Tag Archives: Rape

Evan Rachel Wood Posts Powerful Letter Online About Past Sexual Assults

Last week, Rolling Stone published a profile Evan Rachel Wood. In the piece, Wood discusses her own personal experience as a survivor of rape.

Alex Morris, the author of the piece, included a quote from an email Wood sent him in which she explained why she told him her story, and why she wants to tell the world.

However the magazine only published a portion of the note, so in the name of transparency, the Westworld actress took to Twitter to share her email in its entirety.

https://twitter.com/evanrachelwood/status/803354562337865728

In her email to Morris, Wood wrote:

I started questioning my reasons for staying vague about my experiences as a girl growing up in America. I think, like a lot of women, I had the urge to not make it a sob story, to not make it about me. ‘I didn’t have to confirm what happened, what mattered is that sh*t happened. Bad. Sh*t. That still affects me to this day.

I think deep down, I also didn’t want to be accused of doing it for attention, or told it wasn’t a big deal, or ‘that’s not really rape’. I will not be ashamed. I will also not project some false idea of being completely over it because ‘I am so strong.’ I don’t believe we live in a time where people can stay silent any longer. I certainly can’t.

Not given the state our world is in with its blatant bigotry and sexism. It should be talked about because it’s swept under the rug as nothing and I will not accept this as ‘normal’. It’s a serious problem. I am still standing. I am alive. I am happy. I am strong. But I am still not ok.”

Well said. She continued:

I think it’s important for people to know that, for survivors to own that, and that the pressure to just get over it already, should be lifted. It will remind people of the damage that has been done and how the trauma of a few minutes can turn into a lifetime of fighting for yourself. It’s not that you can’t get over it, it’s just that you are never the same, or maybe I just haven’t gotten there yet.

So to answer your blunt question bluntly, yes. I have been raped. By a significant other while we were together, and on a separate occasion, by the owner of a bar. The first time I was unsure that if it was done by a partner it was still in fact rape, until too late. Also who would believe me. And the second time, I thought it was my fault and that I should have fought back more, but I was scared. This was many many years ago and I of course know now neither one was my fault and neither one was ok. This was all before I tried to commit suicide and I am sure was one of the many factors. There you have it.”

The letter speaks to many of the reasons why survivors of rape often don’t come forward when they’ve been sexually assaulted, including a fear of being blamed, being accused of making it up, and being told it’s not a big deal.

Evan Rachel Wood Opens Up About Surviving Rape Twice: We Can’t ‘Stay Silent Any Longer’

Evan Rachel Wood has opened up to Rolling Stone in an email that she sent the day after the US Presidential election.

She wrote:

I’ve been raped. By a significant other while we were together. And on a separate occasion, by the owner of a bar …

I don’t believe we live in a time where people can stay silent any longer. Not given the state our world is in with its blatant bigotry and sexism.”

The email comes after the magazine published an interview with her, in which she admits she’d suffered ‘physical, psychological and sexual’ abuse.

Evan, who describes herself as ‘gender fluid’, also spoke about being bisexual.

She added in the email:

It was always talked about like a phase or something stupid, or something you were doing for attention.

You know, bisexuality is worthy of eye rolls. And I didn’t realise how damaging that was until I tried to have healthy relationships as an adult and realised that there was still all this shame and conditioning and stigma around my sexuality that was really affecting the way I related to people.”

Has been extremely open about her sexuality, often speaking about it on social media.

She also shared a video on her YouTube channel last year aiming to “shatter misconceptions about bisexuality.” 

https://twitter.com/evanrachelwood/status/644637382508064768

Male Police Officer Suspended After Allegedly Threatening Rape a Gay Woman

Police sergeant, Jesus Menocal Jr. from Florida has been suspended after being accused of sexual abuse by a young lesbian couple he pulled over.

police-officer

The couple – who have asked not to be identified – said that Menocal pulled them over for making a U-turn and then detained them for questioning. He told one of the girls, who is 17, to get in the back of his cop car, and had her 20-year-old girlfriend follow behind in her car.

Back at the station, the couple say Menocal took the younger girl into a private room and began asking her inappropriate questions.

Talking to WSVN, the young woman said

… [He asked me] how do I have intercourse, and I told him, ‘Why do I need to answer that? Why is that necessary?’ He insisted me to answer it, so I told him how me and my partner have intercourse, which is me and my girlfriend. After, he asked if I was a virgin. He asked me, if he was to test me right that moment, if I had any diseases on me.”

She went on to say that Menocal began rubbing his genitals over his pants and alleges he told her to “take off my pants or I was going to get arrested.”

After putting her shorts back on, he asked to see her tattoos.

He wanted me to take off my shirt and my bra together, and I told him, ‘No. Why do I have to do that? There’s no reason to do that,’ Then he said, ‘Oh I thought you wanted to fuck’. Honestly, I thought I was going to get raped. I thought he would make me sleep with him.”

The teen reported that the officer returned her to her worried girlfriend about fifteen minutes later, and they immediately filed a police report.

The day after the alleged sexual assault, Menocal was suspended with pay while the Hialeah Police Department began an investigation into the couple’s allegations.

The Hialeah Police Department, Police Chief, Sergio Velázquez said in a statement.

Very serious allegations were made, which require a methodical, detailed and thorough examination of all statements and evidence. This is a very delicate road … and we seek to be impartial. Our job is to get to the bottom of this. If it is proven that there is wrongdoing, the appropriate decision will be taken. Otherwise, he will return to work.”

HBO’s VICE Links Uganda’s Lesbian Corrective Rapes Back to American Anti-Gay Christians

The plight of the LGBT community in Uganda has largely dropped out of the headlines, but in the latest episode of VICE on HBO, correspondent Isobel Yeung travels to Uganda and shows that they’re as persecuted as ever.

Not only does the documentary highlight how churches and schools are lying to children and adults about the “evils” of homosexuality, but that American missionaries and politicians are part of the problem too.

A Prayer for Uganda highlights the teachings of people like Pastor George Oduch, a Christian Fundamentalist who has taken his lead from anti-gay American Pastor Scott Lively.

They attempt to educate Ugandans about how there’s “no difference between a terrorist and a homosexual,” and that homosexuality is just like paedophilia.

The propaganda is so distorted that children are taught that there are ‘10 different cancers that attack only homosexuals’.

Girls are also told that sleeping with another women will lead to lesbian infertility.

If a woman gets homosexuality with another woman, she cannot give birth.”

The young Ugandans repeat what they are lectured in school and in church, but also in their communities, as the adults are even worse.

In one scene, Yeung interviews poor, working class men. The men tell her that the first thing she needs to know about their culture is “we hate is homosexuality.” That is the first thing of which they are proud. Not arts, science, their families, their heritage – not even their perverted interpretation of Christianity.

“We hate that one [homosexuality] completely. If we find a woman with a woman, we will pull out one and we will do it to her.” He’s of course talking about rape. “We cannot allow a woman to have sex with a fellow woman.”

Yeung asks, “Have you ever raped a lesbian?”

“Yeah,” the man replies. “Serious raping.”

Then Yeung asks, “So what would you do if you saw a gay man?”

“Kill! Kill! You kill that one! Kill! I just kill them. Woman and woman we rape, but man and man we kill.”

She wrote later, “I don’t ever recall feeling as heartbroken as the week we spent shooting this.”

Yeung is able to speak with a Ugandan gay woman on camera, although her face is blurred and voice distorted as to not reveal her identity. The woman had a secret girlfriend, but was found out by a group of men who raped her. When she found out she was pregnant soon after, her girlfriend left her. Now she says her child is “a blessing in disguise,” because now people won’t assume she’s a lesbian so quickly. In a heart breaking moment, she shares that she won’t even tell her son she’s gay because she’s worried he will reject her.

A Prayer for Uganda 02

Last year, the government of Uganda passed a bill making homosexuality–already a crime–punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty. The legislation was overturned, thanks largely to the international fury it provoked, but homosexuality remains illegal and massively stigmatised.

Now, less than a year after the “Anti-Homosexuality Act” (nicknamed the “Kill the Gays” bill in Western media) was struck down, Ugandan officials are working to revive it.

Lena Dunham Explains What Rape Does To Women’s Voices

When Lena Dunham received an award at Variety’s Women in Power luncheon on Friday, she spoke up about her own sexual assault and why she’s been motivated to help other victims.

lena-dunham-01

Dunham was being honoured for her work with GEMS, an organisation that works to empower girls who fell into human trafficking. The HBO actress is now using her personal experience – and voice as a celebrity – to help others.

When I was raped, I felt powerless. I felt my value had been determined by someone else. Someone who sent me the message that my body was not my own, and my choices were meaningless. It took years to recognize my personal worth was not tied to my assault; the voices telling me I deserved this were phantoms, they were liars. So as a feminist and a sexual assault survivor, my ultimate goal is to use my experience, my platform, and yes, my privilege, to reverse stigma and give voice to other survivors.”

Dunham also spoke of the stigma surrounding human trafficking victims and how there needs to be a shift in awareness and education.

Despite this clear lack of agency, we as a society somehow think that 14-year-old runaways make a choice to be in the commercial sex industry. We call these girls names and judge them and write pop songs celebrating their assailants and their fancy sneakers. We think that locking them up will help them make better choices. We look at youth in the commercial sex industry in America as willing participants in their own victimisation, ignoring the disenfranchisement that comes with being poor, from being a child, from being a girl of color, from being a homeless LGBT youth, from being a kid in foster care.

We ignore what it must be like to be bought and sold by adult men and to spend your adolescence that this is what you’re worth, that your voice doesn’t matter, that you have no power.”

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 24: Actors Glenn Close (L) and Lena Dunham attend Variety's Power of Women New York presented by Lifetime at Cipriani 42nd Street on April 24, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Variety)

NEW YORK, NY – APRIL 24: Actors Glenn Close (L) and Lena Dunham attend Variety’s Power of Women New York presented by Lifetime at Cipriani 42nd Street on April 24, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Variety)

The Girls creator and star wrote about her sexual assault at Oberlin College in a controversial passage in her memoir, Not That Kind of Girl. She called her assailant Barry, but when reporters tracked down a real-life Oberlin alum with that name, the publisher announced new editions would clarify that “Barry” was a fake name and offered to pay the man’s legal fees.

South African Judge Makes a Stand, as Man Gets 30 Years For Murdering Lesbian in Hate Crime

A man accused of killing a lesbian in South Africa, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Lekgoa Motleleng pleaded guilty to the murder and rape of out lesbian, Duduzile Zozo, from in Ekurhuleni, which has a history of violence against lesbians.

Violence against openly gay lesbians is literally a matter of life and death in South Africa and something has to done about it if the country wants to continue to move forward.

Motleleng was sentenced in the South Gauteng High Court sitting in Palm Ridge. Judge Tshifiwa Maumela stated that he wanted to make a difference to all vulnerable groups of society.

“No one has been given the right to correct alcoholics. No one has been given the right to correct those who take too much salt or sugar. No one has been given the right to correct others when it comes to the right to love their own gender… You can’t interfere with how someone chooses to live.” 

Judge Tshifiwa Maumela

The paper quoted the judge saying a harsh sentence for Motleleng would serve as a warning to those who threatened the vulnerable. He told the 23-year-old to change his attitude towards homosexual people.

“Lead your life and let gays and lesbians be.”

Judge Tshifiwa Maumela

Same-sex marriage is legal in South Africa, making it one of the most progressive countries on the matter, especially on the continent of Africa.

Unfortunately cultural attitudes have been slow to change. Some 30+ brutal acts against lesbians have been documented in South Africa, mostly in townships, and some suggest the number is higher because some women refuse to come forward.

Men who attack lesbian women, often in the form of rape – referred to as ‘corrective rape,’ falsely believe that male penetration will change them.