The War on Women in America is Alive and Well

The war on women in America is real. It’s insidious. It’s commanders are men who are highly regarded due to political positions or celebrities. Women who are used and abused are often minimized. Their credibility is attacked as if the abuse makes them less believable. Crimes against women involving rape, sexual molestation, and domestic violence are minimized, suggesting that they somehow deserve the violence inflicted upon them. The insidious part of this war is that some of the warriors promoting this violence against women, are men like Todd Palin, who is repeatedly hailed as a champion of family values.

They are men like the Secret Service agents in Colombia. They are men like O.J. Simpson  and Scott Peterson. They are politicians like Senator Mendez.  They are members of the military fighting next to women who are risking their lives to fight the ” enemy.”   Male soldiers frequently abuse and rape the very women who are fighting for America.  Fox News has now hired Herman Cain as a commentator. Cain is best known for his unfaithfulness to his wife, and the sexual harassment of multiple women. What does it say about our country when the most popular “news” show in the country,  hires a “commentator” who is best known for his history of sexual harassment.

 

Here a just a few facts that every American citizen should know about the War on Women:

1. Around 1.3 million women are physically abused by an intimate partner every year.

2. Immigrant women often remain in violent relationships because their abusers threaten to report their undocumented status.

3. LGBT intimate partner abuse isn’t even covered under any hate crimes legislation.

4. 34% of American Indian, and Native Alaskan women will be raped in their lifetimes.

5. 39% of American Indian and Native Alaskan women will be subjected to domestic violence in the lifetime.

6. Native women are murdered at more than 10 times the national.

7. For Super Bowl 2010 an estimated 10,000 prostitutes were brought into Miami and slept with 25-60 men each day.

8. 207,754 women are raped or sexually assaulted every year. That means that every two minutes a woman in America is being assaulted or raped.

9. Estimates are that between 600,000 to 6 million women are the victims of domestic violence every year.

10. An estimated 54% of rapes and sexual assault go unreported. Only about 3% of rapists ever serve a day in jail.

11. The Government has documented 119 Examples of Secret Service Abuse and Corruption, but most of the cases go without an investigation.

Mark Sullivan, the Director of the Secret Service, testified before the Senate regarding the “culture of corruption” within the Secret Service. He testified there was NO culture of corruption, and that the Colombia scandal was an isolated event. He lied.  In fact one of the agents who was in Cartagena during the scandal and who picked up a prostitute “admitted to soliciting a prostitute on two previous occasions, one in El Salvador, and once in Panama. The report also includes allegations of misconduct in Romania and China.

12. Officer Rollins of the Anchorage Police department was raping women while on duty, and the Police knew about it! The attorney for the police department had the audacity to assert in court that the women’s “injuries, if any, are the result of pre-existing conditions” and the women “failed to mitigate damages.”

13. Then there is the case of Larissa Nearing in San Diego whose apartment was burned. Because a police officer simply decided to punish her for trying to retrieve some of her property from the burned apartment, Larissa lost custody of her son for an extended period, lost her job, and was victimized by the very police that were supposed to be protecting her.

14. Washington police have been investigated and shown to have “frequently” failed to investigate a multitude of rape cases. There is a “national crisis requiring federal action. We need a paradigm shift in police culture, because rapes and sexual assaults are being swept under the rug, and too many victims are being bullied.” A study in Washington showed that 37% of reports of serious sexual assault and rape were not being investigated. The report also found that Pittsburgh shelves 34% of cases in this way, Atlanta 24% , Dallas 13%, Jersey City 18%, Lincoln, Nebraska, 19%, San Bernadino 34%, Durham, North Carolina, 31%. Chicago does not declare annual “unfounded” statistics but its average from 2000 to 2009 was 17%. The New Orleans police department is under federal review for shelving 50% of sex attack cases as “non-criminal complaints”.Sara Reedy, 27, last year won a $1.5m settlement from the Cranberry police near Pittsburgh after they did not believe she had been raped at gunpoint and arrested her. She was about to stand trial for filing a false police report, when her perpetrator was caught elsewhere.

15. Former Miss Arizona Hilary Peele is a rape victim-turned advocate after her rape kit was neglected following an attack in her apartment in 2004. Police didn’t test her kit for DNA until she had called every two weeks for eight months.

16. In Cleveland, Ohio, serial rapist and murderer Anthony Sowell was caught in 2011 after killing 11 women, six of them after a rape kit was disregarded. Milwaukee serial rapist Gregory Below was finally sentenced to 350 years in 2011, but three of his victims said the police dismissed their cases initially.

 

17. An estimated 19,000 rapes occur in the military every year.  An estimated 1 in 3 women in the service are raped. Rape in the military is of epidemic proportion. Women in the military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by the enemy.

Todd Akin made headline news when he indicated that women who get pregnant following a sexual encounter could not have been raped. If raped, the “can shut that whole thing down.”  Richard Mourdock indicated that if a pregnancy results from a rape, it is a gift from God.  Sharon Angle is famous for her “lemonade” recipe which was inspired by women who were raped.

Rush Limbaugh is the highest rated talk show host in America.After Sandra Flulke appeared and gave testimony before the House of Representatives regarding the need for contraceptive care to be a covered expense, Limbaugh called her a whore and a prostitute.He then suggested that if her contraceptive care were to be covered then he wanted something for his money, and in this case he wanted to watch a video of her having sex.

Paul Ryan, Romney’s Vice President running mate, was “very proud” of his forcible rape bill.

The House is voting today on the renewal of the Violence against Women Act. That bill expired in 2011 and has not been the law for almost two years. It’s hard to imagine how any politician could fail to support a bill condemning violence against women, but they have. Now it appears that some supporters of the bill are doing so, not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is political suicide to vote against the bill now. When police officers, soldiers, politicians, and secret service agents are among the predators of women, the very fabric of our country is ripped apart. When leaders of the country, and defenders of our freedoms, are the very perpetrators of violence against women, the majority of citizens in the country are threatened. Women constitute the majority of citizens in the United States. When the majority of people in this country are no longer able to pursue their dreams of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then the very moral fiber of America is at risk.

Edmund Burk said:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

The majority of men in America are “good men”. Together good men, and women, must stand up and demand an end to this abuse. Women are mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, and daughters, to men and women in America. We must join together, men and women, to demand an end to this War on Women. It is more detrimental to the future of America than any other form of terrorism.

When terrorists kiledl thousands by flying planes into the World Trade Center, America watched in horror. Ten years later, under the leadership of President Obama, we found and killed the person responsible for the attack that shook our country. Under President Obama’s leadership we now have a chance to bring an end to the tolerance of rape and sexual abuse of women in this country. There may never be an end to the presence of criminals who would engage in such despicable behavior, but we must demand an end to any form of terrorism and corruption that would condone or cover-up this abuse of women