Rape of prisoners

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Prisoner rape is a sex crime committed against prisoners , mostly inside the prison. Under the English name prison rape , German prison rape , the phenomenon has become particularly important in the USA .

Studies and estimates from the USA

According to a 2006 study by the US Department of Justice , 2,205 inmates were raped by prison staff in the United States . 262 of these reports were verified. According to studies and reports by other national and international organizations, the number of rape among prisoners in the United States, as in other countries, is much higher than official figures from individual governments indicate.

The Organization Human Rights Watch 140,000 of those detained in 1996 in the United States men around were raped while in detention. According to the New York City-based organization Stop Prisoner Rape, it is mainly men who are victims of prison rape in prisons around the world. In particular, younger men are among the victims. Women around the world are mostly victims of their male guards and guards. Men, on the other hand, are largely the victims of same-sex crimes around the world, committed either by inmates in prison or by guards.

Russia

At the time of the Soviet Union under communism , the rape of prisoners played a fixed role and served u. a. to humiliate political and religious prisoners. Female prisoners were often distributed to privileged male prisoners. In terms of quantity , however, the rape of male victims also played the greater role here. The Russian-language Wikipedia article went into this in detail, but has since been deleted.

Brazil

In Brazil there are no official surveys of rape in prisons, but the rape and killing of rapists, and especially pedophiles, by other prisoners is very common and is often deliberately facilitated by the police on duty. In the eyes of the prisoners, however , pimps and members of drug gangs are not considered rapists, even though they often enslave and rape women and girls for “professional reasons”.

However, a report was submitted to the Organization of American States by Women's and Prisoners' Associations in March 2007 that disclosed abuse of female prisoners in 2006. In Brazil, it is relatively common for women prisoners to be placed in male cells, which usually contain 20 to 50 men, where they are helplessly exposed to rape. Reasons for this are sometimes the lack of cells for female prisoners in smaller facilities, but more often reprisals by the police officers on duty against individual female prisoners, orders from incarcerated drug lords coupled with bribes to the police officers in order to provide themselves and other prisoners with "fresh meat" and loud Police statements also included mix-ups and oversights.

The number of unreported cases is naturally very high, but in November 2007 one case made a big splash in the press when a young person in prison in the city of Abaetetuba , in northern Pará state , had to share the only cell with over twenty men and was abused for 26 days. Since then, cases have repeatedly come to light. The Brazilian activist Petala Parreira describes a drastic case that became known through the very active prostitute association Aprosmig of the state of Minas Gerais in the form of a free narrative and lists more than twenty other scandalous cases in the documentary section .

Similar conditions prevail in many other Latin American countries, but the atrocities rarely come to light unless the perpetrators are so proud of their crimes that they themselves distribute recordings of them, as two felons did in Paraguay in 2010 and thus worldwide the headlines came.

Islamic countries

In predominantly Islamic countries, a lack of awareness of the perpetrators of the injustice of rape is often observed, since according to their interpretation the Koran with sura 33 verse 52 justifies the sexual claim against previously captured women religiously and legally. Although the verse initially only seems to refer to the prophet Mohammed and prisoners of war, both in history and today it still applies. a. Islamic militias often extended the claim to all captured or kidnapped women and girls in order to legally turn them into sex slaves .

In Islamic countries, a woman is mostly unable to report that she has been raped, since as a rape victim she would be disgraced for her family and socially outlawed.

It is also an ancient tradition to rape virgins before execution . According to Sharia law , a virgin cannot be executed. However, this law, which was supposed to be intended to protect virgins, results in virgins being raped before execution. Law-abiding governments even insist that the rapist marry the prisoner for a day so that the rape does not constitute illegal extramarital sex . After the rape, the victim receives a divorce letter .

Rape in prisons is often the result of the virginity test , which is mandatory in many prisons. In order to avoid that a virgin is raped and deflowered in prison, it should be checked from time to time whether the hymen of a prisoner is still present or the vagina is still tight and closed. Under this pretext, police officers or doctors open the vagina or insert two fingers to test whether it is firm. Foolishly, even girls and women who are no longer virgins are often subjected to this humiliating examination every week. Since the test involves the introduction of fingers or suitable objects, human rights organizations already see this as rape.

The mass abuse of virgin tests on the occasion of the rallies in Egypt in 2011 on Tahrir Square, where arrested demonstrators were subjected to this test to the applause of the other soldiers , became known. Often they were filmed so defenseless and with their legs wide open and fearful that the soldiers would publish the material, which would mean their ostracism from society.

The rape of prisoners in history

In many epochs rape was tolerated or even ordered. The rape of prisoners accused of witchcraft between the 16th and 18th centuries is well documented . Because certain investigations and torture made it necessary that the victim was naked, the imagination was torturers excited, especially when it came to pretty women, and they take advantage of the vulnerability of chained in the cells women to later on them pass away. There is evidence of many rapes because of the victims' charges ; the alleged witches, so the prosecution , enchanted and seduced the guards .

A well-known instrument of torture was the vaginal pear, a pear-shaped metal instrument that was inserted into the vagina or other body orifices and spread open with a screw. From today's perspective, this torture is in itself rape.

Public debate

The subject of rape of prisoners and men in general has long been a taboo . It was not until 1980 that the first organization was founded in the USA, with the establishment of Just Detention International , to publicly oppose sexual violence in prisons. Leading member of the association and well-known activist was Stephen Donaldson, better known as Donny the Punk , who was raped a dozen times while in prison until his AIDS death in 1996 .

In the media

Movie and TV

The issue of prisoner rape has been treated in the past and present in many television and film dramas internationally. While films like The Condemned and American History X still showed the serious effects on the victims, others like Alles Routine , Half Baked and Ab im Jail later took up this topic with comedy and "black humor". In recent years it has played a role in television series such as Oz - Hell Behind Bars and Prison Break in the United States or Behind Bars - Der Frauenknast in Germany.

Novels

In the novels that follow, rape among prisoners is an essential theme.

Web links

Wikisource: Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ exactly: inmate-on-inmate nonconsensual sexual act .
  2. ↑ www.bjs.gov: Sexual Violence Reported by Correctional Authorities , 2006 (PDF, English). / www.bjs.gov: Sexual Victimization in Local Jails Reported by Inmates , 2007 (PDF, English).
  3. ↑ Human Rights Watch / Joanne Mariner: No Escape - Male Rape in US Prisons , 2001 (English).
  4. ↑ Amnesty International : Stop Violence Against Women ( Memento of the original dated January 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.amnestyusa.org archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English).
  5. ↑ Lifestyle: The Story of the Gulag Women
  6. ↑ Constant attacks on rapists in jail resulted in death (in Portuguese)
  7. ↑ Accused rapist found dead in cell (in Portuguese)
  8. ^ "Female prisoners suffer abuse in 5 states" (From the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, November 26, 2007)
  9. ↑ Folha Online: "The case of youths housed in a cell with men" . Folha de S. Paulo , December 10, 2007.
  10. ↑ Aprosmig (prostitutes Association) Minas Gerais
  11. ↑ Petala Parreira: Girls in the men's prison (documentary part) . neobooks, Vila Velha 2015, ISBN 978-3-7427-4535-4 , pp. 108 ff .
  12. ↑ Focus: Inmates rape girls
  13. ↑ Sura 33.50ff
  14. ↑ Stern: Islamic State considers sex slaves for rape
  15. ↑ Islamic State justifies enslavement of Yazidis
  16. ↑ O Globo: Islamic State Justifies General Rape (in Portuguese)
  17. ↑ RTL: Women are not allowed to say no
  18. ↑ Idea Spectrum: Does the rape have anything to do with religion?
  19. ^ Journal "Die Welt": Raped in the Turkish prison. Fear of the victim of being killed by the family.
  20. ↑ Women in Iran
  21. ↑ Teólogo iraniano muçulmano legitima os estupros de presos (em inglês)
  22. ^ Theological foundations and rape in prisons
  23. ↑ Women in Iran - Women's Day
  24. ↑ BBC: The shame of Afghanistan's virginity tests
  25. ↑ UN calls for the end of the virgin test (in Portuguese)
  26. ↑ Army tortured Egyptian women with "virgin tests"
  27. ↑ General admits virgin tests
  28. ↑ Maiden tests in Egypt: Not guilty - in the sense of the military tribunal
  29. ^ Court forbids virgin tests
  30. ^ Hunting witches in the Duchy of Jülich, paragraph 2
  31. ↑ Hermann Löher : Hochnötige Unterthanige Wemütige Klage der Pious Invalid . 1676, rape of Anna Kemmerlin, the wife of lay judge Peller, by the executioner Hondeschlager and his servant, 43 and 44 , quote: (43) ... handed over to Hencker / Hondeschlager and his servant; you all ordered and ended up shearing off the hare; because then a stranger happens when the Hencker and servant / in a secluded chamber / to attack the honest Scheffen Fraw / to shear off the fears of all ends of their body / and to act insolently to / from them also read in Criminalis dubii. The Frauw screams and shouts loudly! ...
  32. ↑ vaginal bulb
  33. ↑ Use of the most common instruments of torture and punishment