Three jailed after raping a 16 year girl and disfiguring her

I started this blog in order to catalogue men's violence towards women, for myself really, for other men and women interested in these crimes but also just to catalogue the horrors. Every time I do I am shocked and appalled, but this story is horrific, the victim in this case is a 16 year old woman with learning disabilities. They poured caustic soda on her in order to destroy forensic evidence. Read it here

Three men, who filmed themselves gang-raping a 16-year-old girl before dousing her in caustic soda, have been given prison sentences of up to nine years.Skip related content
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Three jailed for gang rape
The girl, with a mental age of eight, screamed in pain as she was disfigured for life. They later laughed while using their mobile phones to record her suffering on the first floor of an empty house undergoing renovation.

Her attackers were among a gang up to 10 who had hoped the powerful corrosive would destroy forensic evidence, Met police officers discovered. As she writhed in agony, they poured water on her, intensifying the burning.

The alarm was raised by a neighbour in Tottenham, north London, who heard her "frantic" cries and found her covered with raw patches on her face and body.

Passing sentence, Judge Shaun Lyons said: "The victim has been left with severe post traumatic stress disorder and many, many physical difficulties."

In the dock were Jamaican-born Rogel McMorris, 18, of Antill Road, Tottenham, north London, who was jailed for nine years after being convicted last month of two rape counts and one of causing grievous bodily harm.

Co-defendants Jason Brew, 19, of High Cross Road, Haringey, north London, and 20-year-old Angolan immigrant Hector Muaimba, of Guildford Road, Waltham Forest, E17, were both found guilty of one charge of rape. The each got six years for attacking the girl, although a further two years was added to Muaimba's sentence for a separate Old Bailey conviction for robbery.
The judge made no specific recommendation about how long the trio should serve and the sentences were condemned by charities representing people with learning difficulties.
Kathryn Stone, of pressure group Voice UK, said: "These sentences don't come close to reflecting the brutality and horror of this attack."

Detective Constable Alex Newton said: "After all the work and the response of the community it feels like no sentence is any justice compared to what the victim has been through. But at the same time it sends out the message that these things will be prosecuted and the offenders will be brought to justice."

Teenager standing trial for murdering her step father who she states sexually abused her

A horrible story - In Australia a 19 year old girl on trial for murdering her step father she states sexually abused her from aged 14. The night she killed him she reports that he had demanded oral sex of her. Whilst he was abusing her he was also recording the abuse and capturing his abuse, his torture and rape of her.

The prosecution are saying that because she dismembered his body and then went out with a man that her step father banned her from seeing, that the murder was pre mediatated. She probably should of reported the killing and maybe dismembering was not a good idea, however look at what she is facing - being tried for murdering her abuser, when she was acting in self defence.

Andrea Dworkin said ".......they stand there in jail for us; for all women who survived, for all women who got away without ever having to pull the trigger; without ever having the trigger pulled on us..."

Read the article here http://www.news.%20com.au/adelaiden%20ow/story/%200,22606,24909535%20-5005962,%2000.html

Teen to stand trial over stepdad's murder
Article from: AAP
By Kim Stephens
January 13, 2009 08:11pm
A VICTORIAN teenager has been ordered to stand trial for the murder of her stepfather who allegedly took nearly 10,000 pornographic pictures of her in four years.The Shepparton Magistrates' Court was told that on March 13 last year, the stepdaughter shot the 34-year-old in the back of the head to put an end to daily sexual abuse that began when she was 14. The man's dismembered torso was unearthed in a shallow grave in the backyard of their Mooroopna home on April 9 and further remains were discovered two days later at a campsite nearby at Old Toolamba, in Victoria's north.

The teenager, now 19, has pleaded not guilty to murder. Her defence barrister Peter Chadwick told the court on the night of his death, the woman's stepfather ordered the accused to go to a shed at the back of their home where he demanded she perform oral sex on him. Mr Chadwick told the court when the teenager declined, citing a sore throat, the stepfather removed a shotgun from his gun cabinet, loaded it and asked her to rethink her answer. After she performed the act, she moved behind him and seeing the loaded shotgun lying on the ground, picked it up and fired it at the back of his head.

Mr Chadwick said the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told police her motive for her actions was so "she wouldn't have to do it again". Under cross-examination, Victoria Police homicide squad Detective Senior Constable Barry Gray said soon after the teenager was charged, police seized a series of still and video pornographic images the deceased had taken of her, which he had stored in the shed. He agreed while there were many pictures of the pair engaged in sexual activity, "by far the large majority were of just the accused". He agreed that among the images was one of the accused tied to a chair with cable ties and towels. Det Sen Const Gray said the images dated from January 2004 until February 2008 and constituted child pornography.

Mr Chadwick told Magistrate Ian von Einem the images cast no doubt on the girl's claims of sustained sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. "It has been videoed, photographed and is clear for all to see," he said. "He had used the images to blackmail her into submission. Asked by police what she thought would have happened if she hadn't killed him, she said she probably would have killed herself because she could not keep living the way she was." But Crown prosecutor Mark Gamble said the teenager's dismembering of the body and attempts to cover up the murder, along with forming a relationship with a man her stepfather had banned her from seeing three days after his death, could be construed as something other than self-defence. "She shot him so she didn't have to do it again ... a jury could form the view, albeit against a background of abuse, it was not committed in self-defence, " he said. The accused was ordered to appear at a directions hearing in the Victorian Supreme Court on January 27.

Child-rape prosecutor suspended

December 11, 2007 - 9:19PM
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The prosecutor at the centre of the case in which six attackers escaped jail time for the gang rape of a 10-year-old in far-north Queensland has been stood aside, pending an investigation.
Queensland Attorney-General Kerry Shine tonight said the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions would investigate the conduct of Steve Carter, the senior legal officer responsible for Cape York matters in the DPP's Cairns chambers.
Court transcripts released today showed Mr Carter had described the 2006 incident as "childish experimentation" and consensual "in a general sense".
The child - who cannot be named - was gang-raped at the age of seven in Aurukun on Cape York in 2002, and was later put into foster care with a non-indigenous family in Cairns.
However, child safety officers in April 2006 returned her to Aurukun, where she was raped again at the age of 10.
Premier Anna Bligh today admitted the Child Safety Department had failed the girl.
"I think it is very important to understand, and I don't resile from the fact for one moment, the system clearly failed this little girl," Ms Bligh told reporters.
But she said the government took immediate action by disciplining the officers involved, moving the child, and improving child safety processes.
Ms Bligh could not give a reason for the officers' decision to return the girl to Aurukun, but said it should never have happened.
Cairns-based District Court judge Sarah Bradley did not record convictions against six teenage attackers and gave three others aged 17, 18 and 26 suspended sentences over the 2006 rape.
The state government is appealing the sentences and has ordered a review of around 75 sexual assault cases in Cape York over the past two years.
One senior child safety officer has been sacked and two others suspended for 12 months on full pay over the incident, but the two suspended officers are appealing the decision.
The girl is now in the care of the Child Safety Department away from Aurukun.
While the Director of Public Prosecutions Leanne Clare declined to comment, her office today released transcripts of the court case.
They revealed that during the case, Mr Carter described the incident - in which the girl contracted a sexually transmitted disease - as "consensual sex".
"To the extent I can't say it was consensual in the legal sense, but in the other - in the general sense, the non-legal sense - yes, it was," Mr Carter told the court.
Mr Carter said the sex had been prearranged and the males had not forced themselves on the girl.
"... they're very naughty for doing what they're doing but it's really, in this case, it was a form of childish experimentation, rather than one child being prevailed upon by another," he said.
Mr Carter also told the court such incidents were not out of character in small, remote communities.
" ... children, females, have got to be - deserve - the same protection under the law in an Aboriginal or an indigenous community as they do in any other community," Mr Carter said.
"But sometimes things happen in a small community when children get together."
Hetty Johnston, founder of Bravehearts, said a judicial inquiry was needed.
"The prosecutor is there to defend the rights of the victims - that man is standing behind the wrong desk," Ms Johnston told AAP.
"This girl's life has been screwed up by a combination of the (child safety) department and the DPP."
AAP

Gang Rape cover up

Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR
KBR Told Victim She Could Lose Her Job If She Sought Help After Being Raped, She Says
By BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER & JUSTIN ROOD
Dec. 10, 2007—
A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.
"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."
Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.
"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.
"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.
Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.
According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally."
Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.
A spokesperson for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security told ABCNews.com he could not comment on the matter.
Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.
Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.
"It's very troubling," said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. "The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don't have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice."
Congressman Poe says neither the departments of State nor Justice will give him answers on the status of the Jones investigation.
Click Here for Full Blotter Coverage.
Asked what reasons the departments gave for the apparent slowness of the probes, Poe sounded frustrated.
"There are several, I think, their excuses, why the perpetrators haven't been prosecuted," Poe told ABC News. "But I think it is the responsibility of our government, the Justice Department and the State Department, when crimes occur against American citizens overseas in Iraq, contractors that are paid by the American public, that we pursue the criminal cases as best as we possibly can and that people are prosecuted."
Since no criminal charges have been filed, the only other option, according to Hutson, is the civil system, which is the approach that Jones is trying now. But Jones' former employer doesn't want this case to see the inside of a civil courtroom.
KBR has moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom. It says her employment contract requires it.
In arbitration, there is no public record nor transcript of the proceedings, meaning that Jones' claims would not be heard before a judge and jury. Rather, a private arbitrator would decide Jones' case. In recent testimony before Congress, employment lawyer Cathy Ventrell-Monsees said that Halliburton won more than 80 percent of arbitration proceedings brought against it.
In his interview with ABC News, Rep. Poe said he sided with Jones.
"Air things out in a public forum of a courtroom," said Rep. Poe. "That's why we have courts in the United States."
In her lawsuit, Jones' lawyer, Todd Kelly, says KBR and Halliburton created a "boys will be boys" atmosphere at the company barracks which put her and other female employees at great risk.
"I think that men who are there believe that they live without laws," said Kelly. "The last thing she should have expected was for her own people to turn on her."
Halliburton, which has since divested itself of KBR, says it "is improperly named" in the suit.
In a statement, KBR said it was "instructed to cease" its own investigation by U.S. government authorities "because they were assuming sole responsibility for the criminal investigations."
"The safety and security of all employees remains KBR's top priority," it said in a statement. "Our commitment in this regard is unwavering."
Since the attacks, Jones has started a nonprofit foundation called the Jamie Leigh Foundation, which is dedicated to helping victims who were raped or sexually assaulted overseas while working for government contractors or other corporations.
"I want other women to know that it's not their fault," said Jones. "They can go against corporations that have treated them this way." Jones said that any proceeds from the civil suit will go to her foundation.
"There needs to be a voice out there that really pushed for change," she said. "I'd like to be that voice."
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Rape inquiry police make arrest
Police investigating a rape in a North Lanarkshire village have arrested a man.
A 15-year-old girl was allegedly attacked in Banton, near Kilsyth, on Tuesday night while she was out jogging.
A 31-year-old man has been arrested and is being detained in custody in connection with the alleged incident, a Strathclyde Police statement said.
The man is expected to appear in court on Monday.

Aberdeen fan gang raped in Madrid

An example of how rape is men's violence towards women and not sexual - I don't follow football or fully understand what is happening with the football violence but the "alleged" gang rape of this woman football fan stood out for me.

The female victim, who is understood to be in her late twenties, was reportedly raped by a group of Spanish men as she made her way back to the city-centre hotel where she had been staying. She is believed to have become separated from friends minutes before the attack on Wednesday, the night before the European fixture.

A spokesman for the British Consulate confirmed they had assisted a Scottish woman in connection with an alleged gang rape.

But while Scottish fans have accused Spanish police of heavyhanded tactics, Grampian Police believe known troublemakers who associate themselves with the Pittodrie club travelled to the game with the intention of causing violence.

However, there were no reports of any arrests amongst the Aberdeen supporters.

An estimated 6,000 Aberdeen fans are believed to have made the trip, with only 3,000 tickets officially allocated.

At least one fan, Ian Bremner, a father of two, was taken to hospital during clashes in the Spanish capital.

Friends of the 38-year-old project manager, originally from Buckie, Moray, who now works in Denmark, claimed yesterday he was repeatedly struck over the head by police armed with batons as he made his way to Vicente Calderón stadium for the game.

Lindsay Bartlet, 45, who was with Mr Bremner at the time, said: "It was way over the top for the police to charge at us like that; it was completely unprovoked."

It is understood Mr Bremner was due to be discharged from the Clinico San Carlos Madrid Hospital last night.

John Morgan, Aberdeen FC's head of security, said he witnessed a child of about ten being hit with a baton, and also saw women being struck.

Superintendent Adrian Watson, of Grampian Police, said: "There was a clash between fans and the Spanish police, but the trouble was limited to a small number of troublemakers. This small group travelled to Madrid with the intention of causing trouble."

Four Grampian Police officers were in Madrid to assist the Spanish police. Mr Watson said they were now making efforts to obtain CCTV footage of the violence.

Dave Macdermid, a spokesman for Aberdeen FC, said the club was to write to Uefa.

He said: "There is no doubt there were problems with violence, but it was limited to a small number of people.

"Most of the fans behaved impeccably and I would like to thank them for that. Unfortunately, there was a small number that did not and that is where the violence stemmed from."

The Spanish media reported yesterday that at least 17 people had suffered injuries during the trouble, which saw riot police try to control the crowd after flares, bottles and other objects were thrown.

One Aberdeen supporter told of fights in the stand and violent clashes outside of the ground.