If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
A new worldwide report by Equality Now demands that nationality and citizenship laws, which discriminate on the basis of sex, should be urgently revised in line with international legal obligations
Sure, I understand that the headline: 'Sally fights depression, holds down a full-time job and volunteers for the local community', is hardly shocking. But, by all accounts, perhaps this is exactly the sort of thing that we, the public, need to hear more about in relation to mental health?
So why are so many women's refuges being closed down by cuts in local authority spending? In my opinion it's because there are more votes in filling pot holes and keeping up the bin collections than in keeping a place of refuge open for the victims of violence.
Jimmy Savile was a "predatory, serial sex offender" but he did not "groom the nation". He was allowed to continue abusing because he was a 'celebrity'. Pretending that he "groomed the nation" allows those who knew to minimise and deflect their guilt. Those who knew and did nothing are guilty of helping Savile in sexually assaulting hundreds of children and adults. I say hundreds but we will never know how many. The term "grooming the nation" only serves to silence victims. It serves those predatory, serial sex offenders who are still harming people.
There are many different possible reasons why British celebrity Jimmy Savile was never caught over his half-century long sexual predator rampage. One was his psychopathic-like super-sense of being able to sniff-out the most psychologically vulnerable who would either not tell or not be believed.
Operation Yewtree represents an opportunity to transform forever the legal landscape so never again can a marauder such as this escape detection. What needs to change is an awareness that sexual abuse can be going on right under our noses without us realising.
If the legacy of those who have survived the Savile scandal is worth anything at all, it must lead us to a multi-lateral commitment to bring those responsible for past and current child abuse cases to justice - and to do what we can to prevent them from occurring in the future.
The mainstream media's representation of women and its normalising of pornography should be one of our first ports of call when searching for the causes of sexual violence. As we start the new year and look to what we can do to make a difference, let's not forget the young women bearing the impact of a society that does not take media objectification of women seriously. Sexual violence does not exist in a vacuum. One way we can show our collective disgust at its existence is by refusing to accept that women as sex objects is the norm.
Three Kurdish women have been found murdered outside the Kurdish Insitute in Paris, with gun shot wounds to the head. One of the women is reportedly the co-founder of the militant Kurdish separatist movement, the PKK.
A night in a five star hotel in New York followed by a day of frantic shopping in Macys, Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany & Co, FAO Schwarz, then two first class tickets to Barbados. If you could sum up my dream weekend trip this would be it... except, I'm not in Barbados, I'm in Ireland and the only shopping I did this week was for two bumper packs of nappies in Tesco.
Social media is making politicians better public servants. But in return, the public must recognise that they are only human and criticism is ten times more worse when others get to see it.
Equality Now is strongly in favour of the 'Nordic Model', a set of laws that penalises the demand for commercial sex while simultaneously decriminalising individuals in prostitution. It is based on an approach which was first adopted in Sweden in 1999, followed by Norway and Iceland.
Movie-makers would have died of boredom in a crime-free world. The police force would have remained honest because there would have been no one to corrupt it. Ditto for the political leadership and the judiciary. Come to think of it the world of crime creates jobs.
I am not, repeat not, in favour of arming teachers, or indeed anyone else, in schools. But I recognise why others may disagree.
America has experienced a dreadful loss of young and innocent lives after the murderous shooting rampage in Connecticut. Such incidents are not unique to America but surely what matters is what a nation does to stop these things happening again.
For a while, Oxycodone offered an option for opiate users - essentially, it was akin to medically prescribed heroin. Someone could get an oxy script and, rather than use it "properly", crush up a pill and do a smash.
Most Popular Crime Stories
