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This is the first of a series of articles devoted to violence against women, a public health issue. I consider it of extreme importance to shed some light on this issue which has so severely and tragically affected the countless lives of women and girls all over the world.
Violence against women was considered to be so overlooked that in 2004 Amnesty International launched its world wide Stop Violence Against Women Campaign. This grassroots organization called this violence a “human rights scandal.” The campaign’s intent was to “…break the silence around this scandal, stop the violence, and create a world where women and girls are afforded their basic human rights.” Amnesty states that the right of women to be free from violence is part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Here are some sobering statistics. In Europe, domestic violence is the principal cause of disability and death for women ages 16 to 44. As for the United States, a woman is raped every six minutes, and a woman is battered every 15 seconds. Rape is extremely prevalent in war torn countries. Trafficking of women takes place all over the world.
Amnesty has several goals in its campaign to stop violence against women. First of all it wants governments and armed groups to end impunity for those who commit violence against women in areas where there is conflict, as well as during the post conflict period. It is demanding that laws that discriminate against women and that perpetrate violence against them in the home and the community be abolished. It is urging the adoption of laws that give women protection from violence. Amnesty is urging governments to ratify the Treaty for the Rights of Women (CEDAW.)
A human rights perspective is the guiding force behind this campaign. This means that violence against women is no longer a private matter, but a public one, and therefore the authorities are required to act. Governments must be held accountable for any act of violence committed against a woman or a girl.
There are several other organizations and groups that are working on stopping violence against women, but Nobel Peace Prize Winner Amnesty International is definitely in the forefront.
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I have studied this VAWA, the original House Bill 3402, of the 2005 four billion dollar re-authorization, and the many bills that appropriate funds and issue grant money under this Act. I have read the federal policies on rape.
I have been fighting for five years, to convince the federal government that it is a federal crime to rape a woman in her workplace. The federal government tells me it is not a federal crime.
I have been pleading with the federal government, and the State of Pennsylvania, to simply arrest and incarcerate one, rapist for the past five years, since the day he assaulted me in my workplace.
NO woman should have to leave her job, due to rape.
When the management sexually abuses the office help, they should go to prison. I am having a hard time convincing the federal government, that it is their responsibility to put a rapist out of the workplace an in prison. In the five years that I have been working on this same workplace rape case, it seems to me that the federal government would prefer to process hundreds of thousands of workplace rape cases through the federalized system, never enforcing federal civil rights laws. It is a federal civil rights crime to sexually abuse any person, in the workplace, in America. Title 18 Section 245 Federally Protected Activities. In the five years that I have been working on this case, it seems to me that the federal government has a vested interest in allowing corporations to rape working women. I still can not convince the government to simply put one rapist out of business and in prison. I have spent all that I have, in my efforts to put that one man in prison for serious violent felony rape. To this day, I do not understand why any woman would have to leave her job, due to rape.
The VAWA Title 42 Subchapter 136 Subpart I I I, starts with this simple statement of federal policy, "It is the Sense of the Senate, that rape be prosecuted by the State".
In my case, that federal policy of not prosecuting rapists, and workplace rape cases, led to the rapes of other women, and the tragic murder of 5 children. The rapist is still doing business as usual, after sexually abusing many women , in the workplace. The DOJ refused to arrest him at the scene, the State police just stand there and watch him rape.
He has "no record". He gets his rape cases "sealed" under the provisions of this VAWA. The States have no crime stats, the DOJ has the same non-prosecution policy that results in no workplace rape, crime statistics.
I do know how the DOJ can process more than 147,000 workplace rape cases each year, never putting a rapist in prison.
They receive more than 240 million dollars in VAWA appropriations, along with the "training" and policies of this VAWA.
This VAWA cost the American taxpayer in excess of 4 billion dollars.
The benefit, is to the federal government, processing workplace rape cases thru the EEOC, the US Attorneys offices and the Federal Courts.
The rapists, and the corporations also benefit from this Act.
They have the assurance that rapists are not sent to prison, and can continue to do business as usual, making millions for the corporations.
I want one rapist in prison. No woman should have to leave her job, due to rape. It is the governments responsibility to put him in prison, they refuse to do so. I can be reached at 302-836-8106 [email protected]
August 6, 2010 - 7:18amThis Comment