If She Cry Out

In a bid to generate global political pressure against rape as a weapon of war, the UN has launched a new initiative called “Stop Rape Now!”. Ordinary citizens around the globe are being asked to waken the interest of elected officials around the world in one of four ways:

• adding one’s photo to a worldwide map showing people who oppose rape as a weapon of war
• raising the public profile of rape as a weapon of war through blogging, letters to the editors, media events, and the like
• writing a letter to local elected officials
• hosting a consciousness raising event

Videos, survivor stories, resource materials, sample letters, NGO activity updates and more are available on the Stop Rape Now! website.
Detailed information and support tools for all of these projects are available on the projects website’s Take Action page.

To raise awareness of the project, the United Nations’ special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Margaret Wallstrom was interviewed on NPR radio. They have also placed two PSA’s on YouTube. The first, displayed with this post is meant to both personalize the story and add celebrity appeal. The second features ordinary people around the globe expressing their opposition to rape as a weapon of war.

The political pressure is surely needed. Margaret Wallstrom still is working in temporary office space. A recent press conference several raised questions about whether or not the UN was dedicating sufficient resources to the problem. During the NPR interview, Wallstrom herself explained that the Congo has had good anti-rape laws on the books for a while. However, the laws remain unimplemented due to the lack of resources. Furthermore, the UN has ongoing problems moving its own anti-sexual abuse initiative from a global mandate to local implementation. At the beginning of May, the BBC reported that 10 Pakistani peace-keepers had raped a 13 year old girl. Her village’s elders lodged a formal complaint several months before the BBC investigation, but no action had been taken and the UN is only now saying it will look into the matter.

Often at the UN issues affecting women are treated as bargaining chips. Recently, Iran was accepted as a member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Iran is one of only a handful of nations that has neither signed or ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. All other members of the CSW have ratified the treaty. Their uncontested nomination was the result of horse trading to keep them off of the UN Human Rights Commission.

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Sexual assault has been a hot topic in the last twelve months. Ben Roethlisberger twice made the headlines as an alleged assailant. Roman Polanski pitted Hollywood’s social awareness against its tendency to minimize the seriousness of a crime when a much liked and appreciated artist is the perpetrator.

The movie Precious, about a young woman and survivor of incest who wanted to make something of herself against all the odds was nominated for six academy awards and won two. Oprah did a two part series on sexual molesters. There were also several celebrity stories related to sexual assault: Tyler Perry, Mackensie Phillips publicly told their stories of childhood victimization. Katie Piper told the story of her recovery from a horrific rape and acid attack.

The triumph of the determined individual has been the theme of all of the recent survivor stories, both real and fictional. But survivors of sexual assault aren’t just wounded people in search of healing and personal transformation. Sexual assault and its aftermath also makes survivors aware of the many different ways our society can be improved. Here is just a sampling of the ways survivors of sexual assault have used their experiences to identify needs and improve lives of marginalized groups and even society as a whole.

• Natural childbirth. Ricki Lake became interested in natural childbirth after her own experience helped her gain a new appreciation for her body. Because her body issues were rooted in sexual molestation at 6 or 7, she pays special attention to birthing issues of survivors. However, her primary concerns are the interplay of medical politics, economics, and appreciation for this most essentially feminine of experiences – birthing. She has produced a movie, written a book, and set up a on-line community for those interested in natural childbirth.
• Burn victims. Katie Piper’s face and upper body were seriously damaged in an acid attack by a former boyfriend who had raped her only days before. She received ground breaking medical care and is now advocating to insure that burn victims have access to the latest innovations in burn care. For more information on her work, see The Katie Piper Foundation.
• Sex worker health. Former adult film actress Shelly Lubben has been actively lobbying for the California Occupation Health and Safety Administration (Cal/OSHA) to take a more active role in regulating health conditions in the adult film industry in California. Adult film making is legal in California since the California supreme court declared it a form of protected free speech, but health code requirements for adult film workers are regularly ignored by directors and management. Lubben was molested by older children ( a girl and her teen brother) at age 9. During her years working in the sex industry she was also raped several times.
• Throw-away children. Tracy Lords, another ex-adult film actress, made headlines in the 1980’s when the FBI discovered that she was under-aged when she was photographed for Penthouse magazine and at least 20 adult films. She was raped at age 10 by a 16 year old boy whom she considered a father figure and molested by her mother’s boyfriend from age 10-15.   At 15 she ran away. She began working in the porn industry because mainstream employers didn’t believe her fake id and producers and directors in the porn industry didn’t care. She now works as a mainstream actress and volunteers for Children of the Night – a program that takes in throw away children on the streets of Hollywood and gives them shelter until adult hood.
• Music therapy. Shiela E (raped at age 5) and Lynn Mawbry (molested at 12) developed a program using a combination of journaling, song writing, and music making to help children recover from CSA and other forms of abuse.
• Fund raising. The best ideas won’t go far without funding. Pamela Swider was raped in her early 20’s by a person she met briefly at a party. She has been active in feminist issues. She heads Michigan’s Take Back the Night and serves on the board of the national Take Back the Night Foundation. But organization is not enough. Her latest project is Women For Hope, an on-line shopping mall that donates 10% of gross proceeds to a variety of women’s charities.
• Social Critique. Andrea Dworkin leveraged her experiences of rape into a powerful and controversial critique of public and private expectations of sexuality and intercourse. She argued that the rape-like portrayal of sex in the media oppressed and limited the effectiveness of women in society. Her critique moved the debate about porn out of the sphere of religious morality and forever changed the way we talk and think about sex.

Even when survivors focus on personal transformation, survivors often use their own story as a way to better understand the barriers to empowerment and transformation that affect us all. Survivors have carved out a living as inspirational speakers, social workers, psychologists, coalition builders, and academics, each reflecting on a different aspect of what leaves people dis-empowered and under-performing.

Together with Disney, Terri Hatcher is launching a website devoted to female self-appreciation and empowerment. Joyce Meyer is a high profile evangelical preacher who often draws on her own story of childhood incest to encourage others to believe that they still are valuable in God’s eyes. Iyanla Vanzant, founder of the Inner Visions Institute for Spiritual Development has made a name for herself as a life coach and make-over guru, including a three year run as a life coach on the TV show Starting Over.

The most well known of of these empowerment activists is Oprah Winfrey. In O Magazine, People magazine and numerous comments on her shows, Oprah has discussed how rape at age 9 took her away Oprah’s sense of self worth and caused her to seek consolation and affirmation in food and tumultuous relationships.

As a small child she believed she was meant to help people (see McCall’s, Aug, 1987, p. 140). It was only by working through the childhood rape that she understood how important it was to affirm and love herself as well. As years have passed she has tried to share her sense of empowerment in any number of ways: through her talk show, through her O Magazine, through her choice of books in her book club, through Oprah’s Network of Angels, and through her For All Woman Registry. She has also turned to education both in the US and South Africa. In the US she has is an active supporter of A Better Chance, program that gives economically disadvantaged children in the USA a chance to attend top secondary schools. In South Africa she founded a well-appointed private school for bright economically disadvantaged girls.

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