NEWSSEXUAL ASSAULT

In September, a horrifying video came to light at Abia State University in Nigeria, depicting five men gang-raping a young woman as she begged them to just kill her. Concerned citizens in Nigeria and around the world, activists, and bloggers called for the "ABSU5" to be brought to justice, denouncing the culture of impunity that led these criminals to believe they could get away with taping and distributing their assault. Yet University and Abia State officials refused to take action, denying the violent act occurred in their jurisdiction without investigating. The Assistant Commissioner of Police, J.G. Micloth, even claimed that the brutal attack looked consensual -- or was punishment for the girl somehow shaming her boyfriend -- to excuse their failure to act.

More than 90,000 Change.org members worldwide signed a petition by Adetomi Aladekomo, a Nigerian rape survivor now living in Canada, calling for these men to be arrested and prosecuted. Finally, last month Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice Mohammad Adoke intervened in the case, demanding that the Inspector-General of Police investigate the assault. Carol Aije, a Nigerian lawyer who deals with sexual violence cases across the country and has collaborated with the Change.org campaign, directly petitioned the Attorney General's office urging this action, adding to the protests occurring online and on the ground.

This is significant progress. But the campaign isn't over. Though Attorney General Adoke ordered a full investigation, it hasn't happened yet. And Nigeria's law enforcement has been all stirred up, with former Inspector-General Hafiz Ringim removed from his position for incompetence dealing with terrorism. For the campaign to succeed, international attention must continue to make sure that the new Inspector-General, Mohammad Abubakar, follows through with the investigation, and the Attorney General keeps an eye on the proceedings.

Adetomi also hopes to see a law strengthening violence against women legislation, which would also help victims such as Franca Ogbu, a student deeply disfigured by an acid attack whose assailant remains at large. To add your voice to Adetomi's campaign and help bring the gang-rapists to justice, you can sign the petition here.

Facebook recently launched a "Women Connect" app, calling it "an online platform for organizations and causes to connect and share information with supporters about issues of gender equality and women’s empowerment.” Apparently, it's a part of Facebook's "Diversity campaign."

Taking action to further gender justice is admirable, but some people see Facebook's internal actions as out of step with this stated mission. The top comment to greet me on the Women Connect page, ranked up through users hitting the "Like" button, reads: "I'm glad that FB is supporting this but they also need to get their own house in order - for example by taking down misogynist & pro-rape pages and dropping their stupid censorship against images of breastfeeding."

The almost 200,000 people who signed the Change.org petition demanding that Facebook remove pages promoting sexual violence and violence against women would most likely agree. As would the thousands of Change.org members telling Facebook to leave breastfeeding pictures alone.

In November, Facebook took some action after a #notfunnyfacebook Day of Action on Twitter denounced their excuse for pro-rape pages: "what one person finds offensive another can find entertaining – just as telling a rude joke won’t get you thrown out of your local pub, it won’t get you thrown off Facebook." A number of pro-violence pages were removed, but Facebook still missed the point, permitting the hate content to remain live if the tag [Humor] or [Satire] was simply added in front of the page title. Facebook users can report content as abusive internally, however when the policy is to protect rape apologism, that won't get rid of the pages.

Happy New Year -- out with the old, and in with the new!

More than 140,000 Change.org members signed a petition launched by Ms. Magazine demanding the FBI recognize that rape is rape -- and it worked. On Friday, the Obama administration approved a new nationwide definition of rape, the first change in 80 years. Goodbye and good riddance to the FBI's narrow Uniform Crime Report definition: "The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.”

And a hearty welcome to the new definition: "The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim." For the first time in decades, this federal definition of rape includes victims of all genders, forced oral and anal sex, and drugging or unconsciousness. "With a modern, broader definition, FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics will finally show the true breadth of this violence that affects so many women’s lives,"  said Ms. Executive Editor Katherine Spillar. As these statistics are utilized to understand crime rates and trends, which in turn influence decisions about funding and prioritization, this change can have a real impact in reducing sexual violence across the country.

The glaring discrepancy between the reality of rape and the FBI's definition spurred Ms. Magazine to launch the "Rape Is Rape" campaign, spotlighting the stories of and seeking justice for survivors who discovered their violation wasn't legally considered rape. Once the non-profit organization started a petition on Change.org and brought this travesty to the attention of members like you, nearly 150,000 people jumped up to tell the FBI that rape is rape,  making this one of the most popular Change.org Women's Rights petitions of all time.

The Milwaukee area has two hospitals that provide services for sexual assault victims. If you are unfortunate enough to go to one of the hospitals that does not provide that service, you will be sent away. Or worse, you may wait. Perhaps you will wait for over an hour before leaving, angry and frustrated -- not knowing that after such a long wait, when someone finally came to see you, you would have been sent away anyway. This was my story. This story was in many ways why the SlutWalk movement appealed to me, why I began SlutWalk Milwaukee, and why I am pushing a Change.org petition to fix this situation; a petition that most are shocked to sign because most believe that they, or their daughters, their mothers, their friends, would be treated at any medical center were they the victim of a sexual assault.

A few years ago, I was working with a group of underprivileged youth. Many of the girls in this program had a history that included sexual violence. Some believe this to be the product of poverty. It is not. That these girls shared their stories with me was based on my position, but high school classrooms all over the United States have the same issue. One in four girls will be sexually assaulted before the age of 18. During my time at this program, one of the girls came to me to say that she had been raped the day before. I did what I thought was the most responsible thing to do: I immediately drove her to the nearest medical center. We were sent away. This was a small clinic that did not have the resources to aid a sexual assault victim. Before we were sent away, a nurse thought it would be a good idea to talk to us anyway. She asked a teenage victim of sexual assault very intimate and personal questions about her body, and then when she giggled out of nervousness, the nurse told her that it didn't sound to her as though she had been raped.

Once we left, we were told to go to the city, where a hospital there could care for us. And that is where my story started. Waiting in an emergency room with a teenage girl who became more agitated with every minute that were not seen, until she eventually begged me to leave.

The entire time we attempted to get services, she attempted to explain herself. She wanted me to know that she didn't "ask for it." She wanted to me know that she was sorry. She wanted to convince that she was "not a slut." Those were her words. She asked me to forgive her for being raped.

Over 180,000 of you have petitioned Facebook asking for the removal of pages advocating sexual violence and violence against women, signing your name to a campaign launched by Florida activist John Raines. You've pointed out that Facebook's own Terms of Service ban content that is “hateful, threatening,” or contains “graphic or gratuitous violence.” But Facebook has refused to take action, writing these hateful pages off as humor: "what one person finds offensive another can find entertaining – just as telling a rude joke won’t get you thrown out of your local pub, it won’t get you thrown off Facebook.”

Today, you can join a Twitter Day of Action to tell Facebook that you don't find pages like "Riding You Girlfriend Softly So She Doesn't Wake Up" funny. Facebooks knows these pages exist, but has made a decision to permit pages like this one advocating sexual violence -- pages like this one, where the admin engages in further hilarity about drugging women and threatening critics with assault -- so reporting them isn't enough. The Change.org campaign includes supporters who will be taking action from all around the world, and similar campaigns are being run out of Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, where Women's View on News (WVoN) has been leading and compiling resources.

Facebook has previously been criticized for being quick to delete inoffensive pictures of same-sex couples kissing and regularly taking down breastfeeding photos/groups. Yet when it comes to hate speech and advocating violence against women, suddenly Facebook is ready to shrug their shoulders and say it's all in good fun, nothing for them to do about it.

More than 85,000 people worldwide have joined a Nigerian woman’s popular campaign on Change.org calling on officials in Nigeria to arrest five men who videotaped themselves gang-raping a young woman.

Adetomi Aladekomo, who grew up in Nigeria and still has family there, launched the petition on Change.org after being sent the horrifying video, which depicts an hour of a brutal gang-rape by five men reported to be Abia State University (ABSU) students. The ABSU vice chancellor, Abia State governor, and local law enforcement reportedly denied the assault without conducting a proper investigation. Adetomi, a rape survivor herself, decided to take action to hold the officials accountable.

“When I created this petition I was concerned with finding the men who committed this heinous act,” stated Adetomi. “Now I realize that the issue is bigger than these five men. We need to have an educated and caring government that bothers to fact-check before rashly taking a stand or declaring that despite video evidence, a rape did not take place.”

Last week a shocking video started making rounds through the Nigerian blogosphere. A fellow blogger sent me an email that contained two videos and a short write-up. Being typically me, I skipped her words and went straight to the videos. I started from the shorter video, it was a clip about ten minutes long and the first words I heard as I started listening were "but am I not cooperating?" The video was grainy and not too clear but the scene before me was quite clear and easy to read. There was a girl and she was being raped. I watched exactly 33 seconds of the video before I realized this.

In this shocking video, the full version of which is a little over an hour long, we see a girl being raped repeatedly by five different men in a dormitory style room. In the beginning of the video we hear her pleading with her captors to let her go and promising she will not tell anyone or make a fuss. Her captors laugh off her pleas and threaten to keep her captive and rape her for two days if she does not "cooperate" with them. We also gather that the rape is her punishment for allegedly insulting one of the five rapists. The rape was recorded and then passed around to their friends, to other students of the university, until finally it made its way into the hands of Linda Ikeji, who in outrage posted it on her blog asking for justice for this poor girl.

I was raped at 17. I have never actually come right out and said it before today to anyone but my closest friends and family but while watching that video, I felt something inside me break. The pain and shame I suffered at the hands of one man seemed to me at the time too unbearable to live with and two months later I tried to take my life. I was unable to watch the entire video because the entire time I kept multiplying what I went through by 5 and then trying to imagine the added humiliation of having an entire campus plus countless of nameless, faceless internet users watch my suffering and despair over and over and over again. I could not. I could only cry and so cry I did. And when I was done crying I realized that I had to do something for this girl that no one did for me. I had to stand up and let my voice be heard. I never reported my rape. In fact, it took me over a year to tell my parents what had prompted me to attempt to take my life that night. My rape occurred seven and a half years ago and I would be lying if I said it did not change my life. Till today I have an extreme fear of being stabbed, having been forced at knifepoint into the bushes. So I decided that this girl would not have to live with the knowledge that her attackers got away with what they did. I decided that somehow I would ensure that, these men faced the consequences of their actions.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week overruled a decision requiring a Texas cheerleader to pay $35,000 in legal fees after she sued the high school that forced her to cheer for a basketball player who pled guilty to assaulting her.

H.S. was removed from the cheerleading squad by Superintendent Richard Bain for asserting that she would not cheer for her rapist by name. This incident and the school's general misconduct motivated her family to bring a lawsuit against the school district on free speech, equal protection, and due process grounds.

The decision, issued Monday, alters a ruling by a lower court which previously found the cheerleader’s entire suit “frivolous,” ordering the sexual assault survivor to pay the school district $35,000 in legal expenses. The new ruling finds that the free speech portion of the lawsuit was not frivolous, and orders the amount owed to be recalculated accordingly.

The news comes after more than 140,000 people joined a popular campaign on Change.org calling on Silsbee High School to admit to mistreating the student, apologize for the actions against her, improve district policy for dealing with sexual assault, and refuse to take money from the girl and her family. As of yet, the school has not responded. This court decision represents a golden opportunity for the Silsbee Independent School District Official to say they don't force money from rape survivors.

Get ready, because later this month it is time to make it RAINN. Thursday, September 22 is RAINN Day, the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network annual campaign to raise awareness and educate students about sexual violence on college campuses. With one out of every six American women the victim of a rape or attempted rape in her lifetime, and 80% of all victims under the age of thirty, I don't think there is a better cause for Change.org members to throw their considerable weight behind.

So, how can you get involved on your campus? First, go here and sign-up to be a RAINN Day organizer. You'll get a planning packet, including t-shirt designs, promotion guides, and everything else you'll need to get started. Whether you want to plan a march or a rally, pass out fliers or stage a show, RAINN wants to help you achieve success in getting the word out on your campus about the facts surrounding sexual violence.

You don't have to be a student to get in on the action. Anyone with a college or high school aged friend or family matter should make sure she knows RAINN's Back to School Safety Tips, including being aware of your surroundings, being careful with social media, and drinking responsibly. Frankly, these are tips that everyone, not just students, should practice. As my mother is found of saying, it is better to be safe than to be sorry.

In late June, a vital bill to support rape survivors landed on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's desk. The bill, which had strong bipartisan support in both legislative houses, was to bar rape survivors from being charged for their own rape kits -- collections of forensic evidence after a sexual assault that can be used in a criminal investigation. It would go into effect immediately upon signing, instantly protecting rape survivors.

June petered out. Then all of July. Then, we come to late August, with the deadline for signing or vetoing the bill coming up on the 25th, still without Christie bothering to take action. His office said the straightforward potential law remained "under review." A New Jersey resident, Sarah Rowley, decided this week that enough was enough.

Rowley launched a petition on Change.org calling on Gov. Christie not to stick rape victims with the bill -- and to sign the legislation already. Within less than 72 hours, after almost 1000 signatures from Change.org members, the drawn-out "reviewing" process was over: Gov. Christie affixed his John Hancock yesterday.