SF Thread/Having to Give Up Your Child

At first I wasn’t going to comment on this post, out of respect for Deluna, but the way the White Nationalists have treated her has made me decide to post it here and show my compassion and support for another women who has known the hell of being raped.

Deluna Forum Member     Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Freezing my hinney WI Posts: 859 Blog Entries: 2

Having to give up your child So things sometimes work out odd yet for the best no matter how painful. Recently I have been going through a lot and have been on and off SF. My little one has gone to live with my mother and his big brother. I know I will get flamed for this but I have to let it out somewhere. I’m not on SF much anymore as I said and there are a ton of reasons why. Like I stated my little man has gone to live with his grandmother. I wanted to go away for college and he didn’t want to leave the rest of the family. How can I blame him? We have lived in 4 states in 2 years, he wants stability and security. I cant do that, I’m not done trying to figure out my life and what to do and exactly who I want to be. It makes me sad but everything happens for a reason. I miss him, so much. I’m glad he is happy and my mother waking up and being aware helps. She will raise him the way I would just less extreme as I did. I feel deep pain and loss but at the same time I cant help but feel that maybe some women are not born to raise children. I don’t know how to be a mother, I don’t have the maternal feelings most have. I guess I was a street kid too long and the way I think and feel may never go away. I needed to do what made him happy and not what made others happy. He is happy, very much so. So I am going back down to FL and going to go to UCF or another college for something else that I wont state out of anonymity and wanting to finish my education. I’m confused, lost, scared, hurt, angry, and disappointed in myself. The most I feel I can do is do something more with my life so that my boys understand why I did what I did and become something to make them proud.

I know you won’t get support from White Nationalists, but going to college and getting an education is providing a future for your child.  He is in a safe environment with your mother while you are going to school and working on getting an education so that you can provide for you child.  I hope that at the same time you will work on your own healing.  Any woman who has gone through rape has to heal emotionally. You also have the added pressure of feeling guilty because you are struggling to feel like a mother to your sons who were the product of your rape.  You are a brave woman and you had your sons.  You love them very much and I hope with time, love, and healing that you and your boys can work through all this and become a strong family.  I wish you the best.

Do not let these White Nationalists make you feel guilty for going to school and working on yourself right now, so that in the future you can be a good mother to your children.  My mom left my sister with her mom in Kansas when she first moved to CA so that she could establish herself.  My sister was happy and she was safe until my mother had established herself in L.A.

Being a mother is doing what is best for your child even if it means you have to give that child up.  White Nationalists are wrong in making you feel guilty because you placed your boy’s needs first in your life.  I am sorry that you have to deal with all the crap that your fellow White Nationalists are dishing out at you. 

I know it was a hard decision and I for one wish you luck. 

SteelMagnolia Forum Member     Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: State of Tennessee – Former Country of U.S.A. Posts: 793

Re: Having to give up your child Quote: Originally Posted by Deluna Actually I have 3 sons. Thank you and before you start popping your mouth off you should know facts first. My first one the “father” is still in prison for what he did to me and his rights were terminated. My second his father and I were together for 5 years, we split up but remained friends. He thought since it was once his it still was and took it. My third child I used protection with his father. I went to the doctor one day and found out I was pregnant. I was mortified, in tears and you know what he said to me? “I know now you can never leave me b*tch” I did not know I did not have maternal instincts, I thought one day I would have a family and children. I couldn’t do it, I tried very hard hoping one day something would just click and everything would come together and be the way it was supposed to be and feel the way I was supposed to feel. I didn’t bring children into this world from being irresponsible and knowing I couldn’t do it. So before you judge think first. Life is not peaches and cream for everyone, I’m lucky though I could have had it a lot worse like some other people in this world. I’m lucky I’m wasn’t locked in a cage and burned with cigarettes, or raped in a drug house and murdered, or any of the other horrible things that have happened to so many. I hope you’re not expecting a shoulder to cry on from every SF lady because what I’m hearing is that you’ve made some really bad personal decisions based on bad character judgement and now your parents and your children are going to pay the price for your (how was it you said it…”I’m not done trying to figure out my life and what to do and exactly who I want to be.”) Maybe you should have figured out what it was you ‘wanted to be’ before you kept having kids that were going to be raised by someone else. Oh, I have little doubt that your mother loves the children but, I think it’s pretty selfish of you to foist YOUR responsibilities off on her when her child-rearing SHOULD be over. Don’t start with me either about the abusive fathers (I notice you didn’t say HUSBAND a single time). I was married (and had two beautiful children) with one of those men that they like to make those Lifetime and WE channel movies about. Did you ever see the Burning Bed? Well, I’m here to tell you that the guy in that movie couldn’t have held a light to my first husband. He almost killed me himself TWICE and the only reason I’m still here is God wasn’t ready to call me home yet (my husband was 6’6″ and about 245 lbs while I’m around 5’5″ and weighed about 120 at the time). Thank the Good Lord, I was finally able to get out of that situation after 14 years with my children in my care and as my responsibilty. You see, when I made the deicsion to HAVE them and then made the decision to not put them up for adoption, that made them MY responsibility. I worked and kept a nice, clean roof over our heads and, while there were times that I went hungry, my children NEVER did. You can call it maternal instincts or whatever you want to make yourself feel better but what it ultimately boils down to is RESPONSIBILITY. You’re not telling me that you couldn’t find a college close to home where mayby your mom could have just helped out with baby-sitting and such. No, you made yet another decision based on what YOU want out of life and are trying to justify foisting your children off on your mother. I’m not trying to lay a guilt trip on you but I would like you to stop and take a REALLY long look at your REAL motives and just what your decisions are costing your mother and your sons. You can believe me that this is the exact same thing that I would be telling my own daughter were she ever to have found herself in any similar situation (and she did go through a period of a couple of years exhibiting behaviors that we didn’t condone and you can bet she HEARD about it — that’s what good moms are for – it’s now known as ‘tough love’). Sometimes we need friends who aren’t afraid to tell us what they REALLY think. I won’t apologize if this makes anyone mad. We come to this forum and run down and make disparaging comments about blacks and hispanics who do such things and yet I see many here condoning or making excuses for a White who does the same things. Either we hold Our Race to higher standards or we just give up and join the lower life forms.

I do understand what you are saying about finding a college closer and her mom helping with the boys.   My only question is maybe what she wants to study is not offered at the college near where they live?  Maybe the school in FL is the one she is best able to afford because they might be the one who is helping her the most.  Not every college has the program we want to study or works out best for us.

I think you and some of the other women are being very hard on her.  It is I am such a great mom and you are a terrible mother who doesn’t deserve to work on healing and working through her emotions so that she can be a better woman, mother, and move forward in life.  It is like you fail to understand until a woman who is suffering emotional problems because of things that have happen in her life that caused her to have these emotional problems that she is not going to move forward and but is stuck and needs to work through those emotions.

It was very brave for her to do what she is doing.  Yes, she posted on a White Nationalist board in the woman’s section.  I don’t think she was prepared for the harsh judgment and condemnation that she received.  Actually I hope it opens her eyes to the truth and she will have the courage to leave White Nationalism behind her and move forward and get the healing she needs, the college education and become a woman who raises her sons to be the best they can be, because their mom loved them enough to work on herself so that she could give them her best.

 

whitewheeler1488 Forum Member   Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Richland, Washington Posts: 22

Re: Having to give up your child Quote: Originally Posted by Deluna Actually I have 3 sons. Thank you and before you start popping your mouth off you should know facts first. My first one the “father” is still in prison for what he did to me and his rights were terminated. My second his father and I were together for 5 years, we split up but remained friends. He thought since it was once his it still was and took it. My third child I used protection with his father. I went to the doctor one day and found out I was pregnant. I was mortified, in tears and you know what he said to me? “I know now you can never leave me b*tch” I did not know I did not have maternal instincts, I thought one day I would have a family and children. I couldn’t do it, I tried very hard hoping one day something would just click and everything would come together and be the way it was supposed to be and feel the way I was supposed to feel. I didn’t bring children into this world from being irresponsible and knowing I couldn’t do it. So before you judge think first. Life is not peaches and cream for everyone, I’m lucky though I could have had it a lot worse like some other people in this world. I’m lucky I’m wasn’t locked in a cage and burned with cigarettes, or raped in a drug house and murdered, or any of the other horrible things that have happened to so many. Thank you for sharing some of the “facts” but if what I said upset you, its because its true. All I hear is excuses from you. I am not here to wipe your tears after another mistake. My goal, my only goal is the 14 words!!! As a woman my job is to have children ( I have 3 all with the same WHITE father ) and raise them the WHITE way.

Yes,  you believe the lie of White Nationalism that your only role as a woman is to have White Babies and to raise them WHITE.  To raise your sons be good soldiers for the White Race and your daughters to start having white babies young and have as many as she can.

I will most likely be accused of not liking children, but the truth is I love children.  If I had met the right man I would have wanted to have lots of babies and have the American dream, but life didn’t work out that way, and one must make the best of the situation they find themselves in.

 Are you really happy?  Are you really fulfilled as a woman?  Yes, being a mother is a wonderful thing and one of the true blessings in life, but I believe that women can play more than just one role of motherhood. I don’t believe it is right to judge another woman because she wasn’t as lucky as you in finding Mr. Right and for a time she leaves her son with her mother while she is working on getting herself in the place that she can be in a position to raise him with all the tools needed so that he grows up happy and well adjusted in life.  The wrong mother can be worst than no mother.

Deluna Forum Member     Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Freezing my hinney WI Posts: 859 Blog Entries: 2

Re: Having to give up your child You know something what part of the first 2 i was not a willing perticipant did you all not get? Ya know delete my account **** you guys, none of you get it. I feel ****ty enough about it as it is, and yes you stupid bitch I do have to go to FL for my school, there are only 3 in the united states one state I wont step foot in ever, one i cant afford and the 3rd I have other college friends to roommate with so it is not so expensive. No my mother did not raise me, I was out of a back pack on and off from 13 to 15 then at 16 I was on my own. So if you were never raised knowing what a family is or how to be a mother then stfu. My mom is a great lady now, shes grown and she offered to do this. I didnt ask her, I wouldnt even have metioned to her my feelings had she not sat me down. My brother is the same way, he would never know how to be a father but being a guy he seems to already know this. My husband or ex, whatever were talking to see if we can work it out too, he isnt/wasnt capable of being a father eigther. We both tried and we couldnt we turned very foul to each other. We tried to suck it up. I didnt abort any of them even though in many people eyes and advice it was encouraged because of the nature of the situtation at those times. Im not explaining myself further after this and again please delete my account. I came here to give a reason why exactly I had been on and off and what was happpening not get ragged on by harpies. Im not looking for a shoulder to cry on or pitty, Im not like that one bit. Matter of fact my own husband (or ex hubby, we’re talking again) didn’t even know about it until maybe a year into our marriage. He didnt know the time I was 10yrs old eigther till NOV 25th when I found out the bastard got out of prison in this area. So ya know something stick a sock in it, get something better to do and I pray for your kids that they never lack in parenting or ever have a problem they can not exactly control that displeases you, hell, ya’ll might string them up… Oh and after the 3rd one happened between medical reasons and not wanting to have another child in similar cicumstances I had a tubal, at 24. LC huggers

Maybe your eyes are starting to wake up about White Nationalism and how narrow minded they are in regards to women.  For your sake I truly hope so.

I am sorry you were raped.  You have to understand that to some White Nationalist men like my ex who is CI that they don’t believe the woman has the right to say no.  They don’t believe a man can rape a woman, but if she is raped it is because she asks for it.  They also like to say that women agree to have sex and than she thinks bad of herself so she cries rape when she really wasn’t.  They do not have a healthy view of women, and deep down inside I don’t think they even really like women that much, but they need us to have babies for them.  So you will find White Nationalist women who want to please their men parrot many of the same beliefs about women and our role in life.  Sometimes these women attack the woman who is different with more venom than the man, because it is woman on woman.  The women may call it tough love, but the truth is, it is not tough love, just condemnation and trying to make you feel guilty for daring to be different than the idea of what the perfect White Nationalist woman and mother should be in their mind.

White Nationalists like to say they have all these strong family values and that they treat women and children better than any non White Nationalist man, but the truth is that many times the worst abuse is in White Nationalist homes.  Abuse is very much a part of the Cause, though they like to try and hide that dirty little secret along with all the other little secrets that a good White Nationalist keeps hidden for the good of the Cause.

You might even have PTSD because of the rape and abuse.  I know the White Nationalists won’t tell you this, but you are doing the right thing in leaving your sons with your mom while you go and get healing for yourself.  You need to heal and work on you first so that you can be in a place where you can be a good mother to them. Just because you go to college and  you work on getting well, I know that you will still be a part of your sons lives.  They will know you are their mother and why for now you must work on your own healing so that in the future you can be a better mother to them.

What you are doing takes courage, so don’t let those idiots make you feel bad, because you want to go to college and work on getting yourself in a healthy place.

momo’4 ~DIXIEDARLIN~ “Friend of Stormfront” Sustaining Member     Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Where the snow is finally starting to melt,and the sun is shining once again Posts: 1,774

Re: Having to give up your child Quote: Originally Posted by Freya14 Yeah, I’m going to have to remove myself from this thread. I am truly sorry Deluna for what you are going through right now, and I only hope for the best for you and your child. This thread is just too much for me too deal with, and the comments in it. Honestly,I don’t think a lot of the women on this thread are giving constructive criticism,words of guidance,or words of wisdom. Instead,they like to toot their own horns and say “Look at me,I am the best mom in the world,and you are a piece of crap”. See the difference?

I agree with you and your friend freya 14. I wasn’t going to comment on this thread, out of respect for this woman, but because of the response from White Nationalists I decided that I would try and encourage her.  She is a fellow rape victim and most likely is suffering from some form of PTSD.

I am glad to see a few of you White Nationalist women supporting and trying to help her through this difficult time in her life.  I also wanted to let her know that as a woman who has been raped in my own life and suffers from PTSD that I am here for her as well.  Isn’t it sad that your friend gets more compassion from a Liberal woman who is actually fighting the message of White Nationalism.  Yet, we are all women and any woman who has been raped and abused is going to be there for her sister who has also been forced to live in that hell.

I may not be explaining this very well, but I am here if any woman is fighting the effects of rape, abuse and is suffering from PTSD and wants to put the past behind and get healing and hopefully move on to a better place in this world.  I know that is my goal, so I hope this blog and help other women who want the same thing.

I am sorry Deluna that you are having to go through this, but I hope in one small way it will open your eyes to the true nature of White Nationalism and you can move forward in life and leave the White Nationalist cause behind you.

There is a better life out there for you and your sons.  Good luck.

Women have a Right to Say NO

I was trolling Stormfront and I found this post that really brought back memories of Jeff.  He said the same thing that Jeff used to say to me.  Anyway, I wanted to comment and get out some feelings that I still have towards Jeff and the HELL I lived in.

Yesterday, 08:47 PM	#83
Procopius Forum Member   Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 28	Re: Women Turn History Into a Bizarre Soap Opera, Says Historian Quote:

Sex by force is rape. It is even torture. physical force is violence.Let me ask you this–why would a good man force his wife to have sex? Why would a man who loves his wife force her to have sex?

You can’t rape your own wife it’s a contradiction. I would never marry a woman who thinks that her husband can rape her. A woman like that is filled with feminist ideology whether she knows it or not. A woman in marriage gives herself to her husband, physcially and spiritually. Therefore, a husband CAN NOT rape his wife. Nor can a man steal his own money. Quote:

There are some men out there who force their wives to have sex. Most don’t–and there’s no need for all you nice men out there to get upset over this because we know you don’t do this to your wives, especially when you are angry with her.This is something that some guys need to get straight–most women feel bad about themselves when they have sex without love. Men can do it. For women it’s much harder to do. It is a fact of nature. If there is one thing you can blame on feminism, it is not in trying to save married women from being hurt in a sexual way by their husbands, but for trying to make women sexually like men–for telling women they should have sex without love, even though it goes totally against their own genetics. Or for trying to make women into soldiers and kill.

You said it, if a wife refuses to have sex with her husband, it is because that wife DOES NOT love him and probably keeps this secert from her husband out of guilt. Many married men refuse to see this, and instead pretend in their minds that women don’t like sex. Why are women not loving their husbands nowadays? Quote:

Guys, you want sex–buy her flowers. Tell her she’s beautiful. Tell her you appreciate all the things she does. And you love that blouse on her, it makes her look so feminine. It makes her look just like when you met her. Kiss her hand. Hold not only the door, but the car door for her, too. Make her smile. Plan ahead. Make her smile every day of the week and make Saturday night extra special.

So if your wife doesn’t love you, then bribe her for sex? No thanks. She still doesn’t love you, for whatever reason, and giving her bribes for affection is pathetic. Lots of men cry for love from their wives, but it won’t make her love you, and probably will lose respect from her. Quote:

Be a Knight. Are not the White Knights the most pro-Woman creatures on the face of the earth, after all? Laugh in the face of the Jew–you and your Woman are an unshakable team.

Knights never had to worry about their wives accusing them of rape.

Jeff used to say that to me that a man CAN’T RAPE HIS WIFE, because she is HIS PROPERTY AND A MAN CAN’T RAPE HIS OWN PROPTERY.   I got chills just reading that sentence from you Procopus. 

First of all Procopus, women are not property of men!!!! A husband who forces his wife to have sex against her will is still comitting rape.  I know that some men do not understand that concept and think like you do that a wife has no right to refuse sexual advances from her husband.

Second, will you really love your wife?  Will you really treasure and cherish her?  I know Jeff didn’t me and any man who feels like you do doesn’t either.  You want sex only and not making love.  There is a difference between sex and loving on the person you love.  Sex with Jeff was terrible because I was just an object to him who he said had the right to take when ever he wanted, even if I didn’t want to.  It could be in the middle of the night and even if I was sleeping.  If he wanted sex he was going to take it.  I don’t think I have ever had an enjoybale experience.

Third, I feel sorry for anyone you marry.  Having lived with someone like you who doesn’t think a husband can rape his wife, I know what she has to live with.

Again we get with the White Nationalist man blaming women fighting for women to be treated like human beings blamed for women wanting to be treated with respect and when we say no, not be forced into sex.  NO, means NO and not maybe or go ahead anyway and force us against our will.

Your post just reminded me of being with Jeff and I don’t wish that on any woman.  I wonder are you CI/White Nationalist too like Jeff? I worry about the girls/women in White Nationalism with guys like you in the Cause.

 

Law in Afghanistan Legalizing Rape in Marriage Prompts Outcry

Published on Thursday, April 2, 2009 by The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Canada expresses outrage, Western diplomats hold emergency meeting in Kabul, but Karzai’s move foreshadows painful tradeoffs

by Campbell Clark

OTTAWA – It used to be a mission to give a future to little girls. Now the government is scrambling to explain why Canadian troops are fighting for an Afghanistan that legalizes rape within marriage.

 

In this March 8, 2009 file photo, Afghan women pray for justice and security of the country during a gathering to mark the International Women’s Day in Kabul, Afghanistan. Human rights groups and some lawmakers criticized Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday, April 2, 2009 for signing into law legislation that some believe legalizes the rape of a wife by her husband and prevents women from leaving the house without a man’s permission. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq, File)

The new Afghan law, apparently approved by President Hamid Karzai, led Western diplomats in Kabul to call an emergency meeting and hammer out a concerted response, pressuring the Karzai administration to back down. 

Canadian officials insisted that Mr. Karzai still has some “wiggle room” before the law is implemented, and waited impatiently for the President’s first public comments on the law.

The Conservative government expressed outrage, and opposition politicians said Canadian soldiers did not fight and die for an Afghanistan that would pass such a law.

But the thorny question of whether Canada might withdraw support – cut some of its aid, for instance – left cabinet ministers at a loss.

“We haven’t had a chance yet to talk with the other ministers, so we haven’t made any decisions or had any discussions on next steps,” International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda said. “It’s very problematic. It’s a great concern and it is going to be a difficulty for Canada.”

As the United States, Canada and allies moved to lower expectations about whether they will leave Afghanistan a democracy that respects human rights – and as they increasingly back reconciliation with elements of the Taliban insurgency – the outcry over the new law may foreshadow painful tradeoffs to come.

For the Conservative government, which has emphasized advances for women and the ability of girls to go to school in Afghanistan, the law presents an immediate political quandary. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said the government must make it clear to Mr. Karzai that the law is unacceptable, while the NDP said Afghanistan should not expect Canadian troops and aid if it passes such laws.

“How can the government say our soldiers have died to protect the rights of women when Hamid Karzai passes this law?” NDP Leader Jack Layton asked in the Commons.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in an interview with the CBC from the G20 summit in London, called the move “antithetical” to Canada’s mission in Afghanistan.

“The concept that women are full human beings with human rights is very, very central to the reason the international community is engaged in this country…” he said. “It’s a significant change we want to see from the bad, old days of the Taliban.”

Canadian government officials said yesterday they still aren’t certain if the law had been fully passed or signed by Mr. Karzai. But Alexandra Gilbert, a women’s-rights project co-ordinator for the Canadian agency Rights and Democracy, said from Kabul she understands through women MPs that the law has been passed and signed.

It is a new family-law code for Afghanistan’s Shia minority, and while it does not apply to all, women’s groups in Afghanistan fear the precedent, Ms. Gilbert said.

“Women don’t have access to public life. To education, to health care, they can’t leave the house without the approval of their husband … and [wives] cannot refuse sexual relations,” she said.

Many believe Mr. Karzai is backing the law to build support for the presidential election he faces in August. University of Toronto foreign-policy expert Janice Stein said she’s hoping it will win votes from Shiites and also resonates with Pashtun Afghan elders in the south.

She and other analysts believe that Western allies are still caught between competing visions of the Afghan mission, even though U.S. President Barack Obama has moved the goals from democratic nation-building to preventing the re-establishment of a staging ground for terrorists.

University of Ottawa professor Roland Paris said the new law is so egregious that Western nations had an easy choice to oppose it, but as they scale back emphasis on democracy and support reconciliation with Taliban elements, other hard choices will come.

CTVglobemedia © Copyright 2009 CTVglobemedia Publishing Inc.

Rape Is Cheaper Than Bullets

Published on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

Amnesty’s latest campaign about sexual violence being used as a weapon of war may be offensive. But at least it’ll make us think

by Heather Harvey

This morning I received a text message from a friend who was on her way to work. It read: “Am just in the tube and there’s a really offensive poster up there but it says its Amnesty – do you know anything about it? It says ‘Rape is cheaper than bullets’.”

I quickly replied saying yes, it was an Amnesty International advertisement launched this week, and if it’s offensive then that is nothing compared to what hundreds of thousands of women and girls are suffering in conflict zones around the world.

The new Bullet ads that are appearing across the London Underground network over the next few weeks are designed to make passengers stop and think about some of the real horrors faced by women and girls. They’re meant to be provocative, because people are either immune or ignorant to the abuses that occur in global conflicts on a regular basis.

In previous and present wars, such as in Bosnia and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, rape and sexual violence are regularly used, and frequently the perpetrators go unpunished.

In the DRC’s troubled region of North Kivu, we are told that more than 2,200 cases of rape and sexual violence were reported in the first six months of 2008. Of these only 150 cases were heard in court, and in only one case was the perpetrator found guilty; that’s one out of 2,200.

Sexual violence against women isn’t unique to the DRC conflict.

The UN estimates that between 20,000 and 50,000 women were raped during the 1992-5 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Systematic rape is a crime against humanity. Even one rape during conflict is in fact defined as a war crime, although it is rarely treated as such.

If authorities fail to investigate and prosecute acts of rape in wartime, it will have an impact on the stability of the region once the fighting has stopped. Rape can cause entire communities to flee in terror, freeing up land and resources that are being disputed and ethnically reshaping whole societies. It can also destabilise a community by destroying family units.

The women who are raped regularly suffer horrific brutality, mutilation and violation. Frequently they pick themselves up and carry on but they are usually abandoned, ostracised, stigmatised and blamed for the rape they have suffered.

Meanwhile men turn away from the women in disgust and shame and blame them for their rape, as their ability to protect their family is called into question.

The legacy lasts for years and across generations with the whole community irrevocably displaced, damaged and broken and unlikely to recover for a long time.

In fact this act can produce a similar result as the one that is sought through the use of conventional weaponry but at a much smaller financial cost.

Various resolutions passed at the United Nations Security Council have acknowledged the impact of sexual violence against women in conflict. But they mean nothing if they’re not enforced on the ground.

More has to be done to protect these women from these atrocious acts. I’m hoping that over the next few weeks more people will be stirred into action by the Amnesty ad. After all, it’s not the ad that’s offensive – it’s the truth portrayed that should offend us.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Heather Harvey is Amnesty International UK’s Stop Violence Against Women campaign manager.

Help Sexually Assaulted Women in the Military Find Justice

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/765752032?z00m=17975800

Target: The Next U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Sponsored by: Care2

Women in the military are silently struggling. In 2007, there were 2,688 reported sexual assaults in the military, with nearly half being rape.

Shockingly, most are forced to pay for their own rape kit (victims’ files containing DNA samples, interviews, photographs of injuries and other evidence). TRICARE, the U.S. Department of Defense Military Health System, will only pay for rape kits if the victim is seen in a military or VA facility. However, an estimated 80 percent of cases go unreported, with victims choosing to go off-base to protect their anonymity or careers.

Women in the military need protection. They are twice as likely to be raped as their civilian counterparts, and are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.

In the upcoming administration, the appointed Secretary of Veterans Affairs needs to be aware of the additional vulnerability female soldiers face, and the lack of support they receive. Urge the new Secretary to reform TRICARE so that rape kits are covered, regardless of where victims choose to go for an examination.

Images of suffering African women haunt Lewis

Images of suffering African women haunt Lewis
By Greg Lockert
The Prairie Messenger
November 5, 2008

WINNIPEG — Images of the suffering of African women haunt Stephen Lewis. Speaking in Winnipeg Oct. 25, the Canadian humanitarian and activist spoke emotionally about the violence inflicted upon women in countries such as Congo, Uganda, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Speaking in Winnipeg Oct. 25, the Canadian humanitarian and activist spoke emotionally about the violence inflicted upon women in countries such as Congo, Uganda, Sudan and Zimbabwe. “It’s heartbreaking,” Canada’s former ambassador to the UN said.

Lewis spoke at a Friends of Uganda dinner and silent auction at the Winnipeg Convention Centre. Almost 400 people were on hand for the event.

“Rape has become a strategy of war where you humiliate the women who hold society together,” Lewis said. He said the Congo is the worst place on earth in terms of sexual violence against women, even though there are 17,000 peacekeepers there. “The world can’t get its act together to end it,” he said. The Stephen Lewis Foundation supports community based organizations that battle the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. Since 2003, the foundation has funded more than 300 projects in 15 countries. One of the foundation’s projects is a surgical hospital in Congo for female victims of physical violence. Often the political leaders and others who perpetrate sexual violence end up receiving amnesty, which Lewis called a “disgrace.”

Both the leaders and those who carry out the atrocities should face the International Court of Justice in The Hague, he said.Lewis said the savage treatment of women in Africa makes them especially prone to HIV and AIDS infection, adding that 61 per cent of the 23 million HIV/AIDS cases in Africa are women. And despite the millions of dollars being poured into fighting the scourge, Lewis said often the drugs needed for treatment are not reaching the African people. The virus is evolving and mutating rapidly, adding to the difficulty of fighting it.Deaths in Africa from AIDS have created a growing orphan population in places like Uganda, Lewis said.

Uganda alone has two million orphans, half of whom are cared for by heroic grandparents who have had to watch their own children die first.Lewis praised those grandparents, especially the grandmothers, as “miraculous” and credited them with “holding it all together.”

Lewis criticized the rest of the world for failing to make significant progress in the war on poverty. About 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day, he said, most of them in Africa. Soaring food prices have added about 100 million to that number, he added, and global warming is making things worse, especially in southern Africa where the HIV/AIDS epidemic is the worst.As part of the UN Millennium Project, the G-8 nations agreed at their 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, to double aid to Africa and eliminate the debts of the poorest countries. They pledged to increase aid to developing countries by about $50 billion a year by 2010. Since 2005, however, only $4 billion has been spent.

Yet, in only a few days the US government pledged $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, and the US and Canada are spending a combined $3 billion a week on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“What kind of moral anchor is this?” Lewis asked, and wondered how the world tolerates such injustice and inequality.Lewis worries a global economic recession will further hurt the fight against poverty and said it’s getting harder to find the resources to fund the battle. He said that the best way to help the suffering people of Africa is through grassroots groups that are directly helping those who are suffering. Lewis’s foundation is funding 25 projects in Uganda in which the money goes directly into the bank accounts of the communities where help is needed.

http://www.stpeters college.ca/ prairie_messenge r/

German men sentenced for making women sex slaves

German men sentenced for making women sex slaves

BERLIN (Reuters) – A German court sentenced a pair of middle-aged men to more than 12 years in prison on Wednesday for sexually abusing and torturing two young women they held captive for several weeks — part of the time in a dog kennel.

The ordeal ended when a third woman taken hostage by the two German men managed to escape her captors and alert police, the court in the northern town of Verden said.

In addition to jail sentences, the court ordered the accused, identified as Stephan K., 42, and Bernd K., 55, to pay damages of 150,000 euros ($237,000) to each of the two women, while the third woman was awarded 5,000 euros.

The abuse of the women, who were aged between 18 and 23 at the time, began when the eldest was captured in August 2006 after she followed up a fake job advert posted by the men. Four weeks later, the men abducted the second woman the same way.

During their captivity at a two-storey house in Garlstedt near Bremen, the two women were repeatedly raped, a spokeswoman for the court said.

They were also locked in a kennel, made to crawl around on all fours on a leash, eat from a dog bowl and subjected to blasts of deafening music, she added.
The men, who filmed some of the abuse, also forced one of the women to prostitute herself, or face violent reprisals.

“The court concluded that the men who came for sex were unaware of the circumstances,” the spokeswoman said.

In mid-October, the men bound and gagged their third victim, but she escaped handcuffed and naked through an upstairs window, and alerted police with the help of a passing jogger.

Afterwards, the two men fled, each taking one of the remaining women by force. Within four days, Bernd K. had turned himself in, the court said. Police captured the younger man with the last captive woman just over a month later.

The older man received a 12-1/2 year sentence, while Stephan K. was handed a 14-year term, to be followed by a potentially indefinite period of preventive detention, the spokeswoman said.

The latter sentence reflected the fact the man had marked sociopathic and sadistic tendencies, she added.

“The court said they were deeply ingrained and would probably be apparent when he was 70,” she said.

The 14-month trial of the men, which received considerable attention in local German media, was partly closed to the public due to the disturbing nature of the evidence.

(Reporting by Dave Graham, editing by Erik Kirschbaum and Mary Gabirel)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080702/…aL_N3SHTt0bBAF

The Bureaucracy of Rape

Published on Tuesday, July 1, 2008 by The Nation

The Bureaucracy of Rape

by Barbara Crossette

The Bush Administration has made much of its June 19 triumph in the Security Council in getting unanimous backing for a resolution aimed at curtailing sexual violence against women caught up in conflict. This was no small feat, given the perennial reluctance of some Council members to accept that rape and other violent abuses of women and girls are matters of peace and security. (Ask the women of Darfur or the Democratic Republic of Congo about that.)

The utmost American effort went into lining up all fifteen votes for the resolution, apparently cinched by some high-level last-minute intervention by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the inevitable tinkering with words. Resolution 1820 was welcomed widely by human rights organizations, women’s advocacy groups and some frontline UN agencies.

But how does this advance the cause of the world’s most vulnerable women? What difference will it make?

This is the administration in Washington that has cut off aid–now totaling nearly $300 million over seven years, with the latest installment axed on June 27–to the United Nations Population Fund, which tries to help sexually violated women meet their most urgent and intimate needs, including safe abortions and “morning after” contraceptives. A woman in a besieged refugee camp is not terribly interested in lectures about abstinence, either.

Nearly eight years ago, the Security Council truly broke new ground with another resolution, the now-iconic Resolution 1325, which went straight for the abuses of women in conflict and its aftermath and also targeted the scandalous neglect of women’s voices “at all decision-making levels in national, regional and international institutions.” Peacekeeping and peacebuilding would now take women into account, that resolution said. But the rape goes on, sometimes by peacekeepers as well as combatants. And getting places for women at negotiating tables is still an uphill struggle.

The new US-sponsored resolution does not establish the principle that tactical rape is a war crime, as some media reported. That has been accepted internationally the since the mid-1990s, says Rhonda Copelon of CUNY School of Law, who directs the International Women’s Human Rights Law Clinic. War crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the Balkans have convicted men for rape. Sexual abuse is enshrined as a war crime in the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Nor does the new resolution set out sanctions against governments or militias or any other parties to a conflict that employ systematic abuses of women, which can include impregnating “the other” to sully ethnicity or race, or torturing women and girls in front of their menfolk to inflict the worst humiliation, helplessness and grief. The new measure does, however, edge toward a readiness to “adopt appropriate steps to address widespread or systematic sexual violence.” But only “where necessary,” whatever that means.

Direct threats to offenders against half the human race, coupled with enforcement measures, would have been too much for the council to live with, though UNICEF says that violence against women and girls is perhaps the most pervasive of human rights violations. Instead, the resolution calls for another report by the Secretary General, due next June. The mandate for the report is peppered with words such as analysis, benchmarks and proposals. In the intervening year, countless women will die, and girls will become sex slaves to brutal armies and pick-up militias–the Burmese military and the warlords of Congo come to mind.

There were apparently four countries that took a lot of persuading to join the consensus for unanimity: China, Russia, Indonesia and Vietnam, the latter two holding rotating seats on the council. This is not to say that those governments in any way condone sexual violence as a tactic of warfare. At the UN things are always more complicated than that. There is a genuine concern in some nations that issues involving the treatment of civilian populations belong in the humanitarian agencies or in the Economic and Social Council, which could be a valid point if that body had any backbone or remaining clout. There is always the fear that somehow the Security Council may be moving toward poking its way into the affairs of any government it chooses. Today, Sudan; tomorrow, who? It was on this last point that a workable linguistic compromise seems to have finally been struck. When all is said and done, the scrutiny in the new report from the secretary general will be limited to situations already “on the agenda of the Council.” No surprises.

If countries where horrific abuses take place reject as a breach of sovereignty all outside intervention, or even help, and refuse to save their own people from abuse and violent death, what hope can there be for victims? The circle is closed.

Moreover, there is an underlying, more corrosive reluctance among member nations of the UN to confront the issue of abuses against women generally. UN documents, mission statements, guidelines, how-not-to books and years of speeches have paid lip service to ending the routine abasement of women in many places, in peace as well as war. In the UN there are slogans about how “women’s rights are human rights” and commitments to gender mainstreaming and statements about the empowerment of women as the key to ending poverty. Yet UN statistics on the lives of the majority of the world’s women, particularly in Africa and South Asia, tell a different story–a story of absent rights, the denial of schooling, the lack of control over their own bodies. Meanwhile, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) is lining up a hoped-for 1 million signers of a petition against violence, to add to the archive of ringing declarations from international conferences and exhortations by UN officials. Governments are asked to make a public pledge: “Say no to violence against women.”

Pledges? Why not just do something.

Barbara Crossette, former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, was South Asia bureau chief from 1988 to 1991 and UN bureau chief from 1994 to 2001.

Copyright © 2008 The Nation

The Weapon of Rape

Published on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 by the International Herald Tribune

The Weapon of Rape

by Nicholas D. Kristof

World leaders fight terrorism all the time, with summit meetings and sound bites and security initiatives. But they have studiously ignored one of the most common and brutal varieties of terrorism in the world today.

This is a kind of terrorism that disproportionately targets children. It involves not WMD but simply AK-47s, machetes and pointed sticks. It is mass rape — and it will be elevated, belatedly, to a spot on the international agenda this week.

The UN Security Council will hold a special session on sexual violence this Thursday, with Condoleezza Rice coming to New York to lead the debate. This session, sponsored by the United States and backed by a Security Council resolution calling for regular follow-up reports, just may help mass rape graduate from an unmentionable to a serious foreign policy issue.

The world woke up to this phenomenon in 1993, after discovering that Serbian forces had set up a network of “rape camps” in which women and girls, some as young as 12, were enslaved. Since then, we’ve seen similar patterns of systematic rape in many countries, and it has become clear that mass rape is not just a byproduct of war but also sometimes a deliberate weapon.

“Rape in war has been going on since time immemorial,” said Stephen Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador who was the UN’s envoy for AIDS in Africa. “But it has taken a new twist as commanders have used it as a strategy of war.”

There are two reasons for this. First, mass rape is very effective militarily. From the viewpoint of a militia, getting into a firefight is risky, so it’s preferable to terrorize civilians sympathetic to a rival group and drive them away, depriving the rivals of support.

Second, mass rape attracts less international scrutiny than piles of bodies do, because the issue is indelicate and the victims are usually too ashamed to speak up.

In Sudan, the government has turned Darfur into a rape camp. The first person to alert me to this was Zahra Abdelkarim, who had been kidnapped, gang-raped, mutilated — slashed with a sword on her leg — and then left naked and bleeding to wander back to her Zaghawa tribe. In effect, she had become a message to her people: Flee, or else.

Since then, this practice of “marking” the Darfur rape victims has become widespread: typically, the women are scarred or branded, or occasionally have their ears cut off. This is often done by police officers or soldiers, in uniform, as part of a coordinated government policy.

When the governments of South Africa, China, Libya and Indonesia support Sudan’s positions in Darfur, do they really mean to adopt a pro-rape foreign policy?

The rape capital of the world is eastern Congo, where in some areas three-quarters of women have been raped. Sometimes the rapes are conducted with pointed sticks that leave the victims incontinent from internal injuries. A former UN force commander there, Patrick Cammaert, says it is “more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier.”

The international community’s response so far? Approximately: “Not our problem.”

Yet such rapes also complicate post-conflict recovery, with sexual violence lingering even after peace has been restored. In Liberia, the civil war is over but rape is still epidemic.

Painfully slowly, the United Nations and its member states seem to be recognizing the fact that systematic mass rape is at least as much an international outrage as, say, pirated DVDs. Yet China and Russia are resisting any new reporting mechanism for sexual violence, seeing such rapes as tragic but simply a criminal matter.

On the contrary, systematic rape has properly been found by international tribunals to constitute a crime against humanity, and it thrives in part because the world shrugs. The UN could do far more to provide health services to victims of mass rape and to insist that peacekeepers at least try to stop it.

In Congo, the doctors at Heal Africa Hospital and Panzi Hospital (healafrica.org and panzihospitalbukavu.org) repair the internal injuries of rape victims with skill and humanity. But my most indelible memory from my most recent visit, last year, came as I was interviewing a woman who had been gang-raped.

I had taken her aside to protect her privacy, but a large group of women suddenly approached. I tried to shoo them away, and then the women explained that they had all been gang-raped and had decided that despite the stigma and risk of reprisal, they would all tell their stories.

So let’s hope that this week the world’s leaders and diplomats stop offering excuses for paralysis and begin emulating the courageous outspokenness of those Congolese women.

Nicholas D. Kristof is a regular New York Times columnist.

Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune

Being Transparent

Being Transparent

It is hard to be transparent. No one likes to show a side that would indicate any irresponsibility or failure. No one wants others to know about their embarrassments, or their inconsistencies. Being transparent can prove that we are not who we seem to be, or bear witness to the fact that we aren’t as good at something as we thought we were.

Sometimes being transparent is just letting others see your vulnerable self. It is letting others see you cry, moan, weep or gnash your teeth. It is letting others in on your heartbreak, your hurt, and your sensitive areas. It is coming off the pedestal and standing down in the midst of the crowd.

It is being Jesus, and being hung to die on a cross for all the world to see.

author unknown

This was sent me some time ago by my Catholic Email group. I really like it.

It is scary for some people to be transparent. I know it is scary for me to open up my soul in this journal that anyone can read and use against me. Yet, I am hoping that getting all these emotions out will be healing and I can move on in life.

I am being real.

I had a good night sleep last night.

Do I feel better today after speaking about my feelings for Kitty Olive? Those feelings need to come out. She was a mean and evil person. What kind of person tells a child after her father dies that because he didn’t tell her something that happen to me like being raped and that he didn’t believe me and that it didn’t happen. Or that my father didn’t love me. He was dead so I couldn’t ask him if that was true? Tell me why would my father tell the Olives about my rape when they weren’t even in our lives at the time? Is that something a father is going to share with childhood friends he hasn’t been close to for years? So because my father didn’t tell them it didn’t happen. IT DID HAPPEN AND I WAS THERE. THEY WEREN’T THERE AND FOR THEM TO MAKE THE WORLD BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE TELLING THE TRUTH AND I AM LYING IS VERY WRONG. I don’t hate anyone but if I did I would say Kitty Olive is one of the top people on that list.

I always thought my dad loved me. Where ever we were in the world we would talk on the phone. There wasn’t a day that I didn’t tell my dad I loved him. I thought he loved me too. He made mistakes as we all do, but I always loved him very much as he was my daddy and felt he loved me too or I did until Kitty Olive. She got what she wanted she even took away my dad’s love from me. I don’t know anymore.

She took that love I thought my father felt for me and had to destroy it for her own pleasure.

She is just another Right Wing Republican whose hate hurts people.

I have a lot of unresolved feelings in my life. I know I have to forgive and move on, but how do I forgive someone who set out to destroy any happiness I might have known in life?

My whole life the Kitty Olives in this world win. The people who don’t really care about anything else but them and what it is they want. The people who might be nice to your face but inside they are planning and just waiting for a chance to destroy and hurt you. Let’s lie and gossip. What can we do to stop them from finding any happiness in life because we couldn’t bear to see them happy.

I won’t kill myself, but I can’t wait for the day I die. I still want to die. I have nothing to look forward to in life. I know very little happiness.

Tonight I am going out with a friend for dinner so maybe my mood will improve, but I also think what is the point. Nothing good happens in my life anyway.

The real topper in this is the Kitty Olive is another Catholic who looks her nose down on me when she lies, gossips, hurts people, and enjoys it when their words and actions cause that innocent person to be abused. Yet she has the gall to say I am a bad Catholic. I think she needs to look at her own Catholic walk before judging mine.

Yes, I wear sandals to mass instead of panty hoes and pumps during the Summer because at least in AZ it gets darn right hot. At least out here people wear shorts to mass. Does that make us bad and terrible Catholics because we don’t dress as formal as she does. Is it the clothes a person wears that make them a good Catholic?

She gets a way with it because she looks so normal and good and I on the other hand am a suffering from the effects of abuse, anger, and out of control behavior so I look like this wild animal. So I am always the bad guy that everyone believes the lies and half-truths about and the abuser looks like she is smelling like a rose.

I used to blame Kitty Olive more than the people who listened to her lies and gossip and than run with it. The neighbors who knew that my mother was abusing me and left me there. I had one so called friend Sue say we knew your mother was giving you a hard time and we didn’t want to bother you. Gee that is really nice. I am supposed to be your friend and you know what is going on and you leave me there to suffer more emotional abuse. Did they know I took a whole bunch of sleeping pills because the very neighbors that were suppose to care about me as friends did nothing? I asked for help and was told it wasn’t their problem and was left there so what did they expect I would do? I know Kitty Olive would have been happy if I had died right then and there instead of sleeping for a long time. I think the neighbors would have been happy too if I had died. I wish I would have died then and there.

I just can’t let go because what was done to me that Summer was so terrible that I can’t forget. The so called friends who said they cared and loved me who couldn’t be bothered to help an abused person who needed to be removed from that household. NO, they just left me there to suffer that HELL by myself because they couldn’t be bothered.

So yes, is it any wonder when I got my voice back that I was angry and out of control? I think any normal thinking person would be angry and out of control.

Don’t worry I won’t kill myself because I am a Catholic and I don’t want to be in hell for all eternity for committing sucide. I just wish to God I had never been born or he will take me in death very soon and I can finally have some peace in my life. Just once I would like something good to happen to me.

I am finished trying to be the good Catholic and try for all parties to act like good Catholics and do the right thing by each other. I am done. I am tired of being kicked in the teeth and made to feel like I am this evil person because I want the truth to be told and come out and the right thing to be done.

Oh, the looney title that they put on me is a lie too. Terry the social worker who understood me said he would testify in court that I was not crazy but I was suffering from Post tramatic stress and that I was more in reality than certain other people who keep telling everyone that I am looney tunes.

The Nun who was my dear friend for many years and was at my confirmation and stood up with me when I was confirmed broke my heart too. Out of all people who I thought would have known the truth she said she didn’t know who to believe and that hurt me very much. We had been friends, I had helped with the sisters when they needed help, and she didn’t know if she believed me over people she had never met before. Was it the money that was given for the charity that made her doubt me? When there was an earthquake I sent boxes to her to help with the people who needed it. I know it wasn’t a large sum of money but it was from my heart. I know she couldn’t wait to tell me how much money was donated by a certain family. Was it worth it?

I learned then and there is a different standard for rich Catholics and another one for poor Catholics. The rich Catholic can sin and get away with it and the poor Catholic they sin against is told just forgive and just accept. The rich Catholic can annull their marriages without any real grounds but the poor Catholic is told he is to stay married because his annullment would not be granted.

I lost my faith for a very long time. I am working on getting it back, but it is very hard when I still see the corruption within the church. I wonder if there is a true honest priest anymore with a true heart of God?

I know Father Enzie was but that was many years ago. I haven’t met a priest that has the true heart of God in years. I keep praying I will. There used to be priests who really shined with the love of Christ in them.

Now, I don’t see that. The last church had a priest who liked to get people upset with each other to feed off the energy. He would lie to the people of the church and tell them something when the truth was that he was behind what was happening. Like the case of one women in the church he didn’t like so in a meeting he had someone else bring up topics that he knew would upset this lady. The person did as he was asked to do by the priest and when the lady got very upset and left the room crying the priest was smiling and happy. I don’t want someone like that as my priest. I have known to many people like that in my life. Does the kind of behavior reflect Christ’s love. I DON’T THINK SO.

I remember when my dad died I needed to talk to a priest and he told me he had a golf game. His golf game was more important than talking to someone who had just lost their father. I never went back to that church again. That is just one example of the kind of priests today that are coming up the ranks.

So yes I have some anger toward the church too, but I am trying to work through that. I love the old church. I love Jesus, Mary, and the Saints.

I can’t let my faith be destroyed again but keep my eyes on Jesus. I have to believe that Jesus will heal me of all the hurt that has caused the anger. Jesus heals in the Bible. Jesus heals in real life. HE can heal me and I have to believe that he will show me through the darkness and into the light.

Maybe this is my cross in life to always be misunderstood and misjudged by people. I have to keep my focus on Jesus and not even think that man can help me. Man has failed me every time I have tried to seek his help so I am not going to try anymore. I give up!