challenging institutional disbelief around domestic & sexual violence and abuse
Homelessness, like domestic and sexualised violence and abuse, is a deeply gendered phenomenon requiring specialist provision from services who understand and support an intersectional approach to ending homelessness, as the article below demonstrates: Women with children in refuge accommodation, living in homeless shelters, sofa-surfing, exchanging sex for a bed or sleeping rough on the streets. […]
Nate Parker is an American actor, director, producer, and writer. His new film The Birth of a Nation premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January. Within days of the film festival, news of Parker’s involvement in a multiple perpetrator rape whilst attending Penn State, in which he was found not guilty, began to make the rounds of social […]
Luke Grender is an 18 year old who has admitted to raping a girl under the age of 13 three times. Grender was 16 – 17 at the time of the crime. He was given a suspended sentence by Judge Philip Richards at Newport Crown Court due to the “exceptional circumstance … (of) …heartbreak” experienced […]
Child Sexual Exploitation is in the news again – the media are over-run with commentators who are wringing their hands, apologising, claiming that they’re not sure how they didn’t know, telling us that work is in progress to ‘remove this vile scourge’ from our communities. But what are we actually doing? We’ve looked over a […]
On Wednesday afternoon, when I got back from work I sat at my PC and watched the Alan Titchmarsh Show. I can’t say it’s something I’m proud of, but I was keen to see it as I knew Laura Bates of Everyday sexism was on the programme discussing whether or not sexism still exists. I […]
Today, Oscar Pistorious was found Not Guilty of the murder of Reeva Steenkamp. A verdict of culpable homicide was delivered. In the lead up to the verdict’s deliverance, Mark Williams-Thomas wrote for British newspaper, The Mirror, stating that he believed Pistorious’s version of events. Furthermore, he used his article to comment on Pistorious’s love for […]
Next Monday, two amendments to criminalise revenge porn will go to the committee stage in the House of Lords. For those who don’t know, revenge porn is non-consensual pornography. It’s where a person uploads an explicit image of somebody without their permission. Often the victim’s name and contact details are attached. Not only is it […]
In case you haven’t heard, our national treasure, Stephen Fry, reportedly waded into the murky topic of Operation Yewtree and historical sex crimes whilst speaking at a Labour Party dinner. He allegedly ‘went off on one’* and thinks there should be tougher laws to discourage people from inventing false claims of rape and sexual assault. […]
We were extremely concerned when we read David Aaronovitch’s column “Let’s See Some Evidence. Then We Can Panic” published in the Times on July 10th. As a general rule of thumb, anyone who refers to public inquiries and investigative journalism into organised child sexual abuse rings as “paedogeddon” is already starting from a position of […]
We welcome an open inquiry into the allegations of a cover up of child sexual exploitation, assault and rape within Westminister, however, any inquiry must put the needs of victims first which includes a right to privacy and the choice to testify. We would also ask that all parties involved in the inquiry undertake specialist training […]