Ariel Castro, who is being held on $8 million bail after being charged with multiple counts of kidnapping and rape, appears to have written a chilling confession back in 2004. Reporters for Channel 19 Action News have posted excerpts from the letter, which police found while searching the house where Castro allegedly imprisoned three women for a decade. In the letter Castro admits that “I am a sexual predator” and that he needs help. He also wonders why he kidnapped a third woman when he “already had 2 in my possession.” The letter is reportedly a suicide note, with Castro saying he wanted to kill himself and give his money to his captives. He also blamed his victims, saying they “made the mistake of getting in a car with a total stranger.”

Via:

Multiple sources say that the man living there had written a suicide note years ago outlining what he did and why. Ariel Castro is sitting in the city jail, so of course, he never did take his own life.

But Gallek has learned that in the note, Castro talks about a sex addiction and needing help. It puts some blame on the victims for getting in the car with him, and it refers to family problems and a poor childhood.

Castro and his two brothers, Pedro and Olin, are being held in jail in separate cells. A source who's been in the jail says the suspects are getting a lot of verbal abuse from other inmates.

And in a tearful interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, the daughter of suspected Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro begged Gina DeJesus -- her former childhood friend -- to forgive any role she had in enabling the abduction. “I am absolutely so so sorry,” the 22-year-old cried. Arlene was one of the last people to see Gina in 2004 on the day she was kidnapped—but claims she had no idea that it was her own father who did it. “[We were] not that close,” Arlene told GMA. “Every time we would talk it would just be short conversations, just a hello.” The kidnapper’s daughter says she hopes to see Gina, and introduce her to her kids.

The discovery of three women in a Cleveland home who all had gone missing separately about a decade ago brings to mind cases of abductions elsewhere. Elizabeth Smart says she is elated by the women's rescue. The Salt Lake City woman was kidnapped at age 14 from her bedroom. She was freed nine months later when she was found walking with her captor on a suburban street in March 2003.

Smart also discussed this week how conservative "abstinence only" programs that emphasize sexual purity can be detrimental to victims of human trafficking and rape.

Smart advised the Ohio women to focus on moving forward and letting go of the past. And she urged people to allow the family privacy so they can heal and "find their own pathway back to some sense of well-being."

She also advised the women not to let their alleged kidnappers continue to control their lives.

"He's stolen so much from them already, they deserve to be happy. And I would tell them I hope that they realize there is so much ahead of them, that they don't need to hold on to the past," Smart said. "They don't need to relive everything that's happened, because it's proof, their rescue is proof that there are good people out there."

Speaking at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum on Wednesday, Smart answered the question many Americans who followed her story on the national news wondered, why didn't she just run away as soon as she was brought outside?

She explained that some victims don't run away after being raped because they feel worthless, especially if they have been raised in conservative religious cultures that push abstinence-only education and emphasize sexual purity:

Smart said she “felt so dirty and so filthy” after she was raped by her captor, and she understands why someone wouldn’t run “because of that alone.”

Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you no longer have worth, you no longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”

Since her rescue, Smart created the Elizabeth Smart Foundation to bring awareness to predatory child crimes and speaks about her own experience.

Smart says children should be educated that "you will always have value and nothing can change that."

Attorney Susan Burke and retired Air Force Staff Sgt. Colleen Bushnell join Current TV’s John Fugelsang to react to a Pentagon report that shows an increase in the number of reported sexual crimes in the military between 2012 and 2011.

Bushnell describes her experience navigating the military justice system after reporting that she had been the victim of sexual assault. “There were systems put in place that appeared to be as if they were support systems, but they’re not empowered to actually help the victim,” Bushnell says. “Currently the way the system works is very perpetrator centric, rather than victim-centric.”

UPDATE: Laura Clawson over at Daily Kos reports:

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh:

... appeared to blame broader society, noting that 20% of women report they had been sexually assaulted "before they came into the military.""So they come in from a society where this occurs," he said. "Some of it is the hookup mentality of junior high even and high school students now, which my children can tell you about from watching their friends and being frustrated by it."

That's right, a hookup culture of consensual sexual encounters is to blame for high rates of sexual assault in the military coupled with low rates of reporting of said sexual assaults and low rates of conviction in the rare cases that are reported. Also, apparently the fact that sexual assault is too common outside the military is a decent excuse for high rates of sexual assault in the military. If you're Gen. Mark Welsh and you're looking to blame women for the appalling rates of sexual assault taking place under your command.

So we can safely say that the understanding of and concern about sexual assault at the highest levels of the Air Force is ... lacking. Pitifully, offensively lacking. It's not just Welsh and Krusinski, either. Two different three-star generals in the Air Force have overturned sexual assault convictions in recent cases. In one, Lt. Gen. Susan Helms, President Obama's nominee for vice commander of the Air Force's Space Command, overturned a verdict of aggravated sexual assault against a captain; "In a memo that recently came to light, she explained that in reading through the evidence, she found the captain’s defense credible." The jury didn't, but screw that, Lt. Gen. Helms did.

Similarly, Lt. Col. James Wilkerson was sentenced to a year in prison and dismissal by a jury of male Air Force officers. Only then Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin "declined to approve the conviction because he did not think that there was enough evidence to say that he was guilty," according to a spokesman.

All of which raises the question: Who's going to be the three-star general to overturn Krusinski's conviction, should he be convicted? The Air Force is already asserting jurisdiction over his case, so the stage is set.

Silent rally against another rape in New Delhi on April 23rd.

A four-year-old Indian girl who was brutally raped died on Monday, hospital authorities said on Tuesday. The little girl had been on a ventilator after suffering severe injuries to both her brain and her vagina. She had been in a coma since April 18, the day after the attack. The girl was the daughter of day laborers in Ghansor. Police said she was lured from her home and was found the next day -- bleeding profusely -- by her parents. Firoz Khan, 27, has been arrested in connection to the attack. A second man, Rakesh Chaudhary, 25, has been arrested for taking the girl to her attacker but not in the rape itself.

NYT:

In India’s capital city of Delhi, just in the month of April, the police said several juvenile girls have been raped. The rape of a five-year old girl in Delhi ignited sometimes violent protests earlier this month in the nation’s capital, but as of Tuesday at noon, there was little public reaction in Madhya Pradesh over the recent death.

“The value of life for a little girl whether in Delhi or Madhya Pradesh is the same,” said Varun Amar, a lawyer from Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh. “So why are people not coming on to the streets when this girl has died?”

“The girl from Delhi got 24-7 coverage, but this girl’s death has hardly been covered,” he said.

The cause of the rise in reported sexual assaults of girls under 18-years-old in India has been examined, with a combination of social and cultural factors blamed by some experts. One Indian religious leader blames the rapes on the "increased consumption of meat and alcohol."

Protesters converged at Swami Dayanand Hospital in New Delhi on Friday as shock spread in the Indian capital over the alleged rape and abduction of a 5-year-old girl by a neighbor. The girl, said to be in critical condition, was being taken to a larger facility.

Months after a brutal gang rape of an Indian student prompted widespread soul-searching about the country’s culture of violence against women, the attacks continue. This time, the alleged victim is just 5 years old, reportedly raped by a male neighbor and lying in critical condition in a Delhi hospital. The alleged attack triggered protests in the city, with activists and family members of the child demanding justice and better safety for women and girls. A doctor told reporters that “the next 48 hours will be crucial for her.” The child, whose family lives in a slum on the outskirts of the capital, went missing on April 15 and was found, bruised and semiconscious, in the suspect’s home on Thursday. The suspect allegedly held the girl hostage for three days, raping and torturing her. Activists have demanded tougher laws to deter sex offenders, with some agitating for capital punishment in special cases.

“If you thought just bringing in a new law will stop crimes, you are wrong,” one activist, Kiran Bedi, told an Indian TV channel. “They will reduce, but won’t stop. You need community policing to stop these crimes.”

Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has teamed up with Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague for a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to highlight the use of rape as a weapon of war and to raise awareness of the issue on an international level.

The two will visit a rescue camp for women north-west of Goma to raise awareness about warzone rape.

“This visit is about hearing first hand from people who have endured rape and sexual violence during the conflict in the eastern DRC. We want justice for the victims and we want to know how the world can protect thousands of women, men and children at risk of rape in many other conflict zones. We want to persuade governments around the world to give this issue the attention it deserves,” said Jolie.

“Unless the world acts, we will always be reacting to atrocities, treating survivors rather than preventing rape in the first place,” added Jolie.

Hague hopes to present his findings to the forthcoming Group of Eight summit in London.

He is calling on the G8 leaders to agree that rape and sexual violence constitute breaches of the Geneva Conventions governing warfare.

“More often than not the international community looks away, the perpetrators of these brutal crimes walk free and the cycle of injustice and conflict is repeated,” he said.

“It is time for real, meaningful action by the governments of the world to say that the use of rape as a weapon of war is unacceptable, to bring perpetrators to justice and to lift the stigma from survivors. This is my personal priority for the meeting of G8 foreign ministers,” he added.

As a UNHCR Special Envoy, Jolie has fought for the rights of refugees worldwide for over a decade.

A 2011 film by the 37-year-old actress, “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” depicts the experiences of victims in the infamous rape camps set up during the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It’s almost unspeakable. Three young sisters aged 5, 9, and 11 were walking home from school on Valentine's Day when they disappeared. Now, it’s being reported that the girls were found raped and murdered two days later, and the police never launched a proper investigation. After discovering the sisters’ bodies in an old well, police recorded their deaths as “accidental.” It was only after the people from the girls' remote village staged a protest that blocked a national highway Wednesday did officials look into the matter, leading to a medical investigation that revealed the rape and murder. The girls’ mother was offered one million rupees in compensation, but she says, “No amount of money is going to bring my girls back.”

The Guardian reports:

The young mother's tragedy in a remote village once again demonstrated how the police in India often fail to adequately respond to major crimes, especially when it involves women and children.

When a young physiotherapist was brutally gang-raped in a moving Delhi bus in December, the extraordinary public outrage across the country forced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government to promise better policing and faster legal action to protect Indian women at home and outside.

But even as lawmakers prepared to discuss a new law against sexual offences on Friday, news of the latest atrocity, involving three young girls in a village more than a thousand kilometres from the Indian capital, was kept under a veil of silence until villagers rioted and blocked the national highway demanding a proper investigation.

"There was no nationwide outrage in response to the latest heinous incident of rape," said a CNN-IBN news anchor. "Why is the nation silent? Or have we become numb?"

A recent study released by Human Rights Watch that said one in three reported rape victims in India were children.

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act on Tuesday, despite the efforts of a group of Republican men who tried to block it.

Florida senator Marco Rubio led a group of 22 male Republicans who voted against the bill, which established a system for helping women in danger from domestic violence. No women or Democrats opposed the bill and it passed 78-22. That's right, the guy that Time magazine hailed this week as the "GOP Savior" voted against helping protect women from violence.

In fact, Rubio was also one of eight Republican senators who last week voted against moving to debate on the revived legislation.

One of the most contentious issues of the bill is that the updated version grants additional protections to immigrants which would encourage undocumented women to report assaults done to them.

Another issue some of the gang of 22 are hiding behind is that they object to the updated VAWA extending protections to LGBT and Native Americans.

The spending and grant provisions of the bill may have had something to do with the no votes, as well.

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*Trigger Warning* A film by Eve Ensler and Tony Stroebel

One In Three Women On The Planet Will Be Raped Or Beaten In Her Lifetime.

One Billion Women Violated Is An Atrocity.

One Billion Women Dancing Is A Revolution.

Join V-Day on 02.14.13 in a global strike to demand an end to violence.

Strike! Dance! Rise!

#ReasonToRise
http://www.onebillionrising.org/

Indian police say that a woman was gang-raped by seven men over the weekend (Yes, another one.) after she boarded a bus on Friday night. Police have arrested six of the men and are searching for the seventh. The 29-year-old woman boarded a bus in Gurdaspur district in Punjab, but the bus sped past her stop. The bus driver and his helper than took her to an undisclosed location, where five other men joined and raped her through the night. They dropped her off in her village the next day. The victim said, “They threatened me with a sharp-edged weapon and did wrong things with me. They kept me confined all through the night and forced me to do what they want.”

The violent gang rape in New Delhi has drawn attention to a pattern of violence and discrimination against women in India that leads to the deaths of nearly 2 million women every year. Between 25,000 and 100,000 women are killed each year in dowry disputes. Each year 100,000 women are burned to death, and another 125,000 die from violent injuries that are rarely reported as killings. One expert said, “Women are breaking through and advancing toward greater attainment—but in a society that continues to be patriarchal, that is increasing tensions. And one of the manifestations of that tension is increased violence against women.”

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