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Rape, Terrorism and Sexual Exploitation
Journal article 1
          Title: Violence Against Women on Campus
Author: Ehrhard, Elise
Source: American Feminist, 5(3):17-18, Fall 1998.
Publisher: Copyright © 1998, Feminists for Life of America

                     One in eight women in the United States suffers a sexual assault or attempted sexual assault during her college years, according to the national organization Safe Campuses Now. This is despite a decrease in campus violence nationwide. In California, for example, the state university system conducted a study in 1995 that found a 29 percent decrease in violent crime systemwide, but an increase in the number of women who reported being raped on campus.
          There are manifold reasons for the pervasive problem of violence against women on college campuses, not the least of which is the widespread use of alcohol and other substances among college-age women and men. As Janet Butler, director of the Women's Resource Center at Bucknell University stated in an article in The Bucknellian, "A lot of time there's alcohol involved (in the abuse); not that alcohol causes it -- if just lowers inhibitions."
          Several studies of collegians indicate that illegal drugs and alcohol abuse are involved in about 90 percent of campus crime. Many students also do not know that taking advantage of a woman while she is intoxicated is a crime. Rape is defined by law as "the act of sexual intercourse without consent which occurs by force or by inability to consent." When a woman is under the influence of alcohol or drugs, she is incapable of consent.
          The substance causing the most fear on college campuses right now is Rohypnol. Known as the "date-rape drug," it first induces a drunk-like stupor, then complete unconsciousness, in whoever takes it. Worst of all, the person drugged with it remembers nothing of what happened to her. Rohypnol is odorless, colorless and tasteless. In 1996, three gang-rapes occurred at Clemson University after male students spiked female students' drinks with the drug. Four students were later arrested trying to sell more than 300 tablets of Rohypnol.
          In response to the problem of violence against women on campuses nationwide, numerous national groups have sprung up over the past 20 years. Group founders are galvanized by personal experiences. The founder of Safe Campuses Now, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing student safety and campus awareness, formed the group after an intruder entered her room at the University of Georgia while she was asleep and stabbed her in the stomach. She later learned that she was one of five female students who had been attacked within two months within a one-mile radius of one another.
          Howard and Connie Clery formed Security on Campus Inc. after their daughter Jeanne was raped, beaten and murdered in her dorm room at Lehigh University in 1986. That incident sparked federal legislation that required federally funded schools to publish campus crime statistics and crime policy statements, and to distribute this information to enrolled students and to prospective students upon request. The Campus Security Act of 1990 covers all schools that receive federal grants and loans, including Pell grants, Perkins loans, and Stafford loans. Therefore, about 99 percent of schools in the country are covered by the act.
          Unfortunately, a recent study by the General Accounting Office and the University of Cincinnati found widespread non-compliance with the act. In response, a bipartisan amendment to enforce the law, titled "The Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act," has recently been introduced in Congress.
          photo omitted
          But beyond the requirements of federal legislation, schools have a responsibility to their students to educate and prevent violence against women on campus. Too few schools have comprehensive policies and programs addressing violence against women or advising students who want to help friends in violent relationships. According to Katie Koestner of Campus Outreach Services, one of the best times to address these issues is during freshman orientation -- because a majority of student assaults occur during the first semester of freshman year. Often students are encountering new and dangerous situations, including the use and abuse of power in relationships. Schools further need to identify and implement long-term education programs that promote awareness of rape, acquaintance rape, and other forms of violence.
          Currently, women's colleges are taking the lead in instituting proactive policies to combat violence against women. For example, Barnard College's Women's Handbook, which is publicized on the Internet, offers constructive information such as:
          Abusers have the power to lower their partners self-esteem and isolate the partner from other support. They make the partner feel guilty or responsible for their behavior or their moods. ... Abusive behavior often comes in cycles. At times the relationship will seem calm. The abuser will apologize for previous behavior and perhaps be extra attentive. At other points in the cycle, tensions and arguments will soar. The abuser will blame his/her partner for ruining his/her life. The abused partner is never to blame for the abuse.
          The handbook also offers local and national hotline numbers and advice on medical treatment and legal remedies.
          Distributing women's handbooks is just one step that schools can take to curb an epidemic national problem. College can be a vulnerable period in a young woman's or man's life. No community is immune to violence and college students need all the support they can get to protect themselves from danger.
          For more information, please contact-
          Feminists for Life of America
          7333 15th Street NW, Suite 1100
          Washington, D.C. 20005
          (202) 737-3352
          (202) 737-0414 (fax)
          http://www.serve.com/fem4life Copyright 1998, Feminists for Life of America

          Journal article 2
          Title: No Safe Place
Author: Chesler, Phyllis
Source: On the Issues, 8(1):12-17, Winter 1998.
Publisher: CHOICES Women's Medical Center, Inc.

          After a devastating car accident that left her permanently bedridden and in need of around-the-clock care, Andrea[**] became a long-term patient at the Laurelwood Convalescent Hospital in North Hollywood, California. Paralyzed, unable to speak, eat, or control her bowels or bladder, she also lost the ability to summon help when she needed it. But she could still smile, and register pain and discomfort. In 1982, her family was unable to understand why Andrea suddenly became very restless, whimpered a lot and cried more. But then they also hadn't understood why, against their wishes, Andrea had recently been moved to an isolated room where she was attended only by male aides.
          Then Andrea missed two periods, at which point it was discovered that this totally incapacitated woman, a patient in a state convalescent home, was pregnant. Finally, staff understood why Andrea's feeding tube had been mysteriously disrupted several times.
          Andrea's family sued and won a $7.5 million jury award. But in 1993, an appeals court ruled that the "failure for the facility to provide security" did not constitute "professional negligence." In doing so, the court reversed the original verdict, sent the case back to the trial court, and ordered that "each party bear its own costs on appeal." Eventually, the case was settled out of court for less than a million dollars. One can only ask: Just what would constitute "professional negligence?"
          Clearly, Andrea did not--and could not--consent to sexual intercourse. Totally disabled and trapped in her own body, she was raped in a convalescent home charged with her care. Are crimes not prosecuted when they occur on state property? Or when the criminal is acting on behalf of the state? Is the state above the law?
          [More horrifying examples--deleted]
          One might conclude that a woman--a psychiatric patient especially--will not be believed unless at least five other women independently claim that they too have previously been sexually assaulted by the same man, at least two treating psychologists find her "credible," and the institution officially documents her allegations and does not misplace or destroy the records.
          If so, this bodes well for an upcoming class action suit which has been brought in federal court against the highest ranking officials of Nebraska's Department of Public Institutions. The four named female plaintiffs range in age from 19 to 62 years, and are mentally ill and/or developmentally disabled. This in itself is surprising, because once someone is labeled "mentally ill," whatever she says will either be used against her, or will not be believed.
          From July 1991 through July 1994, the four women stated they were repeatedly and savagely gang-raped by the same three male psychiatric inmates at the Hastings Regional Center (HRC) in Hastings, Nebraska. They were also beaten, kicked, bruised and further threatened by their rapists. The rapes were reported immediately, consistently, and repeatedly by the victims and by other patients. The staff kept a record; they also discussed the attacks with one another. Despite all this, the women received treatment only for their physical injuries, and their attackers went unpunished.
          Incredibly, the staff instead disciplined the women for reporting and protesting their rapes! The victims--not their attackers--were put on ward restriction (no group activities, no outdoor walks) ostensibly "for their own safety," placed in isolation rooms, and often tied down, both hand and foot, in leather restraints, for days at a tune. In effect, they were tortured for having been gang-raped. Tied down, restrained, isolated, these women experienced terrifying flashbacks of earlier abuse, which may have contributed to their mental illness in the first place.
          "High-functioning, exploitative males were placed in the patient population with highly vulnerable females," charges Omaha attorney Bruce Mason, who filed the suit along with Shirley Mora James and Tania Diaz, both attorneys with Nebraska Advocacy Services. The suit alleges that many staff members were "deliberately indifferent" in allowing the "pattern of rapes and sexual exploitation to continue," particularly for women who had been sexually assaulted as children or in their earlier years. The attorneys say that by allowing the attacks to continue, employees created an "inherently dangerous" environment for the women.
          The Nebraska women, extremely courageous to pursue legal vindication under the circumstances, are asking for monetary damages and demanding structural changes in the way HRC operates.
          Across the country, disabled or sick women, who are considerably less able to protect themselves from rape than the average woman, are subjected to brutal sexual assault, either by the staff employed to care for them, or by male inmates, from whom they are not adequately protected. Invariably, the nation's private and public mental institutions, hospitals, convalescent homes and other treatment facilities look the other way or shrug off the attacks as consensual sex--even when that is impossible--or they deny the rapes outright. All too often, so do America's courts. If able-bodied women have a difficult time getting their testimony accepted in rape cases, imagine the legal horrors facing the handicapped or mentally ill.
          Sadly, this isn't new. Remember Willowbrook State School (1952-1975)--the infamous Staten Island, New York facility that made national headlines because instead of treating its inmates, it warehoused them out of sight, brutalized, broken. What you probably didn't hear about (since Geraldo Rivera didn't expose this sexual underbelly during his investigation of the school) was the routine sexual abuse of inmates by other inmates and by low-ranking staff. At Willowbrook, non-mentally retarded teenage girls, whose families had them incarcerated for "uppity" sexual behavior, were sometimes raped by other inmates and staff. When they were impregnated, they were given abortions, or they gave birth to infants who were whisked away for adoption. You didn't hear about it, because then, like now, such abuse was apparently acceptable or overlooked--and because well-meaning whistleblowers on the staff were terrorized into silence or early retirement.
          Since Reagan's infamous budget cuts, mental institutions in America, particularly state facilities, have barely been able to make ends meet. Poorly designed, tended, staffed and managed, asylums can be gruesome places in which to be confined or work. All too often, wars--and patients--reek of urine or feces. Relatives of inmates have long complained that clothing, books and magazines, even food purchased to supplement low-quality institutional meals, are frequently stolen by aides. A major reason for this may be the meager salaries paid to entry-level employees. In many cases, such aides make only minimum wage, and are expected to work long hours in environments that would depress even the most stable of us. Now it seems, sex on demand with patients--who are forced into compliance because chances are good that no one will believe them--has become a job perk.
          Male psychiatric patients are not safe either. For example, one highly intelligent, but chronically schizophrenic man, who was hospitalized long-term in a Georgia facility, was anally raped so many times by male aides that he finally asked his family if he was a man or a woman.
          Over the years, I have interviewed many psychiatric patients who have reported being raped in facilities across this country, both by staff and by other inmates. Women's physical injuries were sometimes so severe they required hospital treatment--but despite this, employees rarely filed police reports, and almost never restricted the rapists to their wards or transferred them to institutions for the criminally insane. No action was taken by the authorities. In fact, employees often concluded that whatever had happened, if anything, was probably "consensual sex," and that the women had "wanted" it.
          But such patients are, in various ways, incapable of either consenting to sex or defending themselves against their rapists. Sarah[**] had been a severely abused child, whose parents committed her as a teenager after she'd tried to run away. Her relatives rarely visited her, but when Sarah turned 21, they allowed physicians to perform a lobotomy. After having her brain mutilated, she was heavily--and perhaps wrongfully--medicated for more than 25 years.
          In an interview, this woman described her rapes as "bad things like in a bad dream in which bad boys hurt me and raped me. It was like torture." In what sense can a lobotomized and heavily medicated female captive agree to consensual sex or effectively resist rape? Or, afterward, be believed as a credible witness?
          [More gruesome examples--deleted]
          As a child, Dana[**] had been horrendously abused by her mother, her father, and other male and female relatives, both sexually and physically While institutionalized, she was raped and gang-raped by male psychiatric inmates. Unable to find anyone who would believe her reports, she became depressed and tried to cut herself with a pen-knife. She recalls being "tackled by staff members and put in restraints," which made her feel utterly "defeated."
          She explained that being tied in leather restraints by staff "reminded her of when her mom held her down for her dad to assault." Placed in restraints, straitjacketed, isolated after reporting her rape, Dana had flashbacks, over and over again, of a repeated childhood occurrence in which she was locked in a "very hot room with no food and no water" for days at a time.
          Such staff responses to inmate allegations of rape are extremely retraumatizing. As numerous studies have indicated, a large proportion of women in psychiatric and other institutions have harrowing histories of incest and childhood sexual abuse. It is probably why they are there in the first place.
          Female (and male) patients are raped precisely because they are helpless; routinely, their very vulnerability is also used to minimize or justify the crime: she didn't know what was happening anyway, she seemed to like it, she didn't die, she didn't fight, so why complain? Being diagnosed as mentally ill--because you have been savagely abused and never treated--also renders the female mental patient "non-credible."
          Imagine if you had to continue living in the same small, controlled space as your rapist, in constant fear of future assaults. What if this had already happened to you before, perhaps in your own family? What if this had driven you over the edge in the first place, and you'd landed in the nearest state institution to regain some peace of mind, presumably safe from such lawlessness?
          What if the same thing happened--and kept happening-to you in this so-called place of refuge?
          Ah, friends, there is little "asylum" in America. Women who have been repeatedly raped in childhood-often by authority figures in their own families--are traumatized human beings; as such, they are often diagnosed as borderline personalities, or as suffering from substance abuse or post-traumatic stress disorder. If they are institutionalized, they are rarely treated as the torture victims they truly are. Instead of being trained to understand this, most institutional staff--psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and attendants alike--do not believe the rape victims, nor do they think of rape as a "big deal."
          For more than 20 years, courtesy of feminist activism and feminist academic and clinical studies, data has been available in psychiatric, psychological, nursing, and social work journals that describes rape trauma syndrome, confirms how serious it is, and outlines treatment protocols. There is no excuse for psychiatric staff who fail to diagnose and compassionately treat such victims of violence.
          The coarsening, deadening effects of institutional structures are too hard for individual staff to overcome, especially if they're overworked and forced to conform to authority. Most staff--from psychiatrists to orderlies--tend to reflect society's prevailing prejudices. In addition, they have the power to brutally enforce traditional misogynist views. Thus, such staff will usually disbelieve and punish the female (or male) sexual victim in their midst. Staff, both male and female staffers may themselves have a vested interest in punishing those women who "tell."
          Thus, when women or men are raped in American institutions--whether they be psychiatric wards, jails, prisons, or facilities for the mentally retarded and multiply disabled--the absent physicians and the overworked and poorly trained employees usually deny that anything criminal or traumatic has occurred. Institutional staff tend to look the other way ("give them some privacy"), deny that a staff member has raped an inmate, or maintain that sex between inmates is simply "consensual."
          Compassionate staff say that "mental patients are also entitled to love." But in my view, rape is not love. Perhaps people still confuse the two. Both criminal and non-criminal inmates are entitled to conjugal visits and on-ward sex--when, and only when it is truly consensual.
          Society has an obligation to keep criminals in jail, not to release them into the "therapeutic" culture. What we need are longer sentences upfront, not institutionalization afterward-especially since the mandatory treatment of sex offenders rarely works.
          Legislators have long fancied themselves gynecologists in the matter of abortion; now, judges have deemed themselves psychiatrists. Sex offenders are no longer merely criminals. By judicial diagnosis, they are "mentally abnormal," have "personality disorders," and/or are likely to engage in future acts of a sexually predatory nature.
          On June 23, 1997, in Kansas v. Leroy Hendricks, the Supreme Court upheld the 1994 Kansas Sexually Violent Predator Act that allows the state to commit a sex offender to a mental asylum--perhaps indefinitely--until he can show that he is no longer "dangerous" or subject to "irresistible impulses."
          The defendant, 62-year-old Leroy Hendricks, admits that when he gets "stressed out," he "can't control the urge" to molest. Ironically, Justice Clarence Thomas upheld the involuntary, civil commitment of sexual predators. His decision stresses that such civil commitment is meant to provide treatment rather than punishment, and that "the conditions surrounding confinement do not suggest a punitive purpose...such restraint of the dangerously mentally ill has been historically regarded as a legitimate non-punitive objective."
          Thirty-eight states have urged courts to allow sex offenders to be detained beyond their served sentences as "mentally abnormal." Similar civil commitment acts targeting sexual predators have been passed in the states of Arizona, California, Minnesota, New Jersey, Washington and Wisconsin--often after a child had been murdered as well as raped. Some of us have had enough. We say: Pedophiles and rapists are epidemic, they inflict lifelong harm, serve short (if any) sentences, and return to rape again. And again.
          Others of us, especially civil libertarian and anti-institutional psychiatry organizations, are afraid that the state will exercise its new psychiatric powers in biased, political ways. We say: It always has.
          Don't get me wrong. I'm still in favor of locking up pedophiles and rapists of adults for a good long time--maybe forever--but I'm afraid of something else. If the courts hold that sex offenders are too dangerous to roam society's streets, what do they believe such men might do to other inmates in state custody? Especially to male or female inmates who are childlike in height, weight, or mental abilities, and may in addition be sedated, straitjacketed, physically disabled, deaf, blind, wheelchair-bound, or lobotomized?
          Absent treatment (and, liberal wishful thinking aside, there is none), sex offenders will do what they do best, and what we allow them to get away with.
          The institutional structures have to change--which cannot happen unless we, the people, allocate more money for appropriate staff training, skilled therapy, and rehabilitation programs. There is no excuse for subjecting late-twentieth-century institutional inmates to the same awful conditions that existed in the nineteenth century. Then, people did not understand incest or rape or domestic battery, nor what their effects were. Today, we understand these abuses fully. We even have some effective methods of dealing with them.
          I hope the Supreme Court's decision is used to lock all serial rapists and pedophiles away--but only with each other. And sure, go ahead and try to treat 'em--feel free to use my tax dollars--but only if you treat their victims first. We owe it to our most vulnerable patients to do just that.
          Copyright © 1998 CHOICES Women's Medical Center, Inc.
          ** Some ex-patients' names have been changed to protect their privacy.

Journal article 3
          Title: The Ultimate Growth Industry-Trafficking in Women and Girls
Author: Goodwin, Jan
Source: On the Issues, 7(4):29-31, Fall 1998. ISSN: 0895-6014
Publisher: CHOICES Women's Medical Center, Inc.
          The California, travel agency brochure could not be more blunt: "Sex Tours to Thailand, Real Girls, Real Sex, Real Cheap," it reads. "'These women are the most sexually available in the world. Did you know you can actually buy a virgin girl for as little as $200? You could fuck a different girl every night for the rest of your life." There is even a prize for the man who has sex with the most girls during the tour. As for AIDS, the brochure continues, "Thailand is safe. And all the places we visit are police protected."
          What the ad copy doesn't say is that these "virgin girls" are frequently children who have been kidnapped or sold into brothels. Forced into prostitution, sometimes even chained to their beds, they lead lives that are brutal, and frequently short. Averaging 15 customers a day, they work all but two days a month. They must perform any act demanded by their customers, most of whom refuse to wear condoms. If they object, the brothel owners beat them into submission. According to human rights activists working in Thailand, a large percentage of the prostitutes there are under 15, and girls as young as eight are sold into the industry. Within six months of being sold into the sex trade, a girl is commonly HIV-infected.
          But you don't have travel to Asia; sexual servitude can be found here in the U.S. too, as an 18-month undercover investigation by the Global Survival Network discovered. For example, women from the former Soviet Union can be found in brothels in New York, Bethesda, Maryland, and Los Angeles. Fleeing a collapsing economy at home, these women pay up to $3,000 in "processing fees" for what they are promised will be good jobs abroad; instead they are sold into sexual slavery. The industry is tightly controlled by the Russian mafia, whose contacts with their own government and immigration officials facilitate acquisition of the necessary visas and passports. Women trying to escape have been murdered, and the threat that family members back home will be beaten to death is also used to keep women in line.
          According to GSN, which is based in Washington, D.C., every year trafficking in women and girls puts billions of dollars into the coffers of criminal syndicates worldwide--an amount rivaling their incomes from drugs and guns. And there is another plus in trading in human flesh: dope and weapons can only be sold once; a woman or girl can be sold again and again.
          As the disparities in the global economy widen, girl children and young women are increasingly seen as currency and quick profits. The United Nations estimates that, around the world, some 200 million people are forced to live as sexual or economic slaves, the latter often involving sexual exploitation as well. In Southeast Asia alone, a reported 60 to 70 million women and children have been sold into the sex industry in the last decade. "Slavery is one of the most undesirable consequences of globalization," says a UN spokesman, adding, "We regret that this is not considered a priority by any country at the moment."
          Nor is trafficking in women and girls limited to prostitution; it is also used to supply the forced-marriage industry. In China today, for example, there are now three males for every two females in the population over the age of 15. This as a result of the government's "one child, one couple" policy, combined with the traditional, and still powerful, requirement for a son. If the first child is a girl, the fetus may be aborted, or the infant abandoned or even killed. As a consequence, young women and girls are being sold into marriage, in a revival of a once-standard feudal practice. According to Chinese government reports, in the first 10 months of 1990 alone, trafficking in brides increased by 60 percent over the previous year. Either kidnapped or sold by impoverished families, the young women are purchased by potential bridegrooms for up to $600. The government's Office for the Eradication of the Kidnapping and Sale of Women acknowledges some 50,000 such kidnappings per year (although human rights organizations believe the real numbers are much higher). And the profits are enormous. In a five-year period, from 1991 to 1996, Chinese police freed 88,000 women and children who had been kidnapped for this purpose.
          Particularly disturbing is the violence to which these forced brides are subjected. The abducted women, who can be as young as 13 or 14, are frequently gang-raped by the slave traders before being sold, a practice that is intended to terrify them into passivity, and is no doubt effective in many cases. Those who try to run from their new husbands are violently punished, even maimed, by the traffickers, in ways that are too sickening to be printed here.
          In some cases, sex tours from the U.S. to the Third World are offered as a means by which lonely men can find a mate. Norman Barabash, who runs Big Apple Oriental Tours out of Queens, New York, views his tours as a social development program. Until recently, $2,200 bought 10 days and 11 nights of "paradise" in the Philippines; since last year, when Big Apple was banned from doing business in that country, Barabash has been sending American men to Thailand. Women in these countries have no jobs, and are dying to get American husbands, he says. "They are so set on landing one, they will do anything their conscience allows." According to Barabash, some 20 to 25 percent of his clients end up marrying women they meet on the tours.
          Big Apple is only one of some 25 or 30 similar operations in the U.S. that ride on--and promote--the myth that "exotic oriental women are thrilled to meet American men, and know how to please and serve them," says Ken Franzblau, a lawyer for Equality Now, a human rights organization. Franzblau went underground for almost two years to investigate sex-tour companies in the U.S. "I posed as a shy man who felt insecure around women, and inquired about taking such a trip," he says. "I was told that all kinds of kinky sex would be available, and that the tour guides would negotiate prices for me with the pimps."
          Franzblau points out that the operators demean women at both ends of their business. Reads ones brochure: "Had enough of the American bitches who won't give you the time of day, and are only interested in your bank account? In Asia you'll meet girls who will treat you with respect and appreciation, unlike their American counterparts." These operators insist that American women are unloving, feminist manhaters, he says. "At the destination end, sex tours create the ever-increasing demand to bring young women and girls into the sex industry."
          In the Philippines and Thailand, prostitution is illegal. Here in the U.S., as well as in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Australia--all countries where sex tours originate--such "tourism" is likewise illegal, although in this country, the law applies only to traveling with the intent to engage in a sexual act with a juvenile, which is punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment. In the four years this law has been in force, however, there have been no prosecutions.
          photos omitted
          It is also illegal in virtually every state of America (including New York where Big Apple operates), to promote prostitution, or knowingly profit from it. Yet sex-tour operators openly advertise in magazines and on the Internet, and the websites of many feature hardcore pornographic photographs of promised "delights." So, too, do the videos they send potential customers. An hour-long video sent to men interested in going on a Big Apple tour and viewed by OTI shows what is described as a wet T-shirt contest, but in reality is more a sex circus in which young women are stripped, and a mob of raucous overweight, aging American men suck on their nipples, perform oral sex, and otherwise explore their body cavities as they are passed around the crowd. The video also offers "daily introductions to ladies of your choice who will be your companion for the night or around the clock." As two young women are shown cavorting naked in a jacuzzi, the voice-over cautions that if viewers don't take a tour, they will "miss an afternoon at a sex motel with two lovely ladies."
          There is nothing subtle or obscure about the promotional video and its customer come-ons, but in a letter to Democratic Senator Catherine Abate last September, Queens County District Attorney Richard Brown wrote: "Our investigation [of Big Apple Oriental Tours], which has been quite extensive and included the use of undercover operatives as well as assistance provided by the FBI and the US Customs Service, has disclosed no provable violations of New York's criminal laws." At the time the decision not to pursue an indictment was made, the DA's office was in possession of the video.
          After that ruling, Equality Now met with the DA, and offered additional evidence, including records of Franzblau's conversations with Big Apple's owner, and the reports of two men who took the tours. The DA has subsequently reopened his investigation of the company.
          photos omitted
          Many other countries are also lax about cracking down on trafficking. The Japanese not only appear to condone the industry, they actively obstruct interference in it. Due to massive unemployment in the Philippines, even for those with college degrees, some 80,000 Filipinos work in Japan; 95 percent of them are women employed as "dance entertainers." Commonly, the passports of these "guest workers" are confiscated on arrival and their salaries withheld; according to Mizuho Matsuda, the director of HELP, the only shelter for abused migrant women workers in Tokyo, many are forced into prostitution. Japan's criminal syndicate, the Yakuza, is heavily involved in trafficking women for the country's sex-and-entertainment industry, and like their Russian counterpart, have contacts in the government, and therefore often enjoy its protection.
          A grisly side of a grim industry is highlighted by the death of 22-year-old Maricris Siosin, a graduate in modern dance. Five months after arriving in Tokyo, she was sent home in a closed coffin, with a death certificate stating she had died of hepatitis. When her family opened the coffin for the funeral, they discovered she had been beaten and stabbed. An autopsy conducted by the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation and confirmed, at the request of Equality Now, by a leading pathologist in the U.S., showed that a double-edged sword had been thrust into her vagina.
          In Japan, S&M has a long tradition, and extremely violent S&M comics are readily available. Many male commuters openly read them instead of newspapers as they travel to and from work. One theory is that Maricris was forced to participate in a "snuff" movie (a porno flick in which the woman is actually killed).
          A Philippine government mission which was sent to Japan to investigate the murder was turned away by Japanese authorities. Similarly, Maricris' family has been denied access to medical documents and police records. Some 33 Filipino workers died in Japan the same year Maricris was killed. At least 12 of these deaths took place under "suspicious circumstances."
          In other countries, local authorities facilitate sex trafficking. In the southern Thai town of Ranong, for example, brothels are surrounded by electrified barbed wire and armed guards to keep girls from escaping. The local police chief condones the practice, describing the brothels as an important part of the local economy. And while prostitution is illegal in Thailand, customers and owners alike have no fear of arrest. The police can be bought off, or accept payment in kind--free use of the' brothels; a number of them also act as procurers for the traffickers.
          The government periodically promises to crack down on the industry, but because of the amount of money it generates, invariably looks the other way. Of the five million annual visitors to Thailand on tourist visas, three out of four are men traveling alone, many of them from Europe, the Middle East, Japan, and the U.S. When raids are planned, the police often alert the brothels ahead of time. The only people arrested are the young prostitutes. Tragically, they are then frequently "recycled," often with the assistance of the local police, who resell them to agents of a different brothel. And so the tragic circle remains unbroken, until the girls become too sick to work, or die on the job, like the five young prostitutes on Phuket island, a popular vacation resort for foreigners in southern Thailand: When fire broke out in the brothel where they worked, they burned to death because they were chained to their beds and unable to escape.
          photos omitted
          Tourism in Thailand generates $3 billion annually, and the country's international image as a sexual paradise has made prostitution one of its most valuable economic subsectors. That international reputation is one even the U.S. Navy has recognized. The first port of call and liberty shore leave for much of the U.S. fleet after the Gulf War was Pattaya, a beach resort notorious as a center of Thailand's sex industry. This apparent reward for service was given despite the fact that at that time at least 50 percent of the prostitutes in the region were HIV-positive. Another major destination for sex traffickers is India, where an estimated 15 million women and girls, many of whom have been sold into it from impoverished Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, work in the sex industry.
          "Women and girls are moved between a lot of different countries," says a spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch. Moreover, trafficking is not only a global phenomenon, it is "a hidden one." For example, the organization reported recently, the U.S. gives Thailand $4 million a year to control the traffic in narcotics, but no U.S. aid is aimed at curtailing sex trafficking there. It is imperative that the U.S. government "recognize the severity of the problem," says Human Rights Watch. "And the United Nations also needs to be very aggressive in fighting this modern form of slavery."
          Jan Goodwin, editor of On the Issues, is an award-winning journalist and author, and a long-time human rights activist.
          Copyright  ©  1998, CHOICES Women's Medical Center, Inc.

Article 4

          Human Rights Watch
          ALL TOO FAMILIAR
Sexual Abuse of Women in U.S. State Prisons
Copyright © December 1996 by Human Rights Watch.

          SUMMARY
          This report examines the sexual abuse of female prisoners largely at the hands of male correctional employees at eleven state prisons located in the north, south, east, and west of the United States. It reflects research conducted over a two-and-a-half-year period from March 1994 to November 1996 and is based on interviews conducted by the Human Rights Watch Women’s Rights Project and other Human Rights Watch staff with the U.S. federal government, state departments of corrections and district attorneys, correctional officers, civil and women’s rights lawyers, prisoner aid organizations, and over sixty prisoners formerly or currently incarcerated in women’s prisons in California, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and the District of Columbia, which is the nation’s capital.
          Our findings indicate that being a woman prisoner in U.S. state prisons can be a terrifying experience. If you are sexually abused, you cannot escape from your abuser. Grievance or investigatory procedures, where they exist, are often ineffectual, and correctional employees continue to engage in abuse because they believe they will rarely be held accountable, administratively or criminally. Few people outside the prison walls know what is going on or care if they do know. Fewer still do anything to address the problem.
          The United States has the dubious distinction of incarcerating the largest known number of prisoners in the world, of which a steadily increasing number are women. Since 1980, the number of women entering U.S. prisons has risen by almost 400 percent, roughly double the incarceration rate increase of males. Fifty-two percent of these prisoners are African-American women, who constitute 14 percent of the total U.S. population. According to current estimates, at least half of all female prisoners have experienced some form of sexual abuse prior to incarceration. Many women are incarcerated in the 170 state prison facilities for women across the United States and, more often than not, they are guarded by men.
          The custodial sexual misconduct documented in this report takes many forms. We found that male correctional employees have vaginally, anally, and orally raped female prisoners and sexually assaulted and abused them. We found that in the course of committing such gross misconduct, male officers have not only used actual or threatened physical force, but have also used their near total authority to provide or deny goods and privileges to female prisoners to compel them to have sex or, in other cases, to reward them for having done so. In other cases, male officers have violated their most basic professional duty and engaged in sexual contact with female prisoners absent the use or threat of force or any material exchange. In addition to engaging in sexual relations with prisoners, male officers have used mandatory pat-frisks or room searches to grope women’s breasts, buttocks, and vaginal areas and to view them inappropriately while in a state of undress in the housing or bathroom areas. Male correctional officers and staff have also engaged in regular verbal degradation and harassment of female prisoners, thus contributing to a custodial environment in the state prisons for women which is often highly sexualized and excessively hostile.
          No one group of prisoners appears to suffer sexual misconduct more than any other, although those in prison for the first time and young or mentally ill prisoners are particularly vulnerable to abuse. Lesbian and transgendered prisoners have also been singled out for sexual misconduct by officers, as have prisoners who have in some way challenged an officer, either by informing on him for inappropriate conduct or for refusing to submit to demands for sexual relations. In some instances, women have been impregnated as a result of sexual misconduct, and some of these prisoners have faced additional abuse in the form of inappropriate segregation, denial of adequate health care, and/or pressure to seek an abortion.
          One of the clear contributing factors to sexual misconduct in U.S. prisons for women is that the United States, despite authoritative international rules to the contrary, allows male correctional employees to hold contact positions over prisoners, that is, positions in which they serve in constant physical proximity to the prisoners of the opposite sex. Under the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Standard Minimum Rules), which constitute an authoritative guide to international law regarding the treatment of prisoners and are appended to this report, male officers are precluded from holding such contact posts. However, since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, U.S. employers have been prohibited from denying a person a job solely on the basis of gender unless the person’s gender was reasonably necessary to the performance of the specific job. In the absence of unusual circumstances, U.S. federal courts have been unwilling to recognize a person’s gender as meeting this standard with respect to correctional employment. As a result, most restrictions on male officers working in women’s prisons that predated the Civil Rights Act have been removed and, by some estimates, male officers working in women’s prisons now outnumber their female counterparts by two and in some facilities, three to one.
          As a matter of policy, Human Rights Watch supports U.S. anti-discrimination laws and has no objection per se to male officers guarding female prisoners. Nor do we believe that all male officers abuse female prisoners. However, we are concerned that the states’ adherence to U.S. anti-discrimination laws, in the absence of strong safeguards against custodial sexual misconduct, has often come at the expense of the fundamental rights of prisoners. Our investigation revealed that where state departments of correction have employed male staff or officers to guard female prisoners, they have often done so absent clear prohibitions on all forms of custodial sexual misconduct and without either training officers or educating prisoners about such prohibitions. Female officers have also sexually abused female prisoners and should, without exception, receive such training. However, in the state prisons for women that we investigated, instances of same-sex sexual misconduct were relatively rare.
          Under both international and national law, states are clearly required to prevent and punish custodial sexual misconduct. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Torture Convention), both of which the United States has ratified, require state parties to prohibit torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment and to ensure that such abuse is investigated and punished. The ICCPR further guarantees prisoners a basic right to privacy, which has been interpreted to preclude strip searches by officers of the opposite sex. These rights are further enumerated in the Standard Minimum Rules, which call on governments to prohibit custodial sexual abuse, provide prisoners with an effective right to complain of such misconduct, ensure appropriate punishment, and guarantee that these obligations are met in part through the proper training of correctional officers. In addition, the United States Constitution expressly protects prisoners from cruel and inhuman punishments and has been interpreted to accord prisoners limited privacy rights as well as to guarantee them access to the courts.
          The United States is thus clearly bound under its own constitution to prevent and punish custodial sexual misconduct. It is equally bound by international human rights law to take these steps, although in ratifying the ICCPR and the Torture Convention, the United States attempted to limit its treaty obligations in ways that were particularly adverse to the elimination of custodial sexual misconduct. In Human Rights Watch’s view, these efforts by the United States to shirk its full international human rights obligations are both bad policy and legally indefensible. Accordingly, we hold the United States to the full scope of the relevant obligations in each treaty.
          Neither the nation’s capital nor any of the five states investigated for this report are adequately upholding these international and national obligations. All five states and the District of Columbia do have prison rules concerning sexual misconduct, but they are often so vague as to be of little effective use. Rape and sexual assault or abuse, which should clearly be covered by these rules, often are not explicitly mentioned and must usually be read into vague prohibitions on “overfamiliarity” or “fraternization.” Few prisons have express policies protecting the privacy rights of prisoners, and fewer still deal expressly with the impropriety of verbal harassment and degradation. While state departments of corrections will usually investigate employees suspected of the most egregious violations of prison rules that govern sexual misconduct, the officers frequently are not punished in accordance with the seriousness of these crimes, and lesser offenses may not be investigated or punished at all.
          The District of Columbia and all of the states investigated in this report, with the exception of Illinois, do expressly criminalize sexual misconduct that takes the form of actual sexual contact between officers and prisoners. In some states and the District of Columbia, a first offense of this sort is classified as a felony. In others, it is classified merely as a misdemeanor. But no matter how the offense is classified, state laws are rarely enforced, and when they are, they often carry very light penalties. States’ failure to uphold their own laws regarding custodial sexual misconduct reflects their reluctance to prosecute such crimes, largely because of an ingrained belief, except in the most egregious cases, that the prisoner was complicit in the sexual abuse committed against her. In this sense, state officials still widely view criminal sexual misconduct as a victimless crime.
          In Human Rights Watch’s view, any correctional employee who engages in sexual intercourse or sexual touching with a prisoner is guilty of a crime and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. As discussed in the legal section of this report, the exact nature of the crime depends on the circumstances under which it is committed and, in particular, on the type and level of pressure the correctional employee exerts on the prisoner. Given the inherently unequal nature of the custodial relationship, however, some type of pressure on the prisoner should be presumed.
          In many instances, the use of force by correctional employees to secure sexual relations from a prisoner takes the form of an offer of privileges or goods. Because prisoners are completely dependent on officers for the most basic necessities, the offer or, by implication, threat to withhold privileges or goods is a very powerful inducement. Even when the officer promises or supplies goods or benefits to the prisoner without any implied or perceived threat to her, it is still a more serious offense than if he bestows no goods or benefits at all. This stiffer penalty reflects the fact that prisoners, by definition, have limited resources and privileges, and thus the promise of such rewards always carries special weight.
          Even in those cases where an officer engages in sexual relations with a prisoner absent any form of pressure or exchange, he should still be liable for a serious criminal offense. In prison, correctional employees have nearly absolute power over the well-being of prisoners and a corresponding obligation to ensure that this power is never abused. When an officer has sexual contact with a person in his custody, even without any overt pressure or exchange, he commits a gross violation of his professional duty. An inquiry into the victim’s alleged consent to such conduct should be unnecessary to establish this professional breach or any other crime of custodial sexual abuse. Rather, the focus should be on the degree of pressure exerted by the guard or employee.
          One of the biggest obstacles to the eradication of custodial sexual misconduct is its invisibility at the state and national level. In the Georgia and District of Columbia correctional systems, for example, it took class actions suits in 1992 and 1994, respectively, to make the problem of sexual misconduct visible outside the confines of the correctional system itself. Only after being sued did the departments of corrections admit that the problem of custodial sexual misconduct existed in their facilities for women and that reforms were needed. Sexual misconduct is often so entrenched that, in those correctional systems where class action suits have not yet occurred or have only recently been initiated, such abuse is still largely an invisible problem or one that the respective correctional systems flatly deny.
          The invisibility of custodial sexual misconduct, and hence its deniability, are further fueled by the failure of the states we investigated and the District of Columbia to establish credible internal grievance and investigatory procedures that do not expose complainants to retaliation or punishment. In virtually every prison that we investigated, we found grievance procedures that required the prisoner to confront informally the implicated officer before filing a formal grievance or that informed the officer of a complaint lodged against him while he was still in a contact position with the complainant. Both of these procedures exposed prisoners to retaliation by officers and routinely deterred them from filing sexual misconduct complaints.
          Even if a prisoner succeeded in pursuing a complaint of sexual misconduct, we found that internal investigatory procedures, while they exist in all five states and the District of Columbia, were often fraught with conflicts of interest and a bias against prisoner testimony. At times, officers accused of sexual misconduct were assigned to investigate themselves. We also found that in almost every case of custodial sexual misconduct, correctional officials assumed that the prisoner lied and thus refused, absent medical reports or witnesses who were not prisoners, to credit prisoner testimony. Given the closed nature of the prison environment, and the reluctance of officers to testify against their peers, such evidence is often very hard to obtain. Thus, complaints of sexual misconduct can be extremely difficult to substantiate. In Georgia, which took steps to credit prisoner testimony more fairly, the investigation and punishment of sexual misconduct markedly improved.
          Virtually every prisoner we interviewed who had lodged a complaint of sexual misconduct faced retaliation by the accused officer, his colleagues, or even other prisoners. In some cases, they also faced punishment by correctional officials. These punishments took the form of write-ups for sexual misconduct, the loss of “good time” accrued toward an early parole, or prolonged periods of disciplinary segregation. In other cases, officials did not overtly discipline prisoners but made use of administrative segregation, ostensibly a protective mechanism, effectively to punish them. Thus, prisoners who had committed no disciplinary infraction whatsoever were subjected to the same treatment as prisoners serving disciplinary sentences. In our view, no justification exists for punishing prisoners for sexual misconduct by officers or staff. Whatever penological benefit that may flow from such measures is far outweighed by their deterrent effect on prisoners who might seek to report such abuse.
          As noted above, unless outside organizations or individuals are made aware of incidents of custodial sexual misconduct, complaints of such abuse are likely to be handled almost entirely from within the departments of corrections or even from within the given prison. While most correctional systems that we investigated did sometimes refer suspected criminal sexual misconduct to the state police, these referrals did not always occur, nor were they necessarily carried out promptly, with the result that crucial medical evidence may have been compromised. Moreover, once correctional officials referred such charges to the state police, this often had the unconscionable side effect of ending the departments’ own internal investigations into the alleged misconduct. It is at this point in the investigatory process that serious allegations of sexual misconduct can escape the grasp of the prison administration. Often, prison administrators fail to deal appropriately with cases that are returned to them because the allegations do not meet prosecution standards. An employee who may not have been found to commit a crime, but who may nonetheless have violated prison rules, can thus escape punishment altogether.
          Meanwhile, in cases of suspected sexual misconduct that authorities consider less than criminal, it is likely that no investigation outside of the prison facility will occur, whether by departmental investigators or the state police. Moreover, any investigation into custodial sexual misconduct at whatever level that does occur may not be recorded or monitored by any central authority. In fact, in no correctional system that we investigated, with the exception of Georgia’s, did any such reliable centralized database of sexual misconduct, whether criminal or otherwise, exist. The absence of such a database makes it all the more difficult to monitor the incidence of sexual misconduct, to record the steps taken to remedy it, and to keep track of allegedly abusive employees or those who have been found to have violated prison rules and/or criminal law.
          One obvious way to address the clear conflict of interest that exists when a department of corrections investigates itself is to establish independent monitors to oversee correctional facilities. However, in the correctional systems that we investigated, such independent oversight was virtually nonexistent. The District of Columbia, for example, pursuant to a judicial order resulting from the 1994 class action suit, was required to appoint a special monitor who would independently investigate and make recommendations to remedy sexual misconduct within the district’s correctional system. But under an August 1996 circuit court decision, the special monitor’s position was eliminated pending appeal. The state of Michigan does have a legislative corrections ombudsman who is mandated by the state legislature to oversee conditions in the state’s correctional institutions. The ombudsman’s investigatory and oversight powers are fairly limited, however, and under 1995 legislation, have been even further curtailed. To our knowledge, none of the other states that we investigated have any kind of effective mechanism for securing the independent monitoring of conditions within their correctional facilities.
          Given the lack of independent mechanisms legally authorized to oversee the departments of corrections, nongovernmental monitors and private attorneys have become crucial players in the effort to expose and remedy custodial sexual misconduct. Unfortunately, few national or local organizations or private attorneys that focus on prisoners’ rights consistently focus on the problem of sexual misconduct in women’s prisons. Those that do face enormous obstacles. These independent nongovernmental monitors, including attorneys, who investigate sexual misconduct often have unduly limited access to prisoners, are shut out of complaint or investigatory processes, are publicly attacked by correctional and even state officials, and find that their work with respect to other custodial issues can be compromised by their attempts to address this one. In addition, these groups and individuals uniformly face severe resource constraints which limit their ability to monitor departments of corrections and which have recently been exacerbated by the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), discussed below.
          The PLRA, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in April 1996, has seriously compromised the ability of any entity, private or public, to combat sexual misconduct in custody. Among other measures, the PLRA dramatically limits the ability of individuals and nongovernmental organizations to challenge abusive prison conditions through litigation. The PLRA invalidates any settlement by parties to such a litigation that does not include a finding or statement that the prison conditions being challenged violate a federal statute or the U.S. Constitution. Because prison authorities never want to admit such violations in the consent decrees that frequently settle prison litigation without trial, such findings are extremely rare. The PLRA further arbitrarily terminates any court order regarding unlawful conditions or practices in a given prison after two years, regardless of the degree of compliance; this is often an unreasonably short time to achieve any meaningful change in the way a prison is operated. Thus, a new trial will usually have to be held in order to make a new finding that problems persist. Finally, the PLRA also restricts court-awarded attorneys’ fees, which are the main income for prisoner rights attorneys, and severely limits the authority of federal courts to assign judicial officers to oversee prison reform, a key tool for implementing remedial court orders.
          The passage of the PLRA removes the one effective external check on serious abuses such as those described in this report and increases the urgency of the need for states themselves to ensure that female prisoners in their custody are not being sexually abused or harassed by male staff in their employ. Where they fail to do so, the United States Department of Justice has the power to prosecute correctional officials who violate federal civil rights statues. These prosecutions are difficult, in part due to stringent intent requirements, and are quite rare. In addition, the DOJ has the statutory right to investigate and institute civil actions under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) whenever it finds that a state facility engages in a pattern or practice of subjecting prisoners to “egregious or flagrant conditions” in violation of the constitution. Unfortunately, the PLRA is likely to have a chilling effect on the DOJ’s oversight efforts, as well as those of private groups, and has already prompted the department to engage in an ill-advised review of all outstanding consent decrees to establish whether they should be terminated under the PLRA, regardless of whether a state department of corrections has yet filed such a request.
          Even prior to the passage of the PLRA, the DOJ fell far short of its international and national obligations to protect against custodial sexual misconduct and to ensure that such abuse was appropriately investigated and prosecuted. Currently the DOJ has no guidelines that stipulate when and how to launch CRIPA investigations into conditions at state prisons and has conducted few such inquiries. The only state that we investigated for this report in which the DOJ has launched a formal investigation under CRIPA is the state of Michigan. Unfortunately, the Justice Department has yet to file suit against the state despite its clear finding of sexual abuse of women prisoners by guards in Michigan’s prisons and the fact that the forty-nine day period that the DOJ must legally wait after issuing findings before it can file such a suit lapsed well over a year ago.
          Moreover, although the DOJ regularly receives complaints of custodial sexual misconduct, the department maintains no system for recording such complaints, nor does it systematically monitor the number of complaints concerning any particular institution or type of abuse. Absent such information, it is virtually impossible for the DOJ to ensure that it is fully aware of all the sexual misconduct problems that fall within its jurisdiction. Unfortunately, even if the DOJ were to take much-needed steps to monitor the problem of custodial sexual misconduct more effectively, it would still have to contend with serious budgetary constraints.
          The tendency of the U.S. government to neglect the problem of custodial sexual misconduct in state prisons for women is perhaps best exemplified by its first report to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the ICCPR. In the entire 213-page report, the problem of custodial sexual misconduct in U.S. state prisons for women is mentioned only once and then only to state that it is “addressed through staff training and through criminal statutes prohibiting such activity.” This statement is at best disingenuous. At worst, it makes clear to the international community, to the people of the United States, to the state departments of corrections and the women they incarcerate, and to us, that the United States has almost completely abdicated its responsibility to guarantee in any meaningful way that the women held in its state prisons are not being sexually abused by those in authority over them.
          Human Rights Watch calls on the United States to demonstrate its clear commitment to its international and national obligations to prevent, investigate, and punish custodial sexual abuse in U.S. state prisons for women and makes the following recommendations to the federal government and its constituent states, urging them to step up their efforts to acknowledge and eliminate this pressing problem. Recommendations specific to the District of Columbia and the five states investigated for this report appear at the close of each relevant chapter.
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