Human Trafficking in Pennsylvania? It’s here if you look for it.

By Judy Hale Reed, Intern, WLP Western Pennsylvania Office

In June 2012, the Pennsylvania Joint State Government Commission Advisory Committee on Human Trafficking released the results of a two-year study entitled, Human Trafficking in Pennsylvania: Policy Recommendations and Proposed Legislation. The Advisory Committee found that Pennsylvania is a pass-through, source, and destination state for human trafficking. This means that human traffickers move domestic and international victims through the state, people already in Pennsylvania are exploited, and people are brought to Pennsylvania for labor, sex, service, and other exploitation.

Human trafficking is modern slavery, defined by the United Nations and federal U.S. law as the movement of persons for purposes of exploitation involving force, fraud or coercion. The forms of exploitation are almost infinite, from circuit brothels, street prostitution, and sex tourism, to domestic, agricultural, and industrial labor, to begging and petty crimes. Victims are men and women, adults and minors, domestic and international citizens. Many are poor, but some are economically secure and may be well-educated. Most victims are trying to improve their lives, or have fallen into a trap of threats and coercion.

According to the University of Michigan Law School’s Human Trafficking Database, trafficking in Pennsylvania has included  a prostitution ring exploiting female minors and adults; forced labor at nail salons and restaurants; and sex tourism travelers who went to Costa Rica, Romania, and Moldova to have sex with male and female minors. The traffickers in Pennsylvania have been legal husbands, “boyfriends,” and strangers to the victims. These are only the cases that have been prosecuted. Many cases are dropped, and many more victims are never identified.

Human trafficking is a particularly hidden crime, often “hidden in plain sight.” Victims may appear to be workers, but with a closer look they are not paid, not paid what they were promised, and  denied freedom of movement, access to communication with friends and family, medical care, and adequate nutrition while being subjected to forced labor, debt bondage, and physical and mental violence.

The Polaris Project, a national advocacy and policy support organization that helps states develop anti-trafficking legislation, rates Pennsylvania near the bottom of U.S. states. Polaris recommends that Pennsylvania take major steps to improve and implement anti-trafficking laws. The Pennsylvania legislature is beginning that process, by authorizing the Joint State Government Commission Advisory Committee on Human Trafficking to study human trafficking in the Commonwealth. The Advisory Committee report includes extensive legislative recommendations. For the most comprehensive of these bills, click here. In terms of local responses, about 22 of 67 counties in Pennsylvania have organized anti-trafficking efforts, with a response team, an awareness-raising coalition, or both. Many, but not all, of these groups include local law enforcement or FBI agents.

To learn more about human trafficking, visit:

Polaris Project

Polaris Project Online Trainings on almost 50 topics

Department of Defense Combatting Trafficking in Persons

 Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Rescue and Restore Campaign – Look Beneath the Surface

 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – Blue Campaign

UPDATE RE: H.B. 2718 Would Penalize Women on TANF for Having Children Unless They Are Survivors of “Legitimate” Rape

UPDATE (10/26/12):  Within three days of the publication of this blog post, three of the six house sponsors of H.B. 2718 have removed their names from the sponsorship of the bill.  The prime sponsor, Rep. RoseMarie Swanger, defended the bill initially, but reversed her position three hours later, saying that she did not check the language of the three-page bill.  She has informed the Philadelphia Inquirer that the bill will not go forward in its current form.

By Amal Bass, WLP Staff Attorney (10/23/12)

Led by State Representative RoseMarie Swanger of Lebanon County, lawmakers in Pennsylvania are targeting poor women and children with the introduction of House Bill 2718, which would prevent women who receive benefits under Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) from receiving an incremental increase in benefits due to the birth of a child.  As of October 17, 2012, the bill is in the Human Services Committee.

As the Women’s Law Project discussed in its report, Through the Lens of Equality: Eliminating Sex Bias to Improve the Health of Pennsylvania’s Women, less than 2% of Pennsylvania’s residents receive TANF, and only 17.6% of Pennsylvania’s residents living below the official poverty line receive cash assistance benefits.  That latter percentage will be even lower now that Governor Tom Corbett has eliminated General Assistance, the welfare benefit program for individuals who were ineligible for TANF.  Most of the families who receive cash assistance through TANF live in counties where the monthly benefit is $403 for a family of three, often not enough for most families to meet their daily expenses.

Instead of helping these families who are struggling to make ends meet, H.B. 2718 seeks to reduce the assistance families receive by preventing a family from receiving additional TANF benefits if that family has a child while receiving benefits or while on a temporary period of ineligibility for TANF.  The result is a denial of assistance to the most needy and vulnerable, the newborn children themselves and their families.  This harmful bill serves as yet another example  of how hypocritical many of Pennsylvania’s politicians are in caring only about “life” before birth and not afterwards.

The bill contains a narrow exception for survivors of rape and incest that is so fraught with conditions that it is unlikely that many survivors will be able to avail themselves of it.  It is largely an empty gesture grounded in insulting beliefs about survivors of sexual violence.  H.B. 2718 does not use the term “legitimate rape” explicitly, the term used by Republican Todd Akin in support of his inaccurate and ignorant argument that women cannot become pregnant as the result of a rape, but it is built upon similar stereotypes of rape survivors.

In essence, this legislation creates a “legitimate rape” test based on misconceptions of how “real” rape victims behave, a test that determines whether a family may receive the incremental increase in benefits after the birth of a child.  If this legislation passes, a woman who is pregnant as a result of rape must send a signed statement to the Department of Public Welfare stating:

 [1] that she was a victim of rape or incest… [2] that she reported the crime, including the identity of the offender, if known, to a law enforcement agency or [3] in the case of incest where a pregnant minor is the victim, to the county child protective service agency… stating the name of the law enforcement agency or child protective service agency to which the report was made and the date such report was made.

This bill presumes that “real” rape victims report the crime to police and will have no trouble disclosing the details of the crime to the Department of Public Welfare, when research shows us that many victims never inform the police for a wide variety of reasons.  For example, as the Women’s Law Project wrote in its amicus brief in Reedy v. Evanson:

Decades of research has documented the fact that the vast majority of sexual assault victims do not report their sexual assault to police… Some of the most common reasons that victims give for not reporting are their fears that their report will not be taken seriously, they will not be believed, or they will be seen as responsible for their own assault. (internal citations omitted).

H.B. 2718 fails to reflect this reality of sexual assault, resulting in harm to survivors who become pregnant as a result of violence.

Pennsylvania’s women and children need laws that do not penalize and stereotype them.  H.B. 2718 must be defeated.

Women have the power – why aren’t more of them using it?

Co-chairs of WomenVote PA, Carol Tracy, Executive Director of the Women’s Law Project, and Kate Michelman, President Emeritus of NARAL Pro-Choice America

AT A RECENT meeting a colleague of ours presented us with a challenge and posed the following questions:  Imagine if every woman of voting age participated in this upcoming presidential election? How would that determine the outcome of the election and the legislation and policy coming out of Washington?  What would happen – would anything really change?

The implications of such a reality are staggering.

For one, you would never hear any politician utter the phrase “legitimate rape” nor would a “transvaginal ultrasound” be prescribed by anyone other than a woman’s doctor; equal pay for equal work would be obvious; our reproductive rights would be championed by politicians, not jeopardized; support for efforts to end violence against women would be expanded; Social Security and Medicare would be stabilized and strengthened, not privatized and minimized.

Sadly, the question is hypothetical and the reality is quite the opposite – but we believe it doesn’t have to be. And we believe we can start by increasing the political participation of women here in Pennsylvania. In 2004, the Women’s Law Project, based in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, began an initiative called WomenVote PA. The goal was and is straightforward: Increase the participation of women in the electoral process. We are focused on making WomenVote PA a resource for voters to learn more about legislative and policy initiatives and, equally important, a community both in the real world and the digital world, a place that uses education, collaboration and information-sharing to mobilize women voters.

The focus on the November election all but guarantees more Americans will vote this November than in any election since 2008 (assuming voter-ID requirements don’t deprive them of their right to vote). In 2008, 6 million Pennsylvanians voted in the presidential race and yet just two years later, 4 million voted in the U.S. Senate race – a staggering 2 million Pennsylvanians who voted in 2008 failed to do so in 2010. That is likely over 1 million women not voting in off-year elections – and each of these off-year elections determine who sits in the Pennsylvania General Assembly as well as the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Increasing that off-year participation number even slightly has real policy implications and real-world effects on women.

A reason behind WomenVote PA’s re-emergence has been what we will generously describe as politicians simply “not getting it.” Whether it is using the phrase “legitimate rape,” attempting to define rape only as “forcible rape,” blocking legislation in support of equal pay for equal work, rolling back our reproductive rights or limiting protections for victims of domestic and sexual violence, WomenVote PA is active in educating our network on the federal, state and local legislation that affects their lives. We believe in assisting our elected officials and policy makers in “getting it.”

And we have the data to back it up. WomenVote PA is an initiative of the Women’s Law Project, which has just published a remarkable study titled Through the Lens of Equality: Eliminating Sex Bias to Improve the Health of Pennsylvania’s Women, which will inform our education and outreach efforts. The study provides important research and data about how ongoing bias against women – in the home, in the workplace, in the classroom, and in the community – negatively impacts women’s health. We see it as a necessity that women’s voices are informed and are heard on issues that are essential to their health and well-being and that of their families.

The question “What if all women voted?” really does set the mind reeling – but in Pennsylvania WomenVote PA will focus our efforts on seeing what happens when more women vote. We believe much will.

This opinion piece appeared in many newspapers throughout Pennsylvania.  Please share this with your friends and remember to vote!

Rape is never legitimate; neither is the control of a uterus by anyone other than its owner.

By Carol E. Tracy, Executive Director, Women’s Law Project

Republican Todd Akin’s astounding remark — inaccurate and insensitive on SO many levels — that women’s bodies can prevent pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape” is only the latest evidence of the twisted beliefs about rape, pregnancy, and abortion held by right-wing so-called pro-life legislators.

First, these truly are just beliefs.  They are accepted and asserted without factual basis, proof, or even examination by any rational thought process, much less any rudimentary knowledge of human biology.

Second, Akin’s comment goes far toward explaining attitudes held by him and his ilk.  This is interesting because there is a strong correlation between rape laws and laws restricting abortion.

Laws about rape and abortion originated with men for the benefit of men, collectively and personally.   Women had no say in these laws, and therefore had no say over their own bodies and powers of reproduction.   Motivated to assure male social dominance in all realms, the men behind these laws paid lip service to the need to protect women—as they continue to do now—but have no genuine concern for women, the lives they lead, the responsibilities they bear, and the decisions they need to make in their own interests.

Rape laws have an ignominious history.  They were developed to protect male property interests.  What property, you ask?   An unmarried woman’s virginity.   A woman’s virginity was considered the property of her father, which he then was permitted to give (sell?) to the man who would become her husband.  Giving a daughter in marriage was a transfer of inheritance rights and property.  Rape was the theft of that property.   It was not an assault crime; the victim’s bodily integrity was irrelevant.  The essential element was controlling female reproductive capacity to protect male property interests.

Rape was defined only as penal penetration of the vagina by force of an unmarried virgin.  Penetration of any other orifice by any other body part or object and penetration of a married woman or a man was not rape.   While vestiges of these archaic notions continue to exist in some of our state laws, massive law reform has largely criminalized behavior that involves unwanted penetration of body parts, without consent and without force, and regardless of gender.  Significantly, within the last year, the FBI updated the definition of rape in its Uniform Crime Reporting system to reflect the broader definition of rape reflected both in current state laws and in public understanding of this heinous crime.

Restrictive abortion laws in America were similarly born of men for men.  In colonial America and at the time that our constitution was written, abortion was perfectly legal until “quickening”, much to the chagrin of today’s strict constructionists.  This was true until the last third of the nineteenth century.   Restrictions developed out of two campaigns, both male-led and for male benefit.  At that time, women’s gynecological and obstetric care was provided by other women who were midwives and homeopathic healers.  In order to ensure their domination of the practice of medicine, doctors (almost entirely male at that time) began to push women out.  As part of this effort, the doctors claimed that abortion was unsafe.  While there was some truth to that—sanitary conditions in many kinds of medical procedures being haphazard and some concoctions sold to induce abortions being nothing less than poison – safety was not the doctors’ real motivation.

The second front was led by U.S. Postmaster General, Anthony Comstock, a fanatical latter-day puritan, whose personal religious convictions caused him to lead an anti-obscenity campaign against the transmission through the U.S. mail service of information about abortion and contraception.  The efforts by the doctors and Comstock led to the enactment of laws criminalizing both the performance of abortions and the dissemination of information about contraception and abortion.  In essence, men were controlling women by keeping them pregnant.

Todd Akin represents the ongoing drive to control women.  He is ignorant and dangerous, and he is not alone.  The 2012 Republican National Convention platform outlaws abortion entirely, without even mentioning rape.  Make no mistake about it, people who have archaic ideas about rape and restrictive views about abortion are in fact motivated to control women’s lives and health.

You can learn more about changes in the definition of Rape and WLP’s work here.

DOJ Issues Ground-breaking Consent Decree Addressing Gender Bias

By Carol E. Tracy, Esq. and Terry L. Fromson, Esq.

The Women’s Law Project (WLP) commends the Department of Justice (DOJ) on its ground-breaking consent decree with the City of New Orleans, which addresses gender bias in the police response to and investigation of reports of sexual assault and domestic violence.  This consent decree followed the March 2011 publication of the DOJ’s report on its investigation of the NOPD.  The WLP identified the NOPD as one of the many police departments which have chronically failed to respond to rape complaints when WLP testified before a Congressional committee in September, 2010. 

In March 2011, the DOJ released a report (pdf) of its investigation of the NOPD. The report addressed many areas of policing but, for women, the most dramatic component was its landmark finding of gender bias in police practice.    

Specifically, the DOJ found that:

NOPD has systematically misclassified large numbers of possible sexual assaults, resulting in a sweeping failure to properly investigate many potential cases of rape, attempted rape, and other sex crimes. We find that in situations where the Department pursues sexual assault complaints, the investigations are seriously deficient, marked by poor victim interviewing skills, missing or inadequate documentation, and minimal efforts to contact witnesses or interrogate suspects. The documentation we reviewed was replete with stereotypical assumptions and judgments about sex crimes and victims of sex crimes, including misguided commentary about the victims’ perceived credibility, sexual history, or delay in contacting the police.

The consent decree, announced by DOJ on July 24, 2012 includes significant steps towards reforming the NOPD’s response to rape complaints. New Orleans has agreed to clarify its procedures for responding to sexual assault, train officers to appropriately classify crimes and conduct interviews in a sensitive manner, increase supervision, and most significantly, establish a committee that includes community advocates to annually review all sexual crimes classified as unfounded or miscellaneous, as well as a random sample of open investigations of sexual assaults.

Both the report and the consent decree establish benchmarks which other cities with similar entrenched practices should take note of and implement. For over a decade, the Women’s Law Project has effectively advocated or improved police response to sexual and domestic violence in Philadelphia and led the reform effort that resulted in the FBI’s recent expansion of the definition of rape for the Uniform Crime Reporting system.  Following the issuance of its report, the DOJ invited the WLP to share with its staff the strategies that it helped to implement in Philadelphia to bring about reform. WLP is gratified to see that the consent decree incorporates several of these reforms. To read more about gender bias in law enforcement and WLP’s continuing work in this area, please see WLP’s 2012 report, Through the Lens of Equality: Eliminating Sex Bias to Improve the Health of Pennsylvania’s Women (pdf).

And Then There Were None: Pennsylvania Bill to Permit Expert Testimony in Sexual Assault Cases Lands on the Governor’s Desk

Amal Bass, WLP Staff Attorney

House Bill 1264, which provides for expert testimony in certain criminal proceedings, has passed the Pennsylvania House and Senate, and is now on Governor Corbett’s desk. Until this legislation is signed by the Governor and goes into effect, Pennsylvania remains the only state in the country that does not permit juries in criminal trials to hear expert testimony explaining the dynamics of sexual assault. The bill, sponsored by Representative Cherelle Parker (D-Philadelphia) and 61 representatives from both sides of the aisle, will allow expert testimony in criminal cases involving sexual offenses. This legislation permits the prosecution or the defense to call experts who, because of their “experience with, or specialized training or education in, criminal justice, behavioral sciences or victim services,” can help juries and judges understand “the dynamics of sexual violence, victim responses to sexual violence and the impact of sexual violence on victims during and after being assaulted.”

This legislation will help counter the misconceptions juries and judges have repeatedly applied in the past to sexual assault cases. These misconceptions, known as rape myths, “are attitudes and beliefs that are generally false but are widely and persistently held, and that serve to deny and justify male sexual aggression against women.” Kimberly A. Lonsway & Louise F. Fitzgerald, Rape Myths in Review, 18 Psych. of Women Quarterly 133, 133-134 (1994). These myths are connected to sexist attitudes about women and distort the dynamics of sexual assault.

Two rape myths, for example, are the belief that rape is rare and that women often lie about its occurrence. Other rape myths include the beliefs that sexual assault victims will actively resist their assailants throughout the assault and that they will report the crime as soon as possible.  Adherence to these myths may make jurors and judges more inclined to believe that a victim’s delay in reporting the assault, her lack of visible physical injuries, or perceived inadequate resistance to the attack indicate that she is lying about what happened.

In reality, research shows that many rape victims cannot or do not fight back during an assault for a variety of reasons, including fear, immobilization due to being physically restrained, or immobilization due to their own psychological responses to trauma. Thus, many victims do not have visible physical injuries and do not actively resist their attackers during the assault. Furthermore, a delay in reporting an assault is very common, as victims dealing with the immediate aftermath of an assault are in the process of making sense of what happened to them and are figuring out what steps to take. Contrary to a common misconception, there is no “right” or “normal” way for a victim of sexual assault to behave.

Pennsylvania’s enactment of HB 1264 will promote justice for victims of sexual assault by giving lawyers such as prosecutors the tools they need to address these commonly held misconceptions about the dynamics of sexual assault. To learn more about rape myths in the criminal justice system, see the Women’s Law Project’s amicus brief in Commonwealth v. Claybrook and our chapter on sexual violence in our report, Through the Lens of Equality: Eliminating Sex Bias to Improve the Health of Pennsylvania’s Women.

Report: Female Farm Workers Face Sexual Violence, Harassment

On May 16^, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report detailing the results of interviews with over 160 farmworkers, police, attorneys, and other members of the agricultural industry about sexual violence and harassment endured by female migrant farmworkers. Women make up 630,000 of the approximately 3 million people who perform migrant and seasonal farm work and 50% of the U.S. agricultural workforce is undocumented. Lily Kuo describes how “nearly all of 52 farmworkers interviewed said they had suffered sexual violence or harassment or knew others who had.” The report found that people in positions of power, such as “foremen, supervisors, farm labor contractors, and company owners were abusing multiple women and often over long periods of time.”

HRW found that most women and girls who work in the agricultural industry and suffer abuse do not report it because they are undocumented and do not want to risk getting deported if they do. Even the relatively small percentage of workers with guest worker visas are unlikely to report abuse because they are dependent on their employers in order to keep their legal status.

While there are U visas, which provide temporary legal status to victims of certain serious crimes if they suffer substantial physical or mental abuse and if they cooperate with the investigation, Huffington Post reports that

even this limited protection could soon be eviscerated. As Congress debates the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, proposed provisions to strengthen the U visa have come under attack, while

Even if proposed provisions to strengthen U visas were passed there would still be significant obstacles to obtaining them, since “to apply for a U visa the victim must get a certification that he or she cooperated with a law enforcement investigation. But law enforcement officials vary widely in their willingness to certify victims, due to a mistaken belief that they are helping unauthorized immigrants ‘get green cards.’”

The HRW report, while detailing troubling realities of the abuse many migrant farmworkers face, does offer hope that their situations can be bettered; it lists ways to improve and expand victims’ access to justice. The report proposes, among other things, that the U.S. Congress pass the Senate version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization bill, enact immigration legislation that would reduce the incidence of serious abuse of immigrant workers’ rights, and that the exclusion of farmworkers from important laws providing labor protections like the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act be eliminated.

To learn more about this issue and what you can do to help, you can read the entire HRW report here. You can also watch a video that includes an interview with an HRW official as well as with farmworkers below.

Women’s Law Project Releases Through the Lens of Equality: Eliminating Sex Bias to Improve the Health of Pennsylvania’s Women

The Women’s Law Project (WLP) released today a major report, Through the Lens of Equality: Eliminating Sex Bias to Improve the Health of Pennsylvania’s Women, linking sex bias to adverse health outcomes in women.   The release of this report coincides with National Women’s Health Week (May 13-19^th), during which time organizations around the country are raising awareness about the benefits of the health care law.

Inspired by the public debate on health care, WLP embarked on an examination of the relationship between the sex bias that women experience and their health, resulting in the publication of Through the Lens of Equality.  “As familiar as we were with ongoing bias and discrimination against women and with data on critical health measures for women, our in-depth examination of the linkage between the two truly shocked us,” said Carol Tracy, Executive Director of the Women’s Law Project.  “The focus is on Pennsylvania, however, the finding and recommendations have nationwide application,” she added.

“For all of the years that I have been involved in women’s rights and women’s health care, I have never seen the connections between health and equality more dramatically demonstrated that it is in this report,” said Kate Michelman, former President of NARAL Pro-Choice America and long-time Pennsylvania resident who served as a consultant to this project.

Through the Lens of Equality examines the health impact of sexual and intimate partner violence, caregiving responsibilities, poverty, and bias in the workplace, school, and health care.  The report delves into the politicization of women’s reproductive health care and shows how women are harmed by limited access to abortion, contraception, and maternity care.  It repeatedly points to the importance of implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) to expand access to better health care for women, while acknowledging the ACA’s serious gaps, including not mandating abortion coverage.

“This is not a publication about diseases, but instead an exposition of how biased environments in which women live, work, study, and receive health services are infected with outdated notions about women’s role in society which in turn have negative health consequences for them,” said Amal Bass, staff attorney at the Women’s Law Project.

The publication also provides a series of recommendations tailored to both overcoming sex bias and improving women’s health.  “Numerous targeted interventions well beyond improving access to insurance through the ACA — are necessary to cure institutional and individual prejudices about women,” said Terry Fromson, Managing Attorney of the WLP.  “Failure to do so will result in significant inequitable and avoidable health problems for women,” she added.

Through the Lens of Equality acknowledges the impressive strides that have been made in women’s rights over the past fifty years, but shows that past victories are not enough.  “Looking to the future requires insistence on equal treatment, equal access, and equal opportunity to achieve not just healthy women, but a healthy society,” said Susan Frietsche, Senior Staff Attorney

The Women’s Law Project is a legal advocacy organization based in Pennsylvania.  Founded   in 1974, its mission is to create a more just and equitable society by advancing the rights and status of all women throughout their lives.  The Law Project engages in high impact litigation, public policy advocacy and community education.   Through the Lens of Equality is available at http://www.womenslawproject.org/NewPages/wkTLE_Base.html.

 

Urge Your Representative in Congress to Oppose H.R. 4970 to Protect the Safety of Domestic and Sexual Violence Victims

As Congress debates the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), domestic and sexual violence victims are in danger of losing important protections under the law.   Unlike previous reauthorizations of VAWA, a law originally passed in 1994 and reauthorized in 2000 and 2005, reauthorization this year has been a largely partisan process in both the Senate and the House.  As we have written previously, the Senate’s bill to reauthorize VAWA had bipartisan sponsorship, but passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on only a party-line vote of 10-8 without a single committee Republican voting in favor of reauthorization.  The bill ultimately passed the Senate in a 68-31 vote, with several Republicans supporting it. 

In the House, partisanship has resulted in a maneuver by Republicans that will undermine previously enacted protections under VAWA.  On May 8, 2012, the House Judiciary Committee approved a marked up version of H.R. 4970 introduced by House Republicans to reauthorize VAWA and to reduce protections for victims.  It passed out of committee in a 17-15 vote, with only one Republican voting against the harmful bill. 

Among its harmful provisions, H.R. 4970 targets immigrant domestic and sexual violence victims, who are among the most vulnerable victims because of language and cultural barriers to accessing services and, for some, undocumented status.  Sections 802 and 806 of the bill are particularly harmful.  Section 802 would limit the circumstances under which a victim qualifies for a “U” Visa, which provides an opportunity for undocumented victims of serious crimes to gain lawful status if they meet certain criteria.  Congress created the “U” Visa in 2000 to encourage immigrant victims to report crime and to strengthen the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute crimes.  Section 802 of the bill would undermine these purposes of the “U” Visa in several ways, including by requiring that victims report the crime within 60 days, a burdensome obstacle for immigrant crime victims who have difficulty accessing services.  It would also require that the “U” Visa applicant provide information that assists in identifying the perpetrator of the crime, even though it is sometimes difficult for victims to be able to identify a perpetrator accurately.  Section 806 of the bill would further undermine the purpose behind “U” Visas by terminating the visa recipient’s eligibility for permanent residence.  

If passed into law, these provisions of H.R. 4970 will harm immigrant domestic and sexual violence victims, making it harder for these women to report and escape from violence in their lives.  The safety of these women should not be subject to partisan politics. 

Please tell your representative in the House that all domestic and sexual violence victims deserve protection.  Urge him or her to oppose H.R. 4970.  To call your representative, dial 202-224-3121 and tell the operator the name of your representative.

Decades after Reforms Erased Sexual Assault Myths from the Letter of the Law, Pennsylvania’s Criminal Justice System Remains Infected

In the early morning hours in a college dorm room, three young men took turns physically restraining and vaginally, anally, and orally penetrating an eighteen-year-old woman student without her consent.  The victim had allowed the three men — who were friends of a friend — to hang out in her room after a party in the hall had ended, but said “no” when one tried to kiss her and then tried to move away when he made further sexual advances.  Afraid, embarrassed, and in shock, she was unable to take any further action to protect herself.  The district attorney brought charges against the men, and after a three day trial, the jury convicted the three men of sexual assault, indecent assault, and false imprisonment.  The trial court affirmed the sexual assault and indecent assault convictions when it denied the defendants’ motion for a new trial.  On appeal, however, the Pennsylvania Superior Court overturned these convictions.  The case, Commonwealth v. Claybrook, is now on appeal before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

In an Amicus (“friend of the court”) brief filed on March 2, 2012 on behalf of the Women’s Law Project (WLP) and forty-two Pennsylvania and national organizations dedicated to justice for victims of sexual assault, amici argue that the Superior Court overturned these convictions in reliance on sexual assault myths, including the myths that primarily strangers perpetrate sexual assault and that social interaction, absence of physical resistance, absence of severe physical injuries, and certain post-assault victim behaviors imply consent.  These myths have been discredited by social science research and eliminated by the Pennsylvania General Assembly.

Beginning in the early 1970s, the Pennsylvania General Assembly dramatically changed Pennsylvania’s sex offense laws.  For example, the legislature eliminated the requirements of resistance, corroboration, and prompt complaint so that a victim’s lack of active resistance, lack of physical injuries, or delay in reporting the crime would not bar prosecution.  In 1995, the legislature revamped Pennsylvania’s sex offense laws again.  Recognizing the complexity of sexual assault, particularly when the parties know each other, the legislature adopted a broader definition of forcible compulsion, eliminated differential treatment of spousal rape, and recognized the crime of “sexual assault,” defined as sexual penetration without consent.  With these changes, as legislative history shows and as the amicus brief lays out, the legislature eliminated several sexual assault myths from the law.

Social science research supports the elimination of these myths.  Most rapes are committed by someone the victim knows; rape often results in few, if any, physical injuries apart from the rape itself; and many victims do not physically resist their attackers for a variety of reasons, including fear of serious injury or death and trauma that causes some victims to become immobilized.  Furthermore, research shows that there is a wide range of reactions and behaviors that victims exhibit during and in the aftermath of sexual assault, and it is erroneous to assume that a victim should behave in any particular way.

The perpetuation of myths adopted by the Superior Court fuels distrust in the criminal justice system and contributes to the low reporting of sex offenses.  The vast majority of sexual assault victims do not report their sexual assault to police.  A recent discussion on twitter with the hashtag #ididnotreport illustrates how lack of confidence in the justice system silences victims of sexual assault and harassment.  One tweet explains, “[I did not report] because I have no faith in our justice system where so few rapists are jailed + victims are treated like perpetrators.”

To stop sexual assault and create a just society where perpetrators of sexual violence are punished for their crimes, the justice system must rid itself of the types of myths on which the Superior Court relied in Commonwealth v. Claybrook.

For more information on WLP’s work related to violence against women, click here and stay tuned for WLP’s forthcoming report, Through the Lens of Equality: Gender Bias, Health, and a New Vision for Pennsylvania’s Women, which details the pernicious impact of sexual assault and harassment on women’s health.