rocco Parascandola, Erica Pearson, Stephen Rex Brown A self-pitying misogynist maniac was arrested for choking his girlfriend, parading her around the streets of Harlem naked and then posting video of the public humiliation online, police sources said Thursday.
Jason Melo, 24, beat and choked his 22-year-old girlfriend in their W. 142nd St. apartment in front of her 3-month-old daughter before forcing the woman into the cold for the medieval-style degradation, cop sources said.
Sources said Melo punched the victim in the face and crotch and threatened to kill her if she didn’t disrobe, put on a towel and leave the apartment.
Video of the incident shows the woman wrapped in a towel being tailed by a man speaking Spanish who derides her as a “bi---” and “a tart [thot].” The man says he’d caught her talking to “seven other men.”
[...]
The video was so disturbing it prompted a response from First Lady Chirlane McCray.
“Earlier this week a video emerged that depicted intimate partner violence on a sidewalk in our city. The video displayed verbal abuse, forced humiliation, and harassment by the alleged offender, directed at his wife,” McCray said. “Posting that video online perpetuated the abuse, which New York City does not tolerate. We are steadfast in our efforts to make sure all victims of abuse are aware of the many resources available as we strive to make New York City's public and private spaces safe for all women and girls.”
Daniel Holtzclaw: The serial rapist cop cried when he was found guilty of multiple rapes.
By USAToday A former Oklahoma City police officer was sentenced Thursday to spend the rest of his life in prison after his conviction for raping and sexually abusing women in a low-income neighborhood while on the beat.
District Judge Timothy Henderson agreed with an earlier court recommendation and sentenced Daniel Holtzclaw to 263 years in prison for the attacks on black women in a low-income neighborhood between 2013 and 2014. Holtclaw, 29, had been charged with 36 counts.
After a six-week trial, a jury on Dec. 10 found Holtzclaw guilty of 18 counts. The youngest victim was 17 at the time of her attack and testified that the incident took place on her mother's front porch, according to The Oklahoman.
The judge denied a request for a new trial made by Scott Adams, Holtzclaw's defense attorney, who maintained that Holtzclaw was denied a fair trial because the prosecution made deliberate violations and misrepresentations in discovery.
Kwamesha Sharp: She was talking to a woman near a crime scene when "Officer" Richard Jones got angry that they didn't "shut up." Jones caused the 17-year-old Sharp to miscarry by kneeing her in the stomach and sending the ambulance away when it arrived.
By Free Thought Project
A police officer accused of past misconduct faces a new federal complaint accusing him of raping a pregnant woman and threatening to arrest her if she resisted.
Identifying herself only as Jane Doe, the woman filed the complaint on Wednesday against Richard Jones and the city of Harvey, a south suburb of Chicago.
Doe, who says she is 20, says Jones began harassing her in June 2015.
The Harvey police officer allegedly added his phone number to her cellphone without her consent, and began calling her repeatedly. Doe says she did not answer his calls or messages.
In August, when Doe was visibly pregnant, Jones saw her at a gas station and made comments to her such as “You know how good you look,” “I’ve wanted you since the first day I saw you when you were wearing that dress,” and, “There are so many things I would like to do to you,” according to the lawsuit.
The next day, Jones pulled Doe over for driving without a license and ordered her to follow him to a nearby train parking lot, she says.
He allegedly waved her into a secluded area behind the parking lot, then forced her to perform oral sex on him.
Jones then ordered Doe to bend over the car, where he raped her, ignoring her protests and the fact that she was pregnant, according to the complaint. She claims he threatened to arrest her if she did not comply with his demands.
Jones remains on the force, despite the fact that this is not the first time he has been accused of misconduct against a pregnant woman, Doe says.
In 2011, Jones allegedly caused 17-year-old Kwamesha Sharp to miscarry by kneeing her in the stomach and sending the ambulance away. A settlement in her case could cost the city up to $1 million, the Chicago Tribune reported last year.
The Tribune detailed Sharp’s case in an investigation of policing in Harvey, Ill., a town it said provides “perhaps the clearest view of the breakdown of oversight” of police in Illinois, in a state already infamous for its lack of police oversight.
“This is Illinois, where the state-imposed ethical standards for a cosmetologist are far higher than those for a cop,” the Tribune’s report begins.
Sharp’s allegations did not trigger any state review of the officer’s actions that day, according to the Tribune.
Instead, a special police committee reportedly gave Jones one of 71 statewide bravery awards.
Recent evidence of the lack of police oversight in Chicago, and the uproar over the video of Laquan McDonald’s shooting, has trigger major personnel changes in the city’s police department and the Independent Police Review Board. The board allegedly fired one of its investigators last year for finding a police shooting unjustified.
But Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg, himself a part-time police officer in a neighboring town, has opposed an outside review of the department.
The U.S. Justice Department investigated the city in 2008 after dozens of rape kits were found unprocessed – and some of the men connected to those kits had raped again.
It concluded in 2012 that the city’s “system for reporting, reviewing and investigating use of force is grossly deficient and creates a high risk of excessive force.”
The Justice Department recommended that Harvey implement clear policies on the use of force, and expand its investigations of allegations against police officers. However, it is unclear if Harvey has adopted any of the suggestions.
The City of Harvey did not immediately respond to a request for comment made Thursday at noon.
Doe is represented by Ronak Maisuria with Erickson & Oppenheimer, the same firm that represents Sharp. She seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
A man believed to be Abu Zaid al-Jazrawi. (Handout)
By Tim Teeman
ISIS murdered a 15-year-old accused of being gay but spared the life of his ‘rapist,’ a senior jihadi commander. What lies behind the brutal double standard?
The murder of a 15-year-old teenager, thrown to his death by ISIS for being gay, not only reveals—yet again—the terror group’s murderous homophobia, but also the hypocrisy that exists alongside it.
A senior commander of the so-called Islamic State, named in reports as Abu Zaid al-Jazrawi, was having some kind of relationship with this as-yet-nameless 15-year-old, but the more senior man was not killed.
Instead, al-Jazrawi was reportedly flogged, and forced to leave Syria and join the fighting fronts in northwestern Iraq.
The boy, killed in Deir ez-Zor, Syria’s seventh-largest city, is not the first to be murdered in such a manner: the images of men, accused and suspected of being gay, being thrown to their deaths from tall buildings has become brutally familiar.
Of the 15-year-old’s killing, “The horrific execution took place in front of a large crowd,” a local media activist and an eyewitness told Syrian news agency ARA News.
“The boy was accused of being engaged in a homosexual relation with the prominent ISIS officer Abu Zaid al-Jazrawi,” media activist Sarai al-Din told the agency.
The Sharia Court in Deir ez-Zor reportedly said that Abu Zaid should, like the boy, die for being gay, but ISIS commanders demanded he be sent to fight in Iraq instead.
Subhi Nahas, a gay Syrian who escaped the country fearing for his life, and who in a history-making speech addressed the United Nations last year about LGBT persecution in Syria, told The Daily Beast that there were possible cultural reasons behind the murder of one young man and the reprieve of his older sexual partner, described as the teen’s “rapist” in some reports.
“A tradition in which adult males engaged in sexual pleasure with pre-pubescent boys--ghelman--including hermaphroditic boys, has existed before the creation of Islam," Nahas said. "Because these encounters didn't result in pregnancies, they became more commonplace after Islam had taken root."
The descriptions of the 15-year-old’s relationship with the commander are contradictory: It has been variously described as a “sexual relation” and “rape.” How consensual or coercive the relationship was is unclear, as is the nature of the relationship between the older and younger man.
“Culturally, post the formation of Islam, people related homosexuality to pedophilia,” said Nahas, now an activist with the Organization For Refuge, Asylum & Migration (ORAM). “No distinction is drawn between the two. If somebody raped a boy they called him a homosexual, not a pedophile. Maybe this commander had a kind of waiver given to him by his peers. They think, ‘He does great things for people. We cannot kill him, but we need a scapegoat, the boy.’
Prosecutors argued that Holtzclaw systematically targeted black women
with prior criminal records and substance abuse problems because he
thought they wouldn't be believed if they reported the assaults.
Serial Rapist Cop Daniel Holtzclaw weeps - as you can be sure all of his victims did.
By Melissa Jeltsen
Daniel Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City police officer who was accused of sexually assaulting 13 black women while on duty, was found guilty of rape and sexual battery on Thursday.
An all-white jury that deliberated for more than 40 hours over four days acquitted Holtzclaw of 18 of the 36 charges he faced involving the assaults. But the charges on which he was convicted, including first-degree rape, carry a possible sentence of life imprisonment. Sentencing was scheduled for next month.
Holtzclaw sobbed loudly as the judge read the verdicts.
During the trial, 13 women testified that Holtzclaw sexually assaulted them while he was on duty. He faced 36 charges, including six first-degree rape counts.
Prosecutors argued that Holtzclaw systematically targeted black women with prior criminal records and substance abuse problems because he thought they wouldn't be believed if they reported the assaults.
"He exercised authority on those society doesn't care about," Assistant District Attorney Gayland Gieger told jurors during closing arguments on Monday. "Convince these ladies that someone does care about them." According to The Oklahoman, Holtzclaw worked from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., often by himself, patrolling one of the state's poorest neighborhoods. The women's testimonies revealed a similar pattern: Holtzclaw would stop them, search them for drug paraphernalia and run criminal background checks. Then he'd force them into sex, threatening them with arrest if they didn't comply.
Sergeant John Gately (far left) when into "cover up mode" for Sgt. Gordon Ennis (middle) as soon as he discovered
that Ennis was the target of a criminal investigation for rape. Gately contacted Ennis to warn him of the contents of
a search warrant that was being prepared. Gately has been charged with obstruction as was the officer (Doug Strosahl) who hosted the party where the alleged rape took place. All three are on paid administrative leave - In other words, all three were awarded with paid vacations. Incidentally, Sergeant John Gately is Spokane Police Guild president. A union notorious for “defending the troublemakers, lawbreakers, and liars among its ranks.”
By William N. Grigg
A young woman was allegedly raped at a party hosted by Spokane resident Doug Strosahl last October. When Spokane Police Sergeant John Gately learned the identity of the alleged rapist, he behaved in harmony with what he perceived to be his highest ethical duty: He contacted the suspect, fellow Spokane Sgt. Gordon Ennis, to warn him that he was the focus of a criminal investigation, and advise him of the contents of a search warrant that was being prepared.
“Our major concern is once we started investigating this was that somebody apparently tipped the suspect off as far as the search warrant and the components of the search warrant,” Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich told KXLY News on November 13. “That’s unacceptable.” At the time, Gately’s conduct resulted only in a paid suspension. Criminal charges were filed following a search of the police union official’s phone.
For people not protected by Blue Privilege, felony charges usually result in an arrest, and when this occurs on a Friday the suspect will spend the weekend behind bars. However, “There was no indication in documents available late Friday [as to] when Gately is expected to be booked into the Spokane County jail,” continues the Spokesman-Review report. “His arraignment is scheduled for December 21.”
Ennis was one of several police officers who had gathered at Strosahl’s home for a party. During that get-together, Ennis allegedly assaulted a fellow officer. A woman who attended described passing out after having several drinks. Upon waking up early the following morning in a guest bedroom, she found Ennis sitting next to her, with his hand down her pants. Ennis has been charged with second-degree rape and will be arraigned on December 7.
Ennis remained on paid leave until December 4, the day that charges were filed against Gately.
On October 25, a friend of the victim – who reportedly is also a police officer — called Assistant Chief Selby Smith, who in turn contacted Gately to inform him about the allegation, as well as the identities of both the victim and the suspect. The Assistant Chief reportedly asked Gately to “care for the victim.” The police union official, who belongs to the department’s Personnel Assistance Team, acted on different priorities, placing a brief phone call to the suspect to warn him about the investigation.
“We could have helped the victim,” complains Sheriff Knezovich, pointing out that it wasn’t necessary for the SPD’s Personnel Assistance Team to get involved. “They didn’t have to do anything. It’s just not a good idea to tell anyone about a criminal investigation, especially early on in the process.”
Since this is a case in which both the alleged victim and accused perpetrators are police officers, it would be expected that the Personnel Assistance Team would focus on the needs of the former, rather than on protecting the latter. Gately heads a union notorious for “defending the troublemakers, lawbreakers, and liars among its ranks,” observes the Inlander, an independent Spokane-area journal. The guilt “has come to symbolize the department’s problems, stirring accusations of cronyism, dysfunction and entrenchment. Some critics have even likened the union to the mafia.”
Gately’s reaction to the reported rape of a female colleague would make perfect sense as an application of the blue mafia’s version of omerta – a code of silence under which a sexually exploited woman would be expected to remain silent for the sake of the tribe.
Reprinted with permission from Free Thought Project
He was at the woman's home to "search for drugs" we are told.
Gerald Nuckolls is now a former Tulsa County Sheriff’s Deputy
By Samantha Vicent Former Tulsa County Sheriff’s Deputy Gerald Nuckolls denied in court testimony Thursday that he committed sex crimes against women he encountered while on duty, but he conceded that he violated Sheriff’s Office policies and behaved unprofessionally during those interactions.
Nuckolls, 27, took the stand in his own defense after a jury watched a video of him being interrogated by then-Detective Marshall Eldridge, a Sheriff’s Office employee who now works in the Internal Affairs Division, about allegations that he groped a woman at her home in the 5600 block of North Utica Place.
Nuckolls faces two charges each of sexual battery and indecent exposure connected to incidents involving that 34-year-old woman on Sept. 16, 2014, and a 41-year-old woman on March 9, 2014, at 171st Street and Yale Avenue.
The Tulsa World does not identify reported victims of sexual assault.
In the video, Nuckolls denies the claims made by the 34-year-old woman for more than an hour, then says he touched her breast. That acknowledgement came after he reported having “a problem” with “attractive girls flirting with him.”
The woman testified Wednesday that he pinched her breast, and she made a motion mimicking Nuckolls snapping the elastic top of her sleeveless dress after he commented about whether she was wearing a bra.
By Human Rights Watch Child marriage in Africa often ends a girl’s education, exposes her to domestic violence and grave health risks from early childbearing and HIV, and traps her in poverty, Human Rights Watch said today. Zimbabwe’s government should lead by example at the African Union Girls’ Summit on Ending Child Marriage and pledge to set and enforce 18 as the minimum legal age for marriage.
The summit, in Lusaka, Zambia, on November 26 and 27, 2015, will highlight the devastating effects of child marriage in sub-Saharan Africa, where 40 percent of girls marry before 18, and seek to secure commitments from governments to end the practice. Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, is currently the African Union chairperson.
“The Zimbabwean government should show that it is serious about tackling the scourge of child marriage and raise the minimum age to 18,” said Dewa Mavhinga, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The future of millions of African girls depends on African leaders taking action to end a devastating practice that robs girls of education and exposes them to abuse.”
In a 2014 survey by Zimbabwe’s National Statistics Agency, one in three women ages 20 to 49 surveyed reported that they married before age 18; an estimated 4 percent marry before age 15, the survey found. Since most child marriages are unregistered customary law unions, the survey is the best indicator of the scale of the problem in Zimbabwe.
Between October 13 and November 10, Human Rights Watch interviewed 35 women and girls who were child brides in six provinces – Matabeleland South, Masvingo, Midlands, Mashonaland East, Mashonaland Central, and Harare – as well as two dozen government officials, lawyers, experts, and religious and traditional leaders.
Zimbabwe has conflicting legal provisions on the minimum age for marriage. Zimbabwe’s constitution does not expressly prohibit child marriage, and a number of laws effectively condone it. The gaps in the law, extreme poverty, poor access to education, and harmful religious beliefs and social norms fuel child marriage in Zimbabwe, Human Rights Watch found.
Child marriage is common in indigenous apostolic churches, charismatic evangelical groupings which mix Christian beliefs with traditional cultures and have approximately 1.2 million followers across the country. The Zimbabwe Council of Churches and the Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe acknowledge that the practice was more prevalent among apostolic followers than other religious groups. A midwife who is a member of the Johwane Masowe Shonhiwa apostolic church told Human Rights Watch that church doctrine requires girls to marry between ages 12 and 16 to prevent sexual relations outside marriage. “As soon as a girl reaches puberty, any man in the church can claim her for his wife,” she said.
Archbishop Johannes Ndanga, president of the Apostolic Churches Council of Zimbabwe, a coalition of over 1,000 indigenous apostolic churches, told Human Rights Watch that “virginity testing” – which includes the insertion of fingers into the vagina – of girls as young as 12, was widely practiced in the apostolic churches. “If found to be virgins they would get marks on their foreheads,” he said. “Older men in the church will then choose these ‘fresh girls’ to become their wives, often joining polygamous unions. If a man marries a woman who is not a virgin, she is required to find a virgin girl for her husband to marry as compensation.” The World Health Organization has determined that virginity testing is a discredited and abusive practice with no scientific basis.
Human Rights Watch also documented discriminatory social norms that link a girl’s perceived sexual “purity” to her family’s honor. If a girl becomes pregnant, spends the night outside the family home, is seen with a boyfriend, or returns home late after seeing a boyfriend, her family may force her to marry for the sake of honor. In some cases girls who become pregnant or are sexually active decide to enter a customary marriage because they fear being rejected, beaten, or abused by relatives.
In most cases of child marriage Human Rights Watch documented, girls had no sex education before they became pregnant or married. The Health and Child Welfare Ministry found in a 2010 survey that young people, especially those ages 10 to 14, lacked basic knowledge of reproductive health. The government’s national school curriculum does not include a comprehensive sex education program. Many Zimbabweans fear that providing young people with contraception contributes to promiscuity. Many indigenous apostolic churches actively discourage use of contraception.
The negative health consequences of adolescents’ limited access to reproductive health information and services can be life-threatening. Early childbearing contributes to maternal mortality, and is a leading cause of death among girls ages 15 to 19 globally. Although the overall HIV infection rate has dropped in Zimbabwe, it remains high, at 15 percent, and Zimbabwe has the sixth-highest number of annual adolescent AIDS-related deaths in the world. According to UNAIDS, HIV prevalence is almost twice as high among women and girls ages 15 to 24 as among men and boys of the same age.
“Zimbabwe’s government and religious leaders should recognize that comprehensive sex education and access to contraception are essential to preventing child marriage and protecting girls from HIV transmission and early childbearing,” Mavhinga said. “Early childbearing can lead to death or serious injury, including obstetric fistula.”
Some child brides Human Rights Watch interviewed had experienced violence such as beatings or verbal abuse from their in-laws or other relatives. Nearly all the child brides said their husbands had abandoned them, leaving them to care for children without financial support. Many described mental distress and suicidal feelings as a result of their situation.
Education can help protect against child marriage, but many girls said they dropped out of school because their families could not afford school costs. Nearly all the child brides Human Rights Watch interviewed were not able to continue their education after marriage, either because of their financial situation, their husband would not permit it, or they had to care for a baby. Many indigenous apostolic churches forbid girls to continue education after marriage. One church elder in the Johwane Marange apostolic church in Masvingo said: “Formal education is not important because the church will teach her the necessary skills to work with her hands and provide for her family. Skills like weaving baskets and mats to sell.”
In October 2014, two former child brides asked the Constitutional Court to have child marriage be made a criminal offense and declared unconstitutional. They asked the court to declare 18 the minimum age for marriage and to have all marriage laws amended. The government opposed the claim on the grounds that the applicants had not been forced into child marriage, but had “simply opted to live in unregistered unions when they were minors”; and since the Marriages Act permits girls to marry at 16 and boys at 18, “the differentiation arises from biological and psychological maturity levels for boys and girls.”
In July, Zimbabwe became the eighth country to join the African Union campaign to end child marriage in Africa. In her keynote address, Zimbabwe’s first lady, Grace Mugabe, called on the Justice Ministry to revise Zimbabwe’s laws to set the minimum marriage age at 18, but her recommendation has not been carried out.
The government has yet to finalize and implement a national action plan on ending child marriage, as the African Union has requested. The action plan should set out the government’s strategies, in partnership with key stakeholders – donors, community leaders, adolescents, and nongovernmental groups – to address child marriage in Zimbabwe.
“President Mugabe and his government should not ignore the suffering of hundreds of thousands of girls in Zimbabwe who are robbed of their futures through early marriage,” Mavhinga said. “The government should drop its objection to the constitutional challenge, reform its laws, and ensure that the minimum age of 18 for marriage is applied across the country, including by religious denominations.”
For further details, recommendations, and accounts by child brides, please see below.
Child Marriage in Zimbabwe
Africa has 15 of the 20 countries in the world with the highest rates of child marriage. According to UNICEF, if the current trend continues, the number of child brides in Africa is expected to double by 2050.
Zimbabwe’s National Statistics Agency in 2014 published the results of a survey called the Zimbabwe Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, which found that 32.9 percent of women between 20 and 49 married before age 18. There has been no comprehensive national study, either by the Zimbabwean government or independent organizations, of the number of girls who drop out of school due to child marriage or of the other harmful effects they suffer.
The government has not produced an action plan to create and strengthen community-based child protection mechanisms with a particular focus on child marriage, including shelter facilities or other mechanism to support girls turned away by their husbands or their families. Local organizations such as the Musasa Project – a nongovernmental group working to protect girls’ and women’s rights – provide shelter for abused girls, but their facilities are not available countrywide.
According to Real Open Opportunities for Transformation Support (ROOTS), a nongovernmental organization campaigning to end child marriage in Zimbabwe, child marriage is most prevalent in poor traditional farming communities and in areas where illegal gold panning is the main source of income. Illegal gold panners have easy access to cash when they sell gold which enables them to lure vulnerable girls living in poverty.
Gaps in Zimbabwe’s child protection system result in lack of protection for victims of child marriage and significant obstacles to girls seeking redress. For example, girls have limited information about their rights, often do not have the money to travel to where they can seek protection from the authorities, and when they do, the authorities often dismiss their concerns as “a family matter.”
Contradictory Laws
Zimbabwe has conflicting legal provisions on the minimum age for marriage. Zimbabwe’s constitution does not expressly prohibit child marriage, and a number of laws effectively condone it.
Section 78 of the constitution says that anyone who has attained the age of 18 has the right to found a family and that no one should be compelled to marry against their will. The government has said, however, that section 78 does not set 18 as the minimum age for marriage, but simply confers a right on those above 18 to found a family.
Zimbabwe’s Customary Marriages Act sets no minimum age for marriage, while the Marriage Act, which governs monogamous marriages, states that girls under 16 cannot marry without the written consent of the justice minister.
The Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act makes it a criminal offense for anyone to promise a girl under 18 in marriage or to force a girl or woman to enter into a marriage against her will. It also makes it a criminal offense to use cultural or customary rites or practices to force a woman to marry. It provides that any adult man who has sexual relations with a willing child between ages 12 and 15 is guilty of statutory rape because children in this age group are considered too immature to make informed decisions about their sexual behavior, so the child’s consent is no defense. However, the law says that if the person is married to a child under 16, having sexual relations with the spouse is not statutory rape.
Zimbabwe has ratified international conventions that oblige it to protect children against child sexual exploitation and abuse, including child marriage. These include the Convention on the Rights of the Child; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child; and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. But unless the government revises domestic laws to incorporate the requirements under these treaties, Zimbabwe’s courts have little power to enforce these international legal obligations.
Key Recommendations to the Government of Zimbabwe
To the President
Publicly support law reform to make 18 the minimum marriage age.
Finalize, in consultation with nongovernmental groups and affected communities, a comprehensive national action plan to end child marriage.
To the Ministries of Justice and of Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development
Take necessary legislative steps to harmonize marriage laws to make 18 the minimum marriage age, and ensure that the laws require free and full consent of both spouses, requirements for proof of age before marriage licenses are issued, and imposes penalties on anyone who intimidates, threatens, or harms anyone who refuses to marry.
Provide regular training for police and prosecutors on their legal responsibilities to investigate and prosecute violence against women, including child marriage.
Withdraw opposition to the lawsuit by victims of child marriage before the constitutional court seeking the criminalization of child marriage and a ruling to set 18 as the minimum marriage age.
Facilitate the provision of shelters, legal services, and other support mechanisms to protect girls from child marriage and to support those currently in child marriage and those turned away by their families.
Initiate local and national awareness campaigns that provide information to parents, guardians, religious leaders, and community leaders about the harmful effects of child marriage, emphasizing the health risks of early pregnancy and HIV transmission and the benefits of girls’ education.
Adapt and adopt best practices from other countries to empower girls, for example by providing girls with safe spaces, economic incentives and support to families in need, information about the harm of child marriage and about sexual and reproductive health, and life skills training.
Support and strengthen initiatives by local groups and the Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe to combat child marriage.
Education Ministry
Develop retention strategies to help prevent child marriage and to keep married girls in school, such as providing incentives for families to keep girls in school, scholarships, expanded school feeding programs, adequate sanitation facilities, and life skills programs for married girls through targeted outreach and support programs, and evening or part-time formal schooling and vocational training opportunities.
Empower girls and boys with information and knowledge about their reproductive and sexual rights by introducing a comprehensive sexuality education curriculum.
Health Ministry
Ensure access to reproductive health information and services for adolescents.
Selected Accounts
Confidence S., 22:
I was 14 years-old when I got married to a 42-year-old man who had a wife already. My aunt who was looking after me said I should get married to the man because he was rich and would look after me. But he was very abusive; he did not allow me to leave the house to visit friends or go to the shops. He always suspected me of having younger boyfriends. I was in form 2 [in secondary school] and pregnant when he married me. I stopped going to school. At that time girls who fell pregnant were expelled from school.
After me he married two more wives. His other wives did not want me – they chased me away but when I tried to go back to my family my aunt and mother also turned me away saying they had already accepted lobola (bride price) from him. When I went back to him, his other wives would fight me. He used to beat me and shout at me. He refused to let me continue with school. After two years of marriage, life was so difficult for me that I tried to kill myself by drinking rat poison. I was in hospital for one week after which my family finally took me back. Child marriage ruined my life. Now I do not work and cannot find a job because I stopped going to school.
Abigail C., 15:
I fell pregnant last year when I was 14-years-old. I had stopped going to school that same year because my mother, who works as a maid earning US$50 per month, could not afford to send me to school. I had an affair with an older man who had a wife. The woman who lives next door is the one who persuaded me to have an affair with this man. I received no sex education at all, and when I had sex with this man I fell pregnant. I went to live with his mother because he was staying with his first wife. In June I went to hospital and gave birth to a baby, who died within a few minutes of birth. The nurses told me my baby died. After that I went back to live with my mother. I wish to go back to school because I am still a child.
Rutendo C., 16:
I stopped going to school last year when in grade 7 because my parents did not have money to send me to school. One day after I had stopped going to school my grandfather saw me in the fields having sex with my boyfriend, who was 25-years-old. He went and told my parents to send me away to get married to my boyfriend. My parents did not want to send me away but he forced them saying, “You cannot keep a child who has been defiled; she has had sex and she must go.” So I went and lived with him as his wife, we are still together and I am 8-months pregnant now.
Justine T., 38:
When I was 16 I met a young man who I talked to about my problems. He was very understanding. We had sex. I didn't know that I would get pregnant. But that's what happened. That's the reason why I stopped going to school. When you are pregnant, you are not allowed to continue with school [a policy that was later revised to allow pregnant girls to continue with school]. At home, they also don't want you there. They told me to go to and live with the person who made me pregnant.
At that time I didn't know anything about sex. Nobody gave me any sex education. If I knew about it I wouldn't have fallen pregnant…It was 1998. I was pregnant. My husband came home drunk and started shouting at me. I was angry and I shouted back at him, then he beat me up. I was very hurt and became angry. That's what caused me to do what I did. I poured paraffin all over my body and set myself on fire. Then I woke up in hospital. I am trapped in this situation. I am failing to find work to support myself and my family. My children have stopped going to school because we cannot afford to send them to school.
Agnes N., 19:
I got married when I was 16. One day I was late coming from school and my grandmother who looked after me saw me standing with my boyfriend when it was nearly getting dark, about 6 p.m. Later when I got home she told me to go back to my boyfriend and I did. I stopped going to school, but my husband who was at the same school continued and failed his exams. He stayed with his sister who was abusive to me, she wanted me to go back to my family; she blamed me for his failure in school.
Later I fell pregnant and his uncle tried to force me to abort but I refused. My husband neglected me. Sometimes I went without food, and tried to go back to my family but my grandmother would not take me back. Eventually she took me back; I gave birth at my grandmother’s house. Life is difficult for me because am not working and the father of my child has never supported his son.
Rosemary M., 19:
I was 15 when I got married. I was pregnant at the time. I had already stopped school in grade 4 when both my parents died. My husband would beat me and he had many girlfriends and did not look after me. When I gave birth my baby died after four days. I got pregnant again but the baby died after four months. His mother chased me away saying she wanted grandchildren but my babies were dying. Whenever my husband beat me she would say, “Beat her some more! When she feels the pain she will leave.”
My brothers refused to take me back saying marriage was my choice so I must live with it. At that point I thought of drowning myself to end my suffering, but I then decided against it. He got another wife saying he did not want a childless wife. Later I gave birth to a baby girl who is now 7-months-old but he does not support me and his child. My sister looks after me and my child.
Munesu C., 16:
I am 16, I ran away from home to get married when I was 14 after I had sex with my boyfriend, who was 21. I was afraid my family would discover that I had had sex so I went to live with my boyfriend as his wife. I was in grade 7 at the time and stopped going to school. After about 7 months my husband and his three brothers began to complain that I was not getting pregnant. He never beat me but always complained that I was barren. I used to do a lot of hard work washing clothes, cleaning and cooking for my husband and his relatives. After two years of marriage he sent me away saying I am barren, and my mother took me back. My wish is to go back to school but my mother cannot afford to send me back to school.
Chamwa M., midwife in the Johwane Masowe Shonhiwa Apostolic faith church:
Our church doctrine is that girls must marry when they are between 12 and 16-years-old to make sure they do not sin by having sexual relations outside marriage. As soon as a girl reaches puberty, any man in the church can claim her for a wife. A man is allowed to have as many wives as he can manage, and as many children as he wants. All pregnant mothers give birth at home; going to hospital or using modern medicine is prohibited. Use of contraceptives or other family planning methods is also prohibited – only God can plan families and God’s commandment was “Be fruitful and multiply.”
We have prophets in our church who will know if anyone in the church disobeys the rules and goes to hospital to seek medication or uses contraceptives like pills or condoms. When a man says God has shown him in a dream that he should marry a certain girl, that girl cannot say no to the word of God. If she says no, God’s curse will be upon her life; she may fail to find a husband for the rest of her life, or she could be barren for the rest of her life.
Archbishop Johannes Ndanga, president of the Apostolic Christian Council of Zimbabwe (ACCZ), a coalition of over 1,000 apostolic churches in the country. The coalition is campaigning to end child marriage. He said:
We are trying to change, and stop child marriage in our churches, but we face a lot of resistance from some churches who hold on to many beliefs that justify exploitation of girls. For example, virginity testing and polygamy is widely practiced in our Apostolic faith churches – I too, before I got to know about human rights, I used to enforce virginity testing in the church that I lead. Girls as young as 12 years would be checked for virginity by church elders, and if found to be virgins they would get marks on their foreheads to show they are virgins. Older men in the church would then choose these “fresh girls” to become their wives, often joining polygamous unions. If a man marries a woman who is not a virgin, she is required to find a virgin girl for her husband to marry as compensation.
We are facing strong and sometimes violent resistance from some of our member churches who continue with harmful practices of child marriage and abuse. In May 2014, after we received reports of abuse of young girls at the church, we asked the police to help us shut down a member church… The church members resisted and used sticks to beat up nine police officers, journalists, and ACCZ officials.
Joshua M., elder in the Zion Apostolic Church:
We continue to allow a man to marry many wives in our church but now support the ACCZ campaign to end child marriage. The problem is that girls and women are not allowed to speak in church, and cannot question church doctrine, and this perpetuates their abuse and lack of rights. If a man stands up in church and says God showed him in a dream that he should marry a certain girl, then that is God’s commandment which must be obeyed. Girls become afraid to disobey God. Our church has pledged to stop child marriage in our church.
Chief Chiveso, traditional leader from Mashonaland Central Province:
Traditional leaders in Mashonaland Central province have come together to campaign to end child marriage. In cases where young girls who are, say, 14 or 15-years-old, and get married in our communities, we summon the man to the traditional court and also refer the case to the police. We do not know how the police deal with such cases, but at the traditional court we sometimes ask the man to compensate the father of the girl child, and if the girl is not pregnant she goes back to school. We encourage pregnant girls to go back to school but sometimes it is not possible due to poverty.
Reprinted with permission from Human Rights Watch.
"It's so underreported and people are scared that if they call and
complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer
is going to be then out to get them."
—Chief Bernadette DiPino of the Sarasota Police Department in Florida
By Matt Sedensky and Nomaan Merchant
Flashing lights pierced the black of night, and the big white letters made clear it was the police. The woman pulled over was a daycare worker in her 50s headed home after playing dominoes with friends. She felt she had nothing to hide, so when the Oklahoma City officer accused her of erratic driving, she did as directed.
She would later tell a judge she was splayed outside the patrol car for a pat-down, made to lift her shirt to prove she wasn't hiding anything, then to pull down her pants when the officer still wasn't convinced. He shined his flashlight between her legs, she said, then ordered her to sit in the squad car and face him as he towered above. His gun in sight, she said she pleaded "No, sir" as he unzipped his fly and exposed himself with a hurried directive.
"Come on," the woman, identified in police reports as J.L., said she was told before she began giving him oral sex. "I don't have all night."
The accusations are undoubtedly jolting, and yet they reflect a betrayal of the badge that has been repeated time and again across the country.
In a yearlong investigation of sexual misconduct by U.S. law enforcement, The Associated Press uncovered about 1,000 officers who lost their badges in a six-year period for rape, sodomy and other sexual assault; sex crimes that included possession of child pornography; or sexual misconduct such as propositioning citizens or having consensual but prohibited on-duty intercourse.
The number is unquestionably an undercount because it represents only those officers whose licenses to work in law enforcement were revoked, and not all states take such action. California and New York — with several of the nation's largest law enforcement agencies — offered no records because they have no statewide system to decertify officers for misconduct. And even among states that provided records, some reported no officers removed for sexual misdeeds even though cases were identified via news stories or court records.
"It's happening probably in every law enforcement agency across the country," said Chief Bernadette DiPino of the Sarasota Police Department in Florida, who helped study the problem for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. "It's so underreported and people are scared that if they call and complain about a police officer, they think every other police officer is going to be then out to get them."
Even as cases around the country have sparked a national conversation about excessive force by police, sexual misconduct by officers has largely escaped widespread notice due to a patchwork of laws, piecemeal reporting and victims frequently reluctant to come forward because of their vulnerabilities — they often are young, poor, struggling with addiction or plagued by their own checkered pasts.
In interviews, lawyers and even police chiefs told the AP that some departments also stay quiet about improprieties to limit liability, allowing bad officers to quietly resign, keep their certification and sometimes jump to other jobs.
The officers involved in such wrongdoing represent a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands whose jobs are to serve and protect. But their actions have an outsized impact — miring departments in litigation that leads to costly settlements, crippling relationships with an already wary public and scarring victims with a special brand of fear.
"My God," J.L. said she thought as she eyed the officer's holstered gun, "he's going to kill me."
The AP does not name alleged victims of sexual assault without their consent, and J.L. declined to be interviewed. She was let go after the traffic stop without any charges. She reported her accusations immediately, but it was months before the investigation was done and the breadth of the allegations known.
She is one of 13 women who say they were victimized by the officer, a former college football standout named Daniel Holtzclaw. The fired cop, 28, has pleaded not guilty to a host of charges, and his family posted online that "the truth of his innocence will be shown in court." Each of his accusers is expected to testify in the trial that begins Monday, including one who was 17 when she said the officer pulled down her pink cotton shorts and raped her on her mother's front porch.
But on a June night last year, it was J.L.'s story that unleashed a larger search for clues.
The media and women's organizations seem far more concerned about black NFL football players who slug their girlfriends than they are about a police officer accused of raping 12 women and a teen while on duty. It seems odd that organizations like the National Organization for Women has shown little interest in this case — Apparently there is little publicity and few grants to be had for organizing against rape within police departments. —Ronald David Jackson
Daniel Holtzclaw: 12 women and one 17-year-old girl has accused him of sexually abusing them
while he was on duty.
_________________
Sex Abuse Charges Against a Former Cop Are Disturbing–as Is the Lack of Media Interest
By Janine Jackson
Daniel Holtzclaw is a former Oklahoma City police officer now standing trial on 36 counts, including rape, sexual battery and stalking. Twelve women and one 17-year-old girl have come forward, saying Holtzclaw assaulted them while on patrol. Most of the victims were black, poor and embroiled in the criminal justice system for things like prostitution and drug use—a precarious state Holtzclaw allegedly used to threaten and coerce them.
As the 17-year-old put it in her testimony, “What am I going to do? Call the cops? He was a cop.”
The alleged crimes are disturbing; so, too, the evident lack of media interest. Outside of Oklahoma, the case has so far garnered little mainstream attention. A Nexis search indicates neither the New York Times nor Washington Post have printed any original reporting; nor has broadcast network news addressed a story that brings together emergent questions of police violence and rape culture.
An Associated Press investigation showed around 1,000 police officers fired over a six-year period for so-called sex crimes, including rape—certainly an undercount of abusive cops, given that it only includes those who actually lost their badges. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, which collects data on police, doesn’t track officer arrests, and states aren’t required to collect or share that information.
Holtzclaw evidently selected his victims because he believed no one would care about them. Media shouldn’t prove him right.
Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.
