This is such a sad story, this woman of color was sexually assaulted by a white man while he shouted racial epithets at her. And after this violent crime, which was only stopped when two young boys came to the woman’s aid, the judge felt that the attacker was “remorseful” and gave him about 4 years (including the 8 months time served). Here’s what the article says about how the victim felt about the ’slap on the wrist’ sentence: “the victim angrily stormed out of the courtroom, calling the sentence a ‘joke’ and saying the judge had ’spat on her face.’” We at Malcolm-Che will absolutely go so far as to say this is a hate crime.
‘Cruel’ racist jailed in sex assault
T.J. Turcotte had seen a man struggling with a young woman near 106th Street and 38th Avenue, forcing her toward Charles Anderson Park. He ran to get his brother at a friend's house, then they raced back to search for the attacker. The twins searched and interrupted a violent sexual assault that ended only when the rapist, Ian Drako Bruce, saw the twins approach. The rapist tried to run, but the brothers chased him, struggled with him, and finally pinned him to the ground until police arrived.
EDMONTON – It’s off to prison for a racist Edmonton man who sexually assaulted a woman at knifepoint and then went ballistic on police after being taken down by twin teenage boys.
Ian Drako Bruce, 22, was handed a five-year sentence Wednesday after pleading guilty to 11 charges stemming from the alcohol-and-drug-fuelled Oct. 17 incident.
However, after Bruce was given 20 months credit for the 10 months he spent in pre-trial custody – leaving him with three years and four months to serve – the victim angrily stormed out of the courtroom, calling the sentence a “joke” and saying the judge had “spat on her face.”
According to agreed facts, Bruce had been at a friend’s wedding party that night at Duggan Community Hall, 3728 106 St., but was asked to leave after becoming highly intoxicated and causing a disturbance.
He then approached the then-25-year-old victim as she was walking home from her bus stop and placed a knife at her neck and demanded her digital music player.
He then forced her to go to a nearby park, saying he would “cut her throat” if she refused, and then made the pleading woman perform a sex act on him at knifepoint.
He then ordered her to lie on her back, took off his pants and was removing her pants when Joe and T.J. Turcotte, twin 16-year-old boys, came to the rescue.
Bruce fled after seeing the twins – who later were given awards for bravery by police – but they chased after him and pinned him to the ground following a fight.
Police then showed up and the struggling Bruce, who threatened to find out where the twins lived and kill them and spat on the victim after saying “Canada is for whites, not blacks,” was eventually put into a police cruiser.
Bruce spat on one of the officers and began swearing and yelling at them. He also began banging his head on the glass and kicking the door before finally being hobbled.
He was then taken to hospital where he became belligerent to staff and attempted to bite a police officer and kick a security guard in the groin before spitting on the pair.
Bruce later told a detective he had drank a lot of alcohol and taken crack cocaine, codeine and Valium. He also said that he hates women and was angry and depressed.
He stated that after being kicked out of the wedding, he felt “betrayed and the need to smash someone.”
The victim told court the attack taught her “there is evil everywhere” and said she no longer trusts people. She then confronted Bruce, telling him he had made her stronger and his life would be ruined without change.
She also told him that she had forgiven him.
Bruce thanked the victim and the twins after telling court he had disgraced himself and his family.
Justice Eric Macklin slammed Bruce for humiliating and degrading the victim and called his racist remarks “callous, repugnant, cruel and intolerable in this country.”
The judge said a sentence of five years and eight months was appropriate, but deducted eight months for Bruce’s guilty plea, remorse and lack of a prior criminal record.
ADELAIDE, Australia — About 100 Australian police are being investigated for circulating racist and pornographic e-mails via the internal police e-mail system, and one officer involved in the scandal has committed suicide, a top official said Thursday.
The investigation in Victoria state follows an independent citizens group report last week that police in the state capital Melbourne have targeted, taunted and beaten African teens, accusing the department of having a “culture of racism.”
Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland acknowledged at the time that some officers were racist but said they were a small minority, and in announcing the e-mail probe Thursday he noted that the material involved a variety of offensive themes, including pornographic and sexist material. The officer who committed suicide was not responsible for racist material, Overland said.
Overland refused to elaborate on the content of the e-mails, saying none of it was illegal but that all of it was offensive and in breach of department policy.
“It’s a mix of racist and pornographic and otherwise offensive material,” he told reporters. “There are varying degrees of involvement and varying degrees of seriousness.”
He would not confirm whether any of the racist material referred to Africans or Indians. Both groups have been the target of violence in Victoria state and have criticized police conduct in recent months.
The Age newspaper reported that the investigation centered on a graphic image of a non-Caucasian man being tortured. There were no other details on the image.
The months-long investigation led to two officers receiving what is called a Section 68 — notice that the commissioner has lost confidence in the officers and giving them a chance to explain why they should not be dismissed — for introducing the material into the police system.
The other officers are being questioned for further circulating the e-mails, sometimes adding inappropriate comments of their own.
“It’s extremely disappointing that people would behave in this way,” Overland said. “They’ve let us down and they’ve let themselves down and we’ll have to deal with it.”
Overland confirmed that a police officer who committed suicide earlier this week was one of two given the Section 68.
Tony Vangorp, 47, tendered his resignation Friday and returned to the police station Monday night and shot himself. Overland said Vangorp had not been responsible for any racist e-mails.
“A tragic event has happened,” Overland said. “It’s deeply, deeply regrettable and we need to learn the lessons but it doesn’t mean that I can or should avoid my responsibilities around the good order and governance of Victoria Police.”
The state police department has 13,800 employees, including police officers, public servants and protective security officers.
Overland said his goal in disciplining the officers was to uphold the department’s values and keep the confidence of the community.
“How can a community have confidence in this organization if we allow racist, sexist, pornographic, inappropriate material to circulate freely around the organization?” Overland asked. “We can’t do it.”
Racist and sexist epithets scrawled across a firehouse door greeted two female firefighters as they reported to work Tuesday — just weeks after City Council authorized sensitivity training to restore harmony in the department.
The discovery happened about 6:30 a.m. at Fire Station 54 at Intercontinental Airport, a station that the president of the Houston Black Firefighter’s Association said previously has suffered vandalism in the women’s quarters.
“This is a very painful day,” said Executive Assistant Fire Chief Rick Flanagan. “This is without a doubt an act of hate. … It is so distasteful, so painful, so despicable. We have the full support of the police department, and we have asked them to expedite this investigation.”
Flanagan did not reveal the content of the graffiti, nor identify the female firefighters, one of whom is white, the other black.
Fire Chief Phil Boriskie said the case has been referred to the city’s office of the inspector general.
“This is a terminating offense and, frankly, a criminal offense,” he said. “We will prosecute this to the fullest.”
Mayor Bill White said the city will not tolerate any form of racial or gender discrimination.
“Before we judge and generalize,” he added, “we need to get the facts. … We will get to the bottom of it.”
Boriskie cautioned that the perpetrator may not have been a firefighter. Flanagan, however, noted that only those with FAA clearance have access to the fire station, where 10-12 firefighters are assigned to handle aircraft emergencies.
Activist wants chief fired
Tuesday’s episode came just weeks after City Council approved $60,000 for firefighter sensitivity training. That measure was aimed at calming racial tension in the department that grew out of the discovery of a noose-like knot in the locker of veteran fire Capt. Keith Smith.
Smith told city officials the rope was a fisherman’s knot he had kept in honor of the firefighter who showed him how to tie it.
But black activists decried it as an emblem of overt racism, and one, Deric Muhammad, called for Boriskie’s resignation.
Muhammad renewed that call Tuesday, saying, “Only strong leadership can root out the cancer of racism in the Houston Fire Department.”
Flanagan on Tuesday said the Smith case was resolved by “putting a note in his permanent file.”
City Councilwoman Jolanda Jones, who advocated for sensitivity training and suggested it be extended to other departments, Tuesday said the U.S. Justice Department might be better equipped to investigate the graffiti incident.
“I think there is more than graffiti. I absolutely have reason to believe there may be retaliation for something,” she said.
Fire Capt. Otis Jordan, president of the black firefighter’s group, said women’s quarters at Station 54 previously had been targeted by vandals. Recently, he said, one of the women targeted in Tuesday’s incident had filed a complaint after someone disconnected the cold water in the women’s shower.
Jordan also said someone had urinated in the sinks and on the walls of the women’s restroom.
“We are not going to stand for our sisters — or a white female — being treated that way,” Jordan said.
Jordan said he received a tearful telephone call from one of the firefighters shortly after she discovered the offensive graffiti.
Flanagan on Tuesday said he has assigned a team to check Jordan’s allegations and to find out what, if anything, was done to address them.
Pastor calls for calm
Speaking at a morning news conference alongside fire department leaders, the Rev. James Nash, pastor of the predominantly black St. Paul Baptist Church, called for calm as the investigation continues and criticized “factions in the community who want conflict.”
Jeffrey Caynon, president of the nearly 4,000-member Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association, denounced “reckless stereotyping of the men and women of all races of the HFD by opportunist activists and self-appointed ‘labor’ organizations that inflame emotions but rarely offer solutions.”
In an afternoon news conference, Muhammad said he interpreted the graffiti as a death threat.
Fire department officials Tuesday said the graffiti incident left them badly shaken.
Boriskie described himself as “angry, embarrassed and bothered.”
Flanagan, who is black, said he has experienced few days of bitterness in the 30-plus years he’s spent with the department.
We been saying this here at Malcolm-Che!! Anyone who has people behind bars has heard the stories of rape. And like it’s noted in this article, prison rape is part and parcel of the entire direction of prisons as punishment, not rehabilitation. Guards look the other way, prisoners look the other way, no one does anything. You know who did do something though? Activists like those known as the Angola 3. These Black Panther brothers knew that there could be no unity behind bars without stopping the ‘punk factory’ going on, the sexual exploitation. Make sure you read this article, its a MUST READ!!
Oh yeah, and for those of you who don’t like it when Malcolm-Che says the prison guards are the most powerful gang inside the pen, here’s a statistic for you: That study also said more prisoners reported abuse by staff than by other prisoners: 2.9 percent to about 2 percent, respectively.
Panel on Prison Rape Hears Victims’ Chilling Accounts
Three prison rape victims at the San Francisco hearing on the problem. From the left, Cecilia Chung, Hope Hernandez and Chance Martin.
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 19 – T. J. Parsell was a lanky pimple-faced adolescent bent on mischief. So when he found a toy gun one evening in 1978 while wandering home from a high school party, he thought nothing of pointing it at a store clerk and grumbling, “Your money or your life.”
He got $50 for what he now calls “a stupid impulsive prank.” The incident landed the 17-year-old Parsell in an adult jail, where on his first night, an older inmate spiked his drink with Thorazine and sexually abused and raped him.
“While my friends prepared for our high school prom, I was being gang raped,” Mr. Parsell testified on Friday to a Congressional commission investigating prison sexual abuse and rape.
Mr. Parsell, now 45, and a successful software executive who lives on Long Island, was one of six victims of prison rape to relate disturbing accounts with a bipartisan panel of The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission here.
“What they took from me went beyond sex,” Mr. Parsell said. “They’d stolen my manhood, my identity and part of my soul.”
The panel, which also heard from state and federal legislators, law enforcement and prison officials and mental health experts, has been investigating the prevalence, cause and possible solutions to a problem that many experts say has escalated as the prison system is collapsing. Overcrowding, staff shortages and budget cuts have contributed to an often taboo topic.
“As a society, we have an obligation to protect the people we lock up, even though they have harmed society,” the commission chairman, Judge Reggie B. Walton of Federal District Court in Washington, said. “Some people say inmates get what they deserve. But they don’t think about the overall impact on society.”
The body, created by the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, was appointed by President Bush in June 2004, focusing on questions like inmates’ physical and mental problems after being released and economic burdens.
Judge Walton, speaking before the meeting here, the second in a national series, conceded in an interview that the government did not know the magnitude of prison rape.
“We don’t really know the prevalence right now,” he said. “But I’ve been in the criminal justice system for 20 years and I have always believed the anecdotal evidence.”
On July 31, the Justice Department released its first statistical report on prison rape and inmate sexual abuse, a report also required under the 2003 act. It estimated that there were at least 8,210 reported incidents of sexual abuse and rape a year within a prison population that exceeds 2.1 million.
According to the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, prison assaults rose 26 percent from 2000 to 2004.
Kendell Spruce told the commission that he was infected with H.I.V. after having been raped at knifepoint in 1991 in an Arkansas state prison. Mr. Spruce, who was convicted of forging a check to buy cocaine, said that in one nine-month period he was raped by at least 27 inmates. He was 28 years old and weighed 123 pounds.
“The physical pain was devastating,” he said. “But the emotional pain was even worse.”
A spokeswoman for the Arkansas Correction Department told The Associated Press that the accusations were untrue that that she believed that Mr. Spruce initiated the activity or was a willing participant. After his five-year term, Mr. Parsell returned to society as an addict of drugs, to “drown out the memories and pain.”
He continues to hold back tears as he says he still struggles with the emotional residue of rape, a crime that tarnished his self-esteem and ability to trust.
Chance Martin, 50, an advocate for the homeless here, told the panel that he was incarcerated for 72 hours in April 1973, when he was arrested as an 18-year-old at a party where another guest had hashish. The charges were dropped, but Mr. Martin’s three days in jail nearly ruined his life.
“On a purely emotional level,” he said after testifying, “I have issues with self-confidence and trust since that day.”
Mr. Martin echoed others’ statements when he faulted a deteriorating prison system and what he described as a society that is indifferent, and at times disdainful, of people who have been incarcerated.
“Prison rape is a symptom of American society’s retreat from rehabilitation toward a system that relies purely on punishment,” he said.
The secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Roderick Q. Hickman, told the panel that California was trying to quantify the problem. But he said outdated prison designs, inadequate electronic surveillance systems and an antiquated computer database had stalled progress.
The information technology “system in California is completely inadequate,” Mr. Hickman said.
“We need a system that can report and handle the cultural classifications of the population.” he added.
Mr. Hickman, appointed last month, said he was working to streamline and centralize procedures to investigate accusations of sexual abuse that were previously handled by individual prisons.
To address guard intransigence, the department has established training programs intended to break what Mr. Hickman called “the code of silence” among guards, behavior that has helped conceal prison rapes.
Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat who was an initial co-sponsor of the 2003 law, equated prison rape with human rights violations. She and other prison rights advocates have stressed the need for “zero tolerance” and a corrections system that accommodates different sexual and cultural orientations.
“By doing nothing,” Ms. Lee said, “we condone this inhumane and abusive behavior. Indifference, deliberate or not, violates the Eight Amendment of the Constitution banning cruel and unusual punishment.”
In the afternoon, the panel heard criminologists, law enforcement officials and leaders of transgender, lesbian, gay and bisexual groups about the need for better inmate classification.
“We don’t want a first-time offender charged with drunken driving to be housed next to a guy who has committed multiple armed robberies, and who has been in and out of the system for years,” said Bart Lanni, the sheriff’s deputy for Los Angeles County.
Mr. Lanni said misplaced inmates ran an increased risk of being a target of sexual abuse.
“Predators looking to rape someone tend to pick people without close ties or a gang affiliation,” Dr. Terry A. Kupers, a psychiatrist and an expert on prison rape, said.
All the victims testifying on Friday said that they might have escaped their rapes if the authorities had placed them with inmates of similar age, race, sexual orientation and the same categories of crime.
Capitalists in America don’t want the world to see what the occupation really looks like!! Malcolm-Che says “bring ‘em out!!” Let them see what goes on in an occupation! More than that, let them see what goes on in our own jails right here in America!! This type of activity isn’t only happening at Abu Ghraib, its happening at Riker’s Island, San Quentin, etc!! Whether Ameicans are administering a prison in Iraq or North Carolina the conditions are the same: rape, brutality, violence, depravity and misery!! End the war in Iraq (for real, not just renaming combat soldiers and redrawing city limits)!! End the prison state here in America!!
Photos show rape and sex abuse in Iraq jails: report
LONDON (Reuters) – Photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse which U.S. President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday.
The images are among photographs included in a 2004 report into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison conducted by U.S. Major General Antonio Taguba.
Taguba included allegations of rape and sexual abuse in his report, and on Wednesday he confirmed to the Daily Telegraph that images supporting those allegations were also in the file.
“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” Taguba, who retired in January 2007, was quoted as saying in the paper.
He said he supported Obama’s decision not to release them, even though Obama had previously pledged to disclose all images relating to abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.
“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one,” Taguba said. “The sequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.
“The mere depiction of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”
The newspaper said at least one picture showed an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Others are said to depict sexual assaults with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
The photographs relate to 400 alleged cases of abuse carried out at Abu Ghraib and six other prisons between 2001 and 2005.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Female U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have more to fear than roadside bombs or enemy ambushes. They also are at risk of being raped or sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers.
“The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq,” a book based on 40 in-depth interviews, recounts the stories of female veterans who served in combat zones and tells of rape, sexual assault and harassment by male counterparts.
Some were warned by officers not to go to the latrine by themselves. One began carrying a knife in case she was attacked by comrades. Others said they felt discouraged to report assaults.
“The horror of it is that it is their own side that is doing this to them,” said the book’s author, Helen Benedict, a journalism professor at Columbia University in New York. The book was released in the United States on Wednesday.
One in 10 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are female, and more women have fought and died in the Iraq war than any since World War Two, according to U.S. Department of Defense statistics cited in the book.
Benedict said the book’s title comes from the isolation female U.S. soldiers experience when combining the trauma of their combat duties with sexual harassment by fellow soldiers.
“Because women are under so much more danger now and actually in the battle, it’s a particularly tragic situation because all soldiers are supposed to be able to rely on one another to watch their backs,” Benedict said.
“And how can you feel that way if your fellow soldiers are harassing you all day or trying to rape you or actually even raping you?”
One such soldier, Marti Ribeiro, was a third-generation Air Force sergeant who served in Afghanistan in 2006 as a combat correspondent with the Army’s all-male 10th Mountain Division. Her story includes an account of being attacked and raped by a U.S. soldier in uniform while guarding a post.
After completing the shift and not showering to substantiate the attack, she reported it to authorities, only to be told if she filed a claim she would be charged with dereliction of duty for leaving her weapon unattended. She left the military.
“I had dreams of becoming an officer one day, like my father and grandfather,” she says in the book. “Unfortunately, because I’m female, those dreams will not come true.”
SURVEYS UNDERSCORE PROBLEM
The number of reports of sexual assault in the U.S. military rose by 8 percent in fiscal 2008 from the previous year and by 25 percent in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report released by the Pentagon in March.
There were 2,908 reports overall of sexual assault by members of the military. Such assaults include rape, indecent assault and attempted rape, the report said.
Of the 40 women Benedict interviewed who served between 2003 and 2006, 10 said they had been raped, five said they were sexually assaulted including attempted rape, and 13 reported sexual harassment.
A new play based on Benedict’s work was performed in New York and may tour the United States. After a recent performance, real soldiers hugged the actors who portrayed them. Some wiped away tears.
U.S. officials said the increase in assaults was due to efforts to make it easier to report them.
Cynthia Smith, a Department of Defense spokeswoman, said the department was committed to eliminating sexual assault from the military through prevention and response policies and eliminating barriers to reporting assaults.
“The Department of Defense’s goal is to establish a climate of confidence that encourages victims to report sexual assault and get the care they need,” she said in an e-mail.
Benedict and some researchers say U.S. government figures are much lower than their findings because the government only counts those brave enough to report the assaults.
The problem is not new to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A 2003 survey of more than 550 female veterans who served in wars from Vietnam to the first Gulf war found that 30 percent said they suffered from rape or attempted rape and 79 percent reported being sexually harassed, according to the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.
FLORISSANT, Mo. — Inside the tidy suburban home of John and Linda Johnson, no photos of their eldest daughter grace the walls. Army Pfc. LaVena Johnson was just 19 when she died in Iraq in 2005; to this day her parents cannot bear to display reminders of her life.
John Johnson does possess other photos of his daughter — explicit color shots of her autopsy and death scene. He shows them to a visitor. They are horrifying: LaVena Johnson in a pool of blood. LaVena Johnson’s corpse on a coroner’s table.
John Johnson does not let his wife, Linda, or four children see these images, but he studies the photos for hours at a time, trying to determine how his daughter died.
Army investigators ruled that LaVena Johnson committed suicide by firing her M-16 automatic rifle into her mouth. Her body was found beside the rifle inside a contractor’s storage tent on a U.S. military base in Balad, Iraq, on July 19, 2005.
There was no suicide note, no recovered bullet and no significant gunshot residue on her hands. But the Army cited fellow soldiers’ reports that she was depressed and had spoken of killing herself.
John Johnson says his daughter was raped and murdered, with her death scene staged to make it appear that she shot herself. He accuses the Army of covering up for a killer or killers to conceal a soldier-on-soldier murder, explaining that military personnel would have had unrestricted access to the area where his daughter died and therefore would not have attracted undue attention.
If LaVena Johnson’s death were investigated as a homicide, John Johnson added, it would raise questions about base security and discourage women from enlisting.
In 2005, in response to concerns about sexual assaults against female service members, the Pentagon established the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. Citing a reluctance to report rape for fear of stigma or reprisals, the office does not share information with law enforcement or the military command.
Like the Johnsons, other families have questioned the military’s findings of suicide in the deaths of their daughters in Iraq or Afghanistan. They too accuse the military of jumping to conclusions and ignoring evidence of murder. But these grieving families have discovered that there are no clear answers and few conclusive facts — only murky evidence that can be interpreted more than one way. The result is a climate of mistrust and suspicion that leaves the military on the defensive and the families feeling deceived.
Christoper Grey, a spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, called its investigation of the Johnson case “thorough and complete.” He said the command is ready to reopen any investigation in which “new credible information warranting further investigation is brought to our attention.”
Of the 115 female service member deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 16 have been ruled suicides. Overall, 205 of the 4,868 military deaths in those wars through Jan. 31, were ruled suicides. The 128 reported Army suicides in 2008 was the highest annual level since the Pentagon began tabulating suicides in 1980.
The Johnson case, and several others involving female service members, have been championed by retired Army Col. Ann Wright, a former U.S. diplomat.
Wright accuses the military of withholding evidence pointing to sexual assaults and other attacks on female service members. She contends that the military has been too quick to close some women’s deaths as suicides without first conducting thorough homicide investigations. She accuses the military of stonewalling families who question its findings.
“What the military is doing is egregious,” she said. “In many cases, they have the information the families want but refuse to release it. These families are really fighting upstream.”
For the Johnsons, the circumstance of their daughter’s death has become an obsession. It is a wound that may never heal.
For more than three years, John Johnson has studied every aspect of his daughter’s death. He keeps cross-referenced stacks of investigative reports, crime scene photographs, lab reports and angry letters sent to the Army, the Pentagon and Congress.
The Johnsons, both former Army employees, say they feel betrayed by a military they and their daughter served honorably. In his family room, John Johnson stabbed his finger at an Army autopsy report, his voice rising in indignation.
“I’m not just a grieving father guessing at things,” he said. “I’m going strictly by the facts. I’m going by the Army’s own evidence.”
After John Johnson filed a Freedom of Information Act request and enlisted the aid of his congressman, the Army provided original color autopsy and crime scene photos in June 2007.
As he studied the photos, he said, he saw blood inside and outside the contractor’s tent. Other evidence suggested to him that LaVena Johnson was killed elsewhere and her body dumped in the tent: Bootprints in blood and on a bag of cement, the absence of blood and brain spatter on the tent, and the Army’s failure to find the fatal bullet.
A small fire next to the body was evidence, he said, that someone tried to cover up her murder. A caustic substance appears to have been poured on her genitals, he said, to eliminate signs of rape.
The abrasions on LaVena Johnson’s face suggest to John Johnson that she was beaten, and scratches on her arms are likely defensive wounds, he said. And he does not believe his 5-foot-1 daughter’s arms were long enough to pull the trigger of an M-16 cradled between her legs, as described in the Army report.
A gunshot residue test, performed on the woman’s hands to determine whether she had fired a weapon, found “insignificant” residue, the report said.
The report quoted three soldiers as saying LaVena Johnson seemed depressed and spoke of suicide. But two of them also said she told them she was only joking and would never take her own life. “She didn’t want to hurt her family,” one soldier said.
A statement by her company commander, Capt. David Woods, said: “This soldier was clearly happy and seemingly very healthy physically and emotionally.”
One soldier said LaVena Johnson was upset over a breakup with a soldier she had met in the U.S., the report said. She learned 10 days before her death that she had genital warts, according to the report.
Grey, the Army spokesman, said the only blood found outside the tent was on a bench that had been removed after LaVena’s Johnson’s body was discovered. Investigators are not aware of any boot prints in blood or on a cement bag, and found no cuts, bruises or abrasions “that would have led us to believe that they had been created by suspicious means,” Grey said.
Investigators believe the bullet exited through an open tent flap window, Grey said. They concluded that LaVena Johnson had burned pages from her journal before she shot herself, starting a small fire inside the tent.
Grey said investigators demonstrated that it was “easily possible” for a person of LaVena Johnson’s stature to shoot herself through the mouth with her M-16. And because investigators found no evidence of sexual assault, Grey said, there was no reason to collect vaginal or fingernail swabs.
Paul Stone, a spokesman for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, said the damage to LaVena Johnson’s face is consistent with the rapidly expanding gases discharged by an M-16, which he said can break bones and leave bruises and abrasions. The Institute also concluded that LaVena Johnson committed suicide.
After John Johnson met in April with U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee reviewed the case. It concluded that further review “would not find anything to change the findings and conclusions” of the Army.
John Johnson called the committee’s conclusions “insulting.”
The Johnsons had their daughter’s body exhumed in 2007 for an autopsy, conducted by Dr. Michael Graham, the St. Louis city medical examiner.
Graham concluded that she died of a gunshot wound fired through her mouth. In an interview, Graham said he could not determine whether the wound was self-inflicted because John Johnson did not provide him with crime scene photos and other material. John Johnson had not yet received the crime scene photos from the Army at the time of the autopsy.
“I saw no evidence that it was not self-inflicted,” Graham said.
John Johnson called Graham’s conclusions “disappointing” and said a lawyer is advising him on what to do next.
Linda Johnson wept as she recounted her final phone conversation with her daughter, two days before she died.
“She was her normal jubilant self,” Linda Johnson said. “She talked about coming home and Christmas plans. She loved Christmas — she told me make sure her father didn’t start decorating till she got home. This was not a girl getting ready to harm herself.”
The family has not celebrated Christmas since LaVena Johnson’s death, she said.
John Johnson was stoic as he thumbed through his daughter’s autopsy photos. With his shaved head and black mustache, he appeared resolute, unbowed.
He spread the photos before him once more, convinced they contain the answers he is seeking. “I’m not giving up,” he said, “until somebody tells me the truth about what happened to my baby girl.”
A Durban Metro Police officer who got drunk and shot his wife in a “premeditated” attack two years ago is back on the job and carrying a firearm after appealing against his discharge from the service.
Opposition parties and anti-abuse organisations have called for a high level investigation into the re-employment of Thandolwenkosi Mvuyana, who pleaded guilty to attempted murder in March 2008.
According to documents leaked to the Daily News, Mvuyana had more than 10 years’ service under his belt when he shot his wife in the leg during a drunken domestic fracas in February 2007. Arrested not long after, Mvuyana continued to serve on the Metro Police force for more than 20 months as he waited for the case to come to court.
He was sentenced to five years imprisonment, wholly suspended for five years, but was not declared unfit to possess a firearm. He was also ordered to pay his wife R5 000 in compensation. The municipality fired him not long after.
But Mvuyana is now back on the job, again carrying a service pistol after a controversial appeal hearing during which he was reinstated to his previous position within Metro Police, after serving a 10-day suspension without pay. The Metro Police firearm board is now expected to rule on whether Mvuyana is allowed to take his pistol home after shifts.
In deciding to reinstate Mvuyana, appeal officer VB Ngubane said that although the case involving the firearm was a “very serious” one, Mvuyana had showed remorse and had undergone voluntary treatment and counselling. Mvuyana was a victim of procedural irregularities because he had not enjoyed a speedy trial, Ngubane added.
“Since the incident took place while the member was off duty and no decision was made with regard to unfitness to possess firearms… the employer did not see the seriousness of the case which would have warranted the suspension from work,” Ngubane said.
The DA and IFP have now called for an executive committee investigation into Mvuyana, saying they were concerned with the way in which the matter was handled.
City management has also stepped in to challenge Mvuyana’s employment in the Metro Police.
“We are obtaining legal opinion on alternative charges to be laid against this employee,” said city manager Michael Sutcliffe.
Mvuyana’s lawyer this morning said he would consult with his client before issuing a statement to the media.
DA caucus leader John Steenhuisen is now poised to initiate separate legal or disciplinary action, if the firearm board allows Mvuyana to take his firearm home.
“The shooting of a woman with a firearm owned by someone in the service of the municipality is an extremely serious offence.
“I am not comfortable knowing a man who was under the influence when he shot an innocent person is back on duty and has access to firearms,” Steenhuisen said.
An angry IFP caucus leader, Theresa Thembi Nzuza, said she was concerned about the state of Metro Police.
“A criminal is a criminal. We do not need people like this in Metro Police. And as a woman activist, I feel for his wife,” she said.
Levels of domestic abuse and incidents of violence were higher in police homes, and a suspended sentence and 10-day suspension were a slap on the wrist, said Selvie Pillay of the Advice Desk for the Abused.
“In all fairness, people can be remorseful or regret what they have done, but cases like this are often not treated seriously enough. We know that police operate under stressful environments, but that is still no excuse for abuse,” she said.
We at Malcolm-Che have no doubt about the widespread and rampant nature of sexual abuse at female prisons (and male prisons). Here is a fresh article about new allegations and another article detailing the end of others.
Prison Guard Charged with Sexually Assaulting Inmates
Paul Vick has been charged with 15 counts, including six of second-degree sexual assault against inmates, one by use or threat of force of violence. He could face 271 years in prison.
MILWAUKEE – Paul Vick used to work at the state prison in downtown Milwaukee. He now sits in jail right across the street on allegations he had sex with inmates. Vick has been charged with 15 counts, including six counts of second degree sexual assault against inmates, one by use or threat of force of violence. He has also been charged with six counts of delivery of illegal articles to an inmate and five counts of misconduct in public office.
If found guilty on all 15 counts, he could face 271 years in prison. The criminal complaint says that some of the counts involve a series of incidents with one woman in the summer of 2006, when Vick, who in his role as a police sergeant, was supervising the women’s section of the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility. Vick allegedly told an inmate that he thought she was pretty, gave her gifts, and then touched that inmate in her private areas in ways that she did not give consent. He then allegedly threatened her to be quiet about the incident, saying “you’ve got to be more nice to me if you want to keep your job.”
She was pregnant when she returned to the MSDF a year later, and he allegedly told her that the baby she was pregnant with was supposed to be his. The complaint also says that Vick had multiple consensual sexual encounters with two other female inmates, one of whom he also gave marijuana. “I think it’s sick,” said one visitor at the prison at the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility. “It’s misconduct,” said visitor Camisha Reed. “It’s definitely not something you should do at the work place.” Vick was arrested Monday after a five month long investigation by the Prison Warden. State prison officials would not talk about the case except to say Vick has been suspended without pay. If the allegations are true, visitor Jessica Scioli says they’re troubling. “To me, it’s like they abuse their power,” said Scioli. “They treat people that are in prison and stuff like they are beneath them, that they are not worth anything. “It doesn’t matter what they do. It seems like nobody cares.” The female inmates involved in the allegations have been moved to other prisons.
The Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of 10 women who were awarded $15.5 million in damages last year for sexual abuse by guards while they were prisoners in the 1990s at Scott Correctional Facility.
The Michigan Department of Corrections had appealed the 2008 verdict, but the three-member appeals court panel said that various issues and arguments raised on appeal were “disingenuous,” “fundamentally flawed” and “muddled.”
It was a stinging defeat for prison officials, who had repeatedly claimed the verdict would be reversed and taxpayers would not end up paying.
The prisons of this country are not a place where rehabilitation happens. They are a place where violence is institutionalized and the corrections officers operate as the most powerful gang inside the prison. In the following testimony we have a group of women detailing the horrific abuse they suffered at the hands of the corrections officers. It is truly despicable, and not an unusual case by any means. The only thing that is unusual about this case is that it made it to the courtroom. We at Malcolm-Che first read about this abuse in the excellent book “Lockdown America” by Christian Parenti. The abuse was documented by Human Rights Watch in a report here: http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1996/Us1.htm#N_691
Female inmate described rapes in lawsuit against state
Toni Bunton sat in the witness chair with her arms folded across her chest. She wore black pants and a lavender V-neck sweater over a white turtleneck. Her hair was parted down the middle and fell down her back. After 16 years in prison, she had learned to cut her own hair by looking in a mirror.
It was the third week of January last year, in a courtroom in Ann Arbor. Bunton was the first of 10 prisoners to testify in a civil lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Corrections. They were among more than 500 female prisoners who said they were repeatedly raped and molested by male guards.
Dick Soble, one of the lawyers for the women, asked Bunton about the crime that landed her in prison. She described a drug deal that had turned into a murder. She didn’t pull the trigger, but she drove the getaway car, she admitted. She made no excuses.
“I deserved to be punished,” Bunton told the jury.
Soble pivoted to the allegations in the suit, and the first time she was assaulted. “It was winter of ‘93,” she said, so softly it was hard to hear.
Judge Timothy Connors asked her to speak up.
“He took me in there and, like, he was kissing me,” Bunton said of her rape by a guard in a prison bathroom at Scott Correctional Facility when she was 19. She motioned to her neck and chest, as if trying to scrape away the memory. “He pulled my jogging pants down. My butt was against the sink. And he penetrated me.”
She said she did not report the incident to prison officials because she feared retaliation from the guard or others.
“He said he would make my life miserable,” she said.
Bunton slumped. The other women wiped away tears.
‘I blamed myself’
Bunton testified she was raped eight times in prison. She described each attack in as much detail as she could remember.
By the time she talked about the third rape, her voice was quivering. She was crouched on the witness stand, ducking her head, her arms wrapped tight and her right hand covering most of her face.
“He came in there and started feelin’ all over me,” she told the jury, before describing the rape itself.
Allan Soros, an assistant attorney general representing the prison system, sat at the defense table, his hands folded, his eyes locked on Bunton.
Bunton took a deep breath. She faced the jury but didn’t focus on anyone.
“Do you want to take a minute, Toni?” Soble asked.
“No, I want to hurry up and get this over with,” she said, her voice breaking.
Each rape lasted about 5 to 10 minutes, she estimated.
One time an officer “came into the room and he was on his knees at the door asking me if he could give me oral sex.” Bunton said she started crying and he left. Another time, an officer climbed on top of her, while she was sleeping in her cell.
Lawyers for the women knew they had to make jurors see their clients as human beings, not as prisoners making claims for money.
As Bunton testified, several people in the courtroom wiped tears from their eyes.
“I was away from my family, 18 years old,” she said of entering prison. “I had never been around people like that. I just don’t think I was sophisticated enough to deal with the types of people that I had to deal with.”
“I felt this was part of prison life. I didn’t know any different. Nobody sat me down and told me.”
She cried. “I felt it was part of the punishment. I blamed myself.”
She stopped and held her head, crying.
Faint hopes
Bunton told the jury that she is worried about the future.
She worries about how she would deal with men, if she ever got out of prison. She said she would have to know a man for several years, before she trusted him, before she felt comfortable with him.
“I want to be normal and I want to have that opportunity and I want to have children, but I don’t know what is going to happen.”
Testimony concludes
On cross-examination, Soros did not ask Bunton any specific questions about the rapes. He did not raise any doubt that it happened, other than noting that Bunton had not reported the abuse when it happened.
Instead, Soros focused on the achievements and education that Bunton received in prison. She had earned an associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree and master’s degree while behind bars. In many ways, she was a model prisoner. Soros tried to raise a subtle point: If Bunton endured so many sexual assaults in prison, if she truly suffered, how could she be so successful?
After more than 1 1/2 hours, Bunton finished her testimony.
“Toni,” her lawyer said. “It’s over.”
“It’s done?”
“It’s done.”
She picked up a cup of water and walked off the stand.
Deborah LaBelle, the lead lawyer for the prisoners, wiped tears from her eyes.
Reviewing the evidence
After three weeks of such testimony by the 10 women, closing arguments began Jan. 31. The prisoners did not appear in court. They were held in a small cell behind the courtroom.
But the walls were thin.
Bunton stood up, leaned forward and tried to stick her head between the bars, turning her ear to hear bits and pieces.
Soble went over the testimony with jurors.
It wasn’t just the wrenching stories of the women themselves.
A female guard testified that she saw guards take women down back stairways, go into their cells at night, flirt or talk vulgarly to them. But she did not report the incidents to her bosses because, she said, she was warned to stay quiet or face retaliation from other guards.
Julie Kennedy Carpenter said that prisoners told her they put wastebaskets by their doors, as an early warning system in the event a guard entered their room at night.
Also damning, Soble noted, were public reports by watchdog and governmental groups in the 1990s which found inappropriate sexual contact between guards and prisoners at Michigan prisons. Soble also pointed out something else: The state did not put on any testimony to dispute the women’s suffering, or call any guards to deny the allegations.
Prison officials, he argued, “refused to recognize they had a problem.”
The defense sums up
After a short break, Soros gave his closing response.
In a three-week trial, the defense had lasted only 59 minutes, 30 seconds. Soros called only one witness to the stand, former Warden Joan Yukins, who testified that every guard received a handbook each year which outlined inappropriate behavior, including rules about physical contact, harassment and prohibiting sexual relations. She testified that she believed officers had been properly trained in how to deal with female prisoners.
Soros then attacked the credibility of different witnesses and the outside reports citing abuse by male guards. The researchers, he said, didn’t directly investigate the women’s claims and instead simply repeated their allegations.
The state, he said, had improved the way it investigated abuse and trained guards.
“To say the department just sat back and did nothing, just let everybody run the place, is just totally false,” Soros said.
Sexual misconduct, he said, is everywhere in society. It’s in homes and offices, schools and churches. But he said the level of abuse at Scott was “unfairly characterized in this trial.” Though Soros had presented no evidence to refute the women’s testimony, he argued that the sexual abuse was not as rampant as the women and experts suggested.
“A big part of this trial is common sense,” Soros told jurors. How could prison officials take action to prevent sexual assaults when so many of these women never reported being assaulted? “How can Warden Yukins take any action to help any of these plaintiffs when they are not telling her what their problem is? Then, they turn around and sue her.”
‘It’s outrageous’
Soble, the women’s lawyer, had the last word.
“What you heard in this courtroom today is what women have heard every single day of their lives in prison,” he said. “They are liars. They are cheaters. They can’t be believed. They are sluts. They are drug addicts. And they are prisoners. … it’s outrageous.”
“Even today, in this court, with the overwhelming evidence, what they are telling you is: There is no problem.”
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