U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. Credit: DoD Photo By Glenn Fawcett

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 9 2013 (IPS)

The new U.S. secretary of defence, Chuck Hagel, pushed Monday for reforms of the armed forces’ judicial code that would roll back an archaic provision allowing high-ranking commanders to overturn military court verdicts, a move that would particularly impact on cases involving sexual assaults.

The move comes in direct response to a major recent scandal. Last month, a three-star lieutenant-general overturned the November conviction of a lieutenant-colonel for aggravated sexual assault involving a civilian employee at a NATO air base in Italy.There are thousands of victims in the department, male and female, whose lives and careers have been upended, and that is unacceptable.

The general, Craig Franklin, had not participated in the trial and gave no explanation for his decision to overturn the conviction and one-year sentence. Thereafter, the accused, Lieutenant-Colonel James Wilkerson, was reportedly released from prison and put back on active duty.

The case enraged Pentagon officials, politicians and the public alike, but effectively highlighted the decision’s legality under current military law. Not only does Article 60 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) allow high-ranking officers to lessen or eliminate punishment following court-martial decisions, but it also precludes the possibility of any appeal.

Though the Department of Defence says that guilty verdicts are overturned in only around one percent of cases, sentences are reportedly modified far more often.

Shortly after he took over as secretary of defence, Hagel ordered an inquiry into the issue. On Monday, he announced that he would be forwarding proposed legislation to the U.S. Congress that would make two changes to Article 60.

“First, eliminating the discretion for a [commander] to change the findings of a court-martial, except for certain minor offenses,” Hagel explained, admitting that the proposal would not completely do away with these powers.

“Second, requiring the [commander] to explain in writing any changes made to court-martial sentences … to justify – in an open, transparent and recorded manner – any decision to modify a court-martial sentence.”

Hagel noted that the proposed changes have the “full support” of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the heads of each of the major arms of the U.S. military.

“This is the beginning of a long process to ensure that victims of military sexual assault – whether they are women or men – get justice,” Barbara Boxer, a senator from California, said following Hagel’s announcement. Several legislative proposals to tweak Article 60 are already underway.

While the new regulations, if passed by Congress, would affect all types of major infractions, both the timing and the content of Hagel’s remarks make clear that the focus is on a current spate of assaults within the armed forces. The U.S. military is in the midst of what has been widely described as a sexual assault epidemic, reeling from what was estimated in 2012 by top Pentagon officials to be some 19,000 cases per year.

Relatively few of those are actually reported. However, even of those that are reported, recent studies have found that less than 10 percent of the accused are actually held accountable.

“[I]t is clear the Department [of Defence] still has much more work to do to fully address the problem of sexual assault in the ranks – this crime is damaging this institution,” Hagel said Monday.

“There are thousands of victims in the department, male and female, whose lives and careers have been upended, and that is unacceptable. The current situation should offend every single service member and civilian.”

Systemic bias

The UCMJ was created around the same time as the founding of the United States, and part of the rationale for Article 60 was both to encourage plea bargains and to allow for an appeals process that otherwise did not exist. Yet a senior defence official here on Monday told reporters that “the world had changed”.

Indeed, while the U.S. system was originally based on the United Kingdom’s, the latter’s was changed in the mid-1990s after the European Court of Human Rights found it gave too much power to top commanders. Canada, Israel and New Zealand have reportedly made similar decisions.

Advocates and campaigners are applauding Hagel’s move. Yet many are also stepping up calls for the Pentagon to make more substantive changes, particularly to deal with what some have called systemic bias within the military against victims of sexual assault.

“Defence Secretary Hagel’s move toward disallowing generals to overturn convictions within the military is a step in the right direction, but only one step,” Helen Benedict, a journalism professor at Columbia University and the author of “The Lonely Soldier”, on the experiences of U.S. women soldiers in Iraq, told IPS.

“He still needs to end the inherent conflict of interest built into the military criminal justice system by taking the decisions to investigate and prosecute those accused of sexual assault out of military hands altogether.”

A group working on the issue of military rape, the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), commended the proposed changes, noting the proposal is encouraging in the aftermath of the “travesty of justice” surrounding the Wilkerson case.

“However, post-trial review is only one component of the command-driven system that currently governs how military crimes are handled,” Anu Bhagwati, SWAN executive director and a former Marine Corps captain, said in a statement sent to IPS.

“Unless pre-trial decision-making around investigation and prosecution of offenses is also removed from the hands of commanders and given to impartial prosecutors, military criminal justice will remain a lesser form of justice, both for victims and defendants.”

Hagel appears to be aware that additional reform measures will be necessary, noting Monday that he will soon announce new actions to strengthen the Pentagon’s “prevention and response efforts”.

He also unveiled the formation of several new independent panels that will be tasked with reviewing “the systems used to investigate, prosecute and adjudicate crimes involving sexual assault, and judicial proceedings of sexual assault cases.”

By Mathieu Vaas
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 6 2013 (IPS)

For homeless youth, life on the streets is brutal. They experience sky-high rates of mental health problems, substance abuse and sexual assault. But despite the fact that it costs just under 6,000 U.S. dollars to permanently end homelessness for one youth, too little is being done to help them.

As the founder and executive director of the Ali Forney Centre, an organisation that helps homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth, Carl Siciliano has witnessed firsthand how harsh life is for them. He started the centre in 2002, naming it after Ali Forney, one of seven youths Sicilian knew who were murdered on the street and whose deaths moved him to found the centre.

Carl Siciliano, founder and director of the Ali Forney Centre. Photo courtsey of the Ali Forney Centre.

Other experiences also influenced Siciliano. “I was really religious when I was young, and worked with the homeless,” explains Siciliano. “When I came out of the closet, I wanted to figure out a way of integrating my work with them with my being an openly gay man.”

IPS spoke with Carl Siciliano about the Ali Forney Centre, the young people it shelters, and what needs to be done to improve circumstances for LGBT youth, homeless or not.

Q: What services does your organisation offer? What do you wish you could offer but can’t?

We have workers that reach out to kids on the streets and tell them about our program. We also have a big drop-in centre in Harlem where we provide food, clothing, showers and toilets, along with mental health, medical and substance abuse services.

Young people can also stay from three to six months in our emergency housing program while they figure out longer term housing. Our centre also has a transitional housing program where young people who can get a job or go to school can stay for up to two years. About 90 percent of our young people are employed and about 75 percent are going to college. When they graduate, they usually find a job and move into their own apartments.

There are several programs I would like to build, including a housing program specifically for transgender youth, who are the most vulnerable and experience the most violence and harassment on the streets. I also want to develop a model of studio apartments with intense staff supervision for youth with mental illnesses or developmental delays who find congregate housing situations difficult to manage.

One kid from Uganda reached out to us – he said that his parents kicked him out and he was afraid he was going to get killed, so I am interested in developing an international network of providers that can help young people get out of countries where their lives are in danger to reach us or other programs.Homophobia creates an environment of abuse and rejection.

Q: LGBT youth represent 40 percent of New York City’s homeless youth. As a small shelter, what are the biggest challenges the Ali Forney Centre faces every day?

The biggest challenge we face is the lack of resources. There are only 250 shelter beds for 3,800 homeless youth in New York City, and the waiting list to enter our shelter has about 150 to 200 kids on it. It breaks my heart to have to turn kids away every night.

Our day-to-day work is challenging. We occasionally have to deal with violence, and homeless LGBT youth have a very high risk of suicide, so we’re constantly monitoring them. We’re trying to protect them, but I wish there were more of a commitment on the part of the city to provide a safety net to these young people.

Q: What typically brings young people to the Ali Forney Centre? What kind of threats do they face?

The biggest common denominator tends to be family rejection. About 75 percent of our young people report that they were harassed or abused in their home for being LGBT. Some of them are kicked out. Others face so much violence and cruelty in their homes that they find it unbearable to stay. Too many parents don’t know how to cope with having a gay child.

Compared to straight homeless youth, LGBT homeless youth face twice the amount of violence on the streets by being gay bashed. They get beaten up by kids in other shelters, or staff in a Catholic youth shelter, for instance, will tell them they are sinners and going to hell.

A lot of them turn to prostitution, which puts them at greater risk of violence and a very high risk of HIV infection. Almost 20 percent of New York’s LGBT homeless youth has HIV. The stress and pressure of homelessness and the trauma of family rejecting harms their mental health, too.

Q: What should local politicians and international organisations such as the United Nations be doing to improve the situation of LGBT young people?

New York City has shelter systems for children and adults, but those the ages of 16 and 24 don’t fit in these systems. Local politicians must understand and recognise that it’s a disaster for these kids to be left out on the streets. If they get adequate support, these young people can get jobs, go to school and become healthy independent adults.

If you leave them on the streets, they become addicted to drugs and infected with AIDS. They will become an enormous cost and burden to society. Even if politicians look at it in term of smart public policy and not in term of human decency, it just doesn’t make sense to leave kids out there on the streets. You’re creating a social disaster by doing that.

In term of international organisations, the most important thing is to understand that homophobia creates an environment of abuse and rejection. Organisations trying to combat homophobia must focus more how it affects youth – how it makes them feel unsafe in their own homes and endangers the children’s welfare. It would be harder for conservative organisations that promote homophobia, such as the Catholic Church, to do it with a clear conscience if these connections were clearer.

Excerpt:

By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Jul 23 2012 (IPS)

A spate of child rape cases in Sri Lanka has angered child rights activists and moved the government to consider tightening the relevant laws and making the offence punishable with the death sentence.

A government statement released in parliament in May said that of the 1,450 female rape cases reported in 2011, child rape accounted for 1,169, alerting authorities and activists to a rising trend.

Earlier this month, police said in a statement that over 700 complaints of rape or abuse of children were filed in the first half of the year, and that, on average, at least four cases were  being reported daily.

But, according to the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), the situation is far worse than what is being reported to the police and the authority estimates that over 20,000 cases of child abuse may  have occurred in the first half of this year.

Among the reasons for such abuse, as reported in the NCPA statement, are insecurity of children, popularity of mobile phones with internet facilities among the youth, access to pornography, increasing substance abuse and lack of sex education.

An October 2011 study of child abuse in Sri Lanka’s north-central region – where unsettled conditions prevail following the end of three decades of armed separatist militancy in 2009 –  showed that 30 percent of the cases were of female minors (below 15 years) having consensual sex with a male partner.

The rest of the cases were attributed to the “strength, power and dominance of perpetrators who could be relatives, teachers or religious dignitaries,” a senior prosecutor at the attorney general’s office told IPS asking not to be named. “While we do our part, society also needs to take a serious look at this issue,” he said.

The trend of powerful people preying on minor girls is not confined to the north and east of the island country. Recently, a 13-year-old girl identified four men, including a local   politician belonging to the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), of  gang raping her.

Another UPFA politician, the head of the local council in the southern town of Akuressa, is presently in custody for the alleged abuse of a 14-year-old girl.

The Women and Media Collective (WMC), a campaign group, has denounced these alleged crimes, saying Sri Lanka has become a society where “perpetrators of heinous crimes against women and children can live with little fear of the law.”

Responding to such allegations, Tissa Karaliyadda, child development and women’s affairs minister, told reporters earlier this month that he has drawn up plans to tighten the laws that deal with child abuse, including making it punishable with the death sentence.

Authorities are also trying to sharply reduce the time taken – six years on average – to complete a prosecution, and thereby reduce impunity to offenders who often get easy bail.

Dr. Hemamal Jayawardena, child protection specialist from UNICEF, Colombo, said the number of cases appear to have risen due to an increase in reporting centres, particularly in the former war-torn northern region. People are also more sensitive to this issue and coming forward with information, he said.

“But I think there are many runaways (under-age couples eloping) cases and sex with consent which appear in the first complaint (to the police) as suspected rape and provide somewhat misleading data,” he told IPS.

Under Sri Lankan laws, those under 16 years are defined as minors and sex with a minor is considered rape, with or without consent.

A maximum jail term of 10 years is imposed on offenders while the authorities are examining proposals to enforce the death penalty and make it a non-bailable offence.

Under a project assisted by the United Nations Children’s Fund, law enforcement authorities are experimenting with a rapid three-month process involving selected courts across the island to reduce the time taken to dispose cases of child abuse or rape.

Menaca Calyaneratne, director of advocacy at Save the Children’s Colombo office, warns about a new breed of abusers called ‘professional perpetrators’ who are “professionals in their own fields but carefully choose an area of work that gives them unhindered access to children in order to abuse them.”

Fields such as education, sports, childcare organisations and children’s institutions harbour predators such as principals, teachers and sports coaches who are known to abuse their positions, she said,  adding that about 90 percent of child abuse is perpetrated by someone known to the victim.

“We used to tell children to be careful of strangers, but that does not seem to be valid anymore,” Calyaneratne told IPS.

Lack of awareness of sexual and reproductive health among teenagers in villages is a serious problem. At a village, some 75 km north of Colombo, a social worker said there have been at least five cases reported this month of 13-15 year-old girls striking up affairs with 22-year-olds, mostly soldiers, and eloping.

“When there is a problem, the girls come back and the parents file a complaint, it becomes a case of suspected rape,” the worker said asking not to be identified for fear of repercussions.

Sri Lanka which had about 120,000 soldiers in 2008 more than tripled its troop strength in order to defeat separatist militancy and also ensure that there is no resurgence.

Police blame parents for lack of supervision of their children while also citing women working abroad as domestics and leaving the children under the care of a relative as some of the reasons that lead to child abuse.

Sumithra Fernando, director at Women in Need, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works with battered women, says parents are often indifferent. “They are busy with their jobs and often unaware of what their children are up to,” she told IPS.

Women’s groups say it is important for fathers to take an interest in the welfare of their daughters.

“It’s a social obligation for the father to share responsibilities,” argues Sepali Kottegoda, director at the WMC. “When a girl is abused it is the mother who is blamed – rarely the father,” she said.

“Sri Lankan society has also become very violent and the situation is such that women and children have become very vulnerable,” Kottegoda told IPS.

Prof. Siripala Hettige from Colombo University, an eminant sociologist,  has a different perspective and links child abuse to young people steadily migrating from the villages to Colombo and other urban centres.

“The vast majority of school-leavers don’t have proper jobs. They come to the city but can’t hold down stable employment. And with the average age of marriage steadily going up from 22 to 28, there are a lot of very frustrated people around,” Hettige told IPS.

This group of young people keeps moving around, looking for sexual opportunities, Hettige explained.

Coralie Tripier interviews filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering about their latest film "Invisible War".

By Coralie Tripier
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 20 2012 (IPS)

The US military is facing one of its biggest scandals, depicted in “Invisible War”, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering’s latest documentary. The movie collects the stories of women – and men – who, along with many others, became victims of sexual abuse while serving their country and now face post-traumatic stress disorder. The statistics are staggering: more than 20 percent of female veterans have been sexually assaulted during their service. In fact, a female soldier is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed in enemy fire. The lack of response is often as traumatising for the victims as the abuse itself. Most victims do not report the rape in fear of retaliation, and when they do, their attacker is unlikely to be punished. “Invisible War” won several awards, including the Audience Award at Sundance, and is part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival currently taking place in New York. In a interview with U.N. correspondent Coralie Tripier, filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering explain why they decided to make the movie and what must urgently be done to reform the military justice system. IPS correspondent Shari Nijman filmed the interview. “Invisible War” opens in U.S. theaters on Jun. 22. The video of the interview follows.