Take Jamie Leigh Jones's case, for example. ... The first is the battle to have the perpetrators prosecuted in criminal court--which, because of Order 17, may be nearly impossible. According to the order, imposed by Paul Bremer, US defense contractors in Iraq cannot be prosecuted in the Iraqi criminal justice system. While they can technically be tried in US federal court, the Justice Department has shown no interest in prosecuting her case. In fact, for more than two years now, the DOJ has brought no criminal charges in the matter. Representative Ted Poe, a Texas Republican who has taken up Jones's cause, reports that federal agencies refuse to discuss the status of the investigation; meanwhile, in December, the DOJ refused to send a representative to the related Congressional hearing on the matter.

Last week, the assistant principal, Steve Thomas Rooney, 39, allegedly molested a student at the new campus, Markham Middle School. He was arrested and charged with five counts of forcible lewd acts on a child, stemming from allegations that he sexually assaulted the 13-year-old girl March 1 and at least one other occasion.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials declined to comment Wednesday about how Rooney had been reassigned to Markham last fall, saying they are conducting an internal investigation and citing a policy barring them from speaking publicly about cases under those circumstances.

District policy requires officials to conduct their own investigation into employee misconduct regardless of whether the allegations result in criminal charges. Officials would not say Wednesday whether such an inquiry occurred in the earlier case.

This summer we were all talking about the scandal at Eastern Michigan University, where university officials attempted to cover up the rape and murder of a student. Quick update in the story came yesterday when the former president, John A. Fallon, sued EMU, charging it violated the state’s whistleblower protection law when it fired him in July, according to a story in The Ann Arbor News. I’m no expert on this one, but I have no sympathy for a guy who was complicit in covering up a heinous crime, telling the parents of Lauren Dickinson, the raped and murdered student, that she’d died of a heart problem. Not only immoral and illegal, but also would seem to be ignoring a duty to let students know about what’s going on in their community, potentially putting them at greater risk of suffering a similar fate as Dickinson.

Yesterday it was announced that John A. Fallon had been fired from his post as president, two years into his five year contract at Eastern Michigan University. Also let go were James Vick, vice president for student affairs, and Cindy Hall, the public safety director. The three along with other university officials had attempted to cover up a rape on campus. (see the NYT coverage here)

A new Amnesty International report uncovers the disturbing truth that Native American women are twice as likely to be raped as non-Native women.  One in three indigenous women in the U.S. will be the victims of sexual assault at some point in their lives (although the statistic for women in general is not much better, one in four women in the U.S. will be assaulted in their lifetimes).

And as if that weren’t horrific enough, due to the complicated relationship of tribal criminal justice systems with U.S. state, local or federal criminal justice systems, many of the survivors of assaults never see their assailants brought to justice.  Tribal police often lack the resources to quickly respond to emergencies.  And survivors are sometimes confused about where to turn to for help—do they call the local police, the tribal police, state police…?

Much lip service has been paid to the crisis of domestic violence in Native American communities.  Even the deputy director of the Office of Justice Services for the Bureau of Indian Affairs seems to look inward to the behavior of people on reservations for an explanation—“'Domestic violence is up because of methamphetamine use on Indian lands,’ Chaney said. Rape, Chaney said, ‘was a problem long before methamphetamine, but methamphetamine is making it worse.’” 

However, according to the Justice Department’s own statistics, the overwhelming majority of sexual assaults against Native women—86%—are committed by non-Native, mostly white men.  As a 1978 Supreme Court ruling stated that tribal governments have no authority over individuals who are not a part of the tribe, much of the blame lies squarely in the laps of U.S. law enforcement for failing to prevent these crimes and to pursue the perpetrators.

Sexual violence was—and obviously, still is—an arm of colonization of indigenous peoples.  Although some violence in Native communities does come from within, for Native women, white supremacy is still the greatest threat.

Every college campus has a few of these kids. They see themselves generally as non-partisan (or non-conservative, or libertarian), since their intelligence and objectivity put them above the fray of such squabbles. Contrarian often for its own sake, their arguments use deliberate and contrived non-PCisms and attacks on so-called conventional wisdom. In a nutshell, they parade provocation as unique insight. But, to paraphrase Dave Chappelle, sometimes arrogant and self-indulgent games of devil’s advocate can go wrong. The latest “victim” of this well-intentioned and oh-so-misguided practice is John Petroski, former opinion editor of Central Connecticut State University’s The Recorder.

In a Feb. 7th op-ed entitled “Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It,” Petroski’s feeble attempt at satire (ostensibly of modern news media sensationalism) crossed the line. “Which line is that?” you might ask. Why, it’s the “Rape is Never Funny, especially in the context of a serious college publication” line. More on that later, but first, to the op-ed and ensuing controversy.

Petroski’s gem of a satire opened with a defense of rape as “a magical act that benefits society as a whole.” The piece then meanders into a bizarre defense by way of obscure ancient Roman parables (all true scholars cite classical history to defend themselves, if you were unaware) and a hypothetical musing on why Puritans didn’t make the thrifty choice to rape native women before getting to the absolutely, knee-slapping hilarious parts: “Take ugly women for example. If it weren't for rape, how would they ever know the joys of intercourse with a man who isn't drunk.”

Moving onto how rape benefits prisoners, the author mentions how rape spares them from loneliness, and that “[i]nstead, they merely need worry about treating their rapist with enough love and respect to earn a quick reach-around.” As for a satire of media sensationalism, the closest Petroski gets is by arguing that rape should be endorsed for the sake of more captivating news headlines, just before advocating “some saucy circle-jerk rape action” over more mundane topics.

 The publication was, predictably, met with disbelief and outrage. A hundred students protested in front of The Recorder’s offices, seeking the resignation of the editor and Petroski. The University President was pulled into the mess as well, defending free speech while condemning the piece. Eventually, apologies were issued by both the editor and the (now-demoted) Petroski, and the ensuing dialogue seems to have been sincere enough that the controversy appears largely settled on the CCSU campus. But that it happened at all, that the editorial board could not foresee this being offensive and problematic, and that, during a campus forum discussion, it took the bravery of several students who are survivors of rape to bring the point home points to a more serious disconnect.