Post by bistro on Oct 21, 2013 17:56:11 GMT -5
License To Rape
November 16, 2010 by Maggie McNeill
Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you. – George Bernard Shaw
In every country in the world where prostitution is illegal, from Southeast Asia to Russia to Africa to the United States, prostitutes at every level of the profession (but most often streetwalkers) are raped by the police on a regular basis. The report presented on November 5th to the UN Human Rights Council by the Best Practices Policy Project, Desiree Alliance, and the Sexual Rights Initiative contains a section entitled “Freedom from torture, and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” which reads in part:
U.S. sex workers’ greatest fear is abuse by the police and other state agents. Organizations working with sex workers have documented a pattern of practice by police towards sex workers, which includes assault, sexual harassment and rape that constitutes torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment…When sex workers seek recourse for crimes committed against them, officers do not take their reports seriously or may further violate these sex workers by arresting them, physically assaulting them or pressuring them for sex.
This is not an exaggeration; if anything it is a polite understatement of the problem. Of the whores I know who have been raped, a fair percentage of them were raped by police; the prevalence of it in San Francisco was one of the issues which spurred the founding of COYOTE. Nor are these abuses limited to local law enforcement personnel; activist Jill Brenneman reported in September on her rape by a federal air marshal (WARNING: this is both graphic and disturbing). Do I believe that a disproportionate percentage of rapists join the police? Not at all; I believe that as Lord Acton observed, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Many cops are simply not afraid of the consequences of their actions, and so are more likely to act on an impulse to commit rape than men in the general population, particularly when the victim is a prostitute, because hookers are vastly less likely to report the crime and less likely to be believed even if they do report it.
(more)
maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/license-to-rape/
November 16, 2010 by Maggie McNeill
Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you. – George Bernard Shaw
In every country in the world where prostitution is illegal, from Southeast Asia to Russia to Africa to the United States, prostitutes at every level of the profession (but most often streetwalkers) are raped by the police on a regular basis. The report presented on November 5th to the UN Human Rights Council by the Best Practices Policy Project, Desiree Alliance, and the Sexual Rights Initiative contains a section entitled “Freedom from torture, and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” which reads in part:
U.S. sex workers’ greatest fear is abuse by the police and other state agents. Organizations working with sex workers have documented a pattern of practice by police towards sex workers, which includes assault, sexual harassment and rape that constitutes torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment…When sex workers seek recourse for crimes committed against them, officers do not take their reports seriously or may further violate these sex workers by arresting them, physically assaulting them or pressuring them for sex.
This is not an exaggeration; if anything it is a polite understatement of the problem. Of the whores I know who have been raped, a fair percentage of them were raped by police; the prevalence of it in San Francisco was one of the issues which spurred the founding of COYOTE. Nor are these abuses limited to local law enforcement personnel; activist Jill Brenneman reported in September on her rape by a federal air marshal (WARNING: this is both graphic and disturbing). Do I believe that a disproportionate percentage of rapists join the police? Not at all; I believe that as Lord Acton observed, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Many cops are simply not afraid of the consequences of their actions, and so are more likely to act on an impulse to commit rape than men in the general population, particularly when the victim is a prostitute, because hookers are vastly less likely to report the crime and less likely to be believed even if they do report it.
(more)
maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2010/11/16/license-to-rape/