Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • "I Wouldn't Take No For An Answer"

    Married off to an abusive older man at age 9, Akkatai Teli could not read or write. But she recognized how the rural India justice system neglected women like her in a misogynistic society with high rates of domestic violence, creaky legal machinery, and social pressure to cover up abuse and stay in awful marriages. Teli built a sisterhood movement throughout 50 villages that has helped more than 1,000 women fight for their rights by agitating for attention from police and courts.

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  • Philly teen starts a motor rally to help end sexual violence

    The Main Line Motor Rally provides events for car enthusiasts, who drive through Philadelphia suburbs and rural areas, as a way to raise money for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, the country’s largest anti-sexual violence organization. The event specifically aims to educate men on issues like consent, as well as the ways that they are impacted by violence against women and girls.

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  • Can ‘Bad Men' Ever Change?

    Among the many restorative justice programs in the U.S., the Domestic Violence Safe Dialogue program was one of the few to arrange face-to-face dialogue between survivors and men who had violently abused women. This form of surrogate dialogue – the pairings are between strangers – helps two people who want to change but can't do it alone. After extensive preparation and led by a facilitator, the meeting gives survivors a way to hear they were not to blame for the harm done to them, and for the men to admit responsibility and help someone else in ways that traditional punitive justice often cannot.

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  • In Egypt, online group Qawem saving hundreds of women from sextortion

    The Egyptian Facebook group Qawem (Arabic for resist) helps victims of sextortion by turning threats around to target the attacker. Sextortion, in which threatened disclosure of a person's nude or other embarrassing photos are used as a tool of extortion, is illegal in Egypt. But women – the typical victims – are often reluctant to report incidents to the police, out of shame or fear. When victims report sextortion attempts to Qawem, volunteers counsel the victims while other volunteers track down the extortionists and threaten to expose them to their family or friends. About 200 cases per week get resolved.

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  • Western's sexual assault prevention program is up for renewal — does the online training do more harm than good?

    Research shows that online training isn’t successful at changing attitudes or beliefs on sexual assault. This article takes an in-depth look at EverFi, an online sexual assault module that students at Western Washington University are required to take. The program is used at 1,300 other institutions. Researchers recommend programs that target specific individuals. Other methods that have been successful include implementing activities like group discussions, lectures, and policy changes. The programs should also take a long time to complete, for example, a semester-long training versus the few minutes,

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  • Meet the baroness catching paedophiles red-handed

    The people who produce child pornography give police invaluable evidence, if it can be decoded, when they film themselves sexually abusing children. A Scottish forensic anthropologist and anatomist has helped both in the prosecution and defense of abuse cases by determining whether the hands that are seen in a video belong to the person charged with the crime. Her method of finding conclusive points of comparison now is being used to develop algorithms that could spread the detection method worldwide.

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  • Can a Radical Treatment for Pedophilia Work Outside of Germany?

    Prevention Project Dunkelfeld is "arguably the world's most radical social experiment in treating pedophilia." Its prevention-first approach to providing treatment to people who are sexually attracted to children means that it encourages people to volunteer for treatment and disclose past and planned crimes without the threat of being reported to authorities and punished. German law makes this possible, but in most places such crossing of lines from thoughts to action would be grounds for mandatory reporting. This policy and the program's disputed claims of effectiveness have drawn harsh criticism.

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  • “You Save as Long as You Have To”

    The first DNA database in unsolved rape cases was created at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center nearly 50 years ago by a forensic pathologist who was appalled by the callous treatment of rape victims and the impunity their attackers were granted. Dr. Rudiger Breitenecker's methodical storage of physical evidence and meticulous documentation enabled dozens of convictions, and some exonerations, decades later with the development of DNA testing. Baltimore County's use of the evidence became a model for other prosecutors and police around the country.

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  • There's a detective at the door; she wants to say 'sorry'

    Using a federal grant to reopen unsolved sexual assault cases, Tucson police and prosecutors have provided hundreds of victims with something they were denied when they first reported being attacked: a clear sense that authorities take their cases seriously. Dozens of possible serial rapists were identified when DNA testing was finally performed, and several suspects were prosecuted. When notifying victims their long-ago cases were getting a second look, detectives and victim advocates start with an apology for neglecting or mishandling the cases in the past.

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  • How WhatsApp became a tool for Indian police to fight harassment

    In India, where women face high rates of harassment by men but rarely report abuse because they view the police as hostile, the Telangana State Police encouraged more reporting by turning WhatsApp into an anti-harassment hotline. By using the country's most popular phone app rather than one of the many safety apps designed for this purpose, the police now get about 40% of their complaints through this channel. Turning complaints into prosecutions remains a challenge. But, when women decline to press charges, the police require alleged harassers to attend counseling.

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