If you are a woman in the United States, your chances of leading a life free of sexual violence They are not good.
One in 5 American women will be raped or will be a victim of an attempt to violate their life. One in 3 of those survivors will be between 11 and 17 when the attack occurs, so being a child is actually a risk factor for women.
And for each 1,000 sexual aggressions, around 975 of perpetrators It will not face legal consequences, for a variety of reasons that include continuous prejudices of those destined to help survivors.
“How our society looks or ignores the horrible thesis crimes of sexual aggression is internal,” said Alameda Dist. Atty. Nancy O’Malley.
If sexual assault were a disease like COVID-19, we would declare a public health emergency. On the other hand, also after decades of incremental improvement, this crisis of violence against women and girls continues to spread like a virus and even prosper because a society that we refuse to eliminate it.
A group of women from California directed by O’Malley and the first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom Published a report on Tuesday By a group of lawyers, legislators and health experts with a plan of how to lead the state of gold when it comes to protecting women.
California intensify now is equally more critical when you look at the national image.
Alarmed by the deprivation of rights and the turn to the right of the young Americans, a lot of focus on how we can make them feel better with life, they also ignore misogyny and repression of women’s rights that their conservative change is feeding. In some states, the survivors of rape and incest now face restrictive abortion prohibitions, including places That won an exception or badge, the assault is informed to the police.
Therefore, going back in the other direction, protecting women’s rights and highlighting where we can do better to prevent sexual crimes and support survivors, it is essential.
“In some areas we do it very well. Legislatively, California leads the way,” O’Malley told me. California has approved a series of laws in recent years that provide survivors with greater rights and more help and take a nuanced Approach to your trauma.
But elsewhere, we behave on a long way.
O’Malley, who worked in a violation crisis center in the 1970s before becoming a prosecutor of sexual crimes and then DA, said that, from the police to the courses, women still face stigma and ignorance when it comes to sexual crimes.
“We have partners who need to step forward and do a better job,” O’Malley said.
The reports of the report have a remarkable common sense, which makes it even more frustrating than some of the recommendations have no longer made their legs. For example, not all counties have a designated hospital where forensic exams can be done. Especially in rural areas, obtaining adequate care and treatment for survivors of sexual aggression is a challenge.
And if an exam is performed, California lacks a state -owned cohesive system to track the results to “support the identification and prosecution of serial perspectors,” according to the report. Yes, in this day and age, DNA is helping to solve decades murders, we still do not have a reliable system to track active serial rapists. O’Malley points out that almost 40% of those convicted of sexual crimes are re-fensive.
Do not make me start with rape kits not tested sitting in storage.
The report suggests that the State ensures that local crimes laboratories are submitted to the California Department of Justice, and that we also ensure that survivors have a way to track that sample through the system.
One of the most basic problems that Siebel Newsom and O’Malley found was that the system, from the officers who responded to the judges, still lack trauma -based training. Whether they are uniformed officers who respond to a call of domestic or jurist violence that passes a sentence for a known violation, the survivors are also facing the same child of infused bias the system for decades.
Were they drinking? Why did they wait so long before they introduce themselves? Did they fight?
Through our justice system, all stereotypes and the fault of victims who have prevented women from looking for or finding justice. It is really unpredictable. Some within the criminal justice system have evolved, others not.
“We have a lot to do in terms of educating people,” O’Malley said. He would like to see the training required for judges, for example, so that the rights of the victims remain in the courtroom and testify is not their own trauma. And the report accompanies the teaching of better interview techniques to the police, so that the survivors do not give up on obtaining help or justice.
“It doesn’t have to be an abusive system,” O’Malley said. “It should be a compassionate system.”
Few know better than Siebel Newsom. In 2022, she bravely testified against El-Mogul Harvey Weinstein at once superpetent in her judgment for rape of Los Angeles, detailing how she had assaulted her in a hotel room in 2005. Before she even entered the courtroom, Weinstein’s lawyer described a “Bimbo”.
This week, Weinstein I returned to the court in New York For a new trial about his conviction there. In a hard reminder or where we are culturally in this particular time, that judgment is invoiced as a referendum on the #MeToo movement, which raised the epidemic of sexual assault in the center of attention.
Now, Right -wing commentators, including Joe Rogan, claim That poor Mr. Weinstein, who has firmly maintained his innocence, was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“If this happened in the 80s, they would probably have discarded it. But in the #MeToo movement, it was a hot witch hunt,” Rogan said.
It wasn’t.
It was a moment of accounts that now face a reaction because some that have power in our country do not do it because responsibility when it comes to sexual crimes. But the women of California and I suspect that the US., Do.
“As a survivor, the work of prevention of sexual violence and support for other survivors is deeply personal for me, as it is for many others,” said Siebel Newsom.
This report “is more than a set of recommendations, it is a call to action for each system designed to support and protect survivors. We have established a bold and processable path that is based on healing, justice and the responsibility of the desivor.” “
In summary, a plan for California that covers the welfare of women, while others turn it on.
