Ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft have now both stated that they will no longer force victims of sexual assault into non-binding arbitration, as has been the practice of both firms until today. Read the rest

In 2017 Hillview Police Department detective John W. Nissen was assigned to drive a rape victim to her home. But prosecutors say he drove her to a hotel instead, and raped her. Read the rest

A woman told police that casino mogul Steve Wynn raped her, and that she became pregnant and had a child from the rape, ' while another has reported she was forced to resign from a Las Vegas job after she refused to have sex with him,' reports AP. Read the rest

Andy Savage is one of the powerful, wealthy evangelical clerics implicated in the #churchtoo movement, in which congregants are disclosing the sexual assaults and harassment they experienced at the hands of faith leaders. Read the rest

In Michigan's Wayne County, Prosecutor Kym Worthy has spent years processing 11,341 rape kits. The kits, found in 2009, were forgotten in a police storage warehouse, where they were routinely dumped without investigation.

Over 800 serial rapists, criminals who have struck 10-15 times without being stopped, were identified. 127 convictions have been made this far.

The Detroit Free Press' Nancy Kaffer interviewed Worthy:

Q: All the things you were talking about, the better tracking system, the new guidelines for when rape kits get tested ... in the National Institute of Justice report on the backlog (by Michigan State University Professor Rebecca Campbell), the big takeaway there was that too often, officers didn't believe victims, and had used disbelief as a way to triage their workload.

A: They just closed cases, even cases where I think they believed the victim ... They closed cases because the women had worked as prostitutes or had mental illness issues or had substance abuse. Didn't believe them, didn't care, and this was one issue that led to the backlog of these kits.

Q: That's something we look for in certain victims — when the victim is a teenage boy of color, or a woman who has been raped, we want them to be perfect. They can't have had a drink or have worked as a prostitute, and if they have, there's a mindset that makes them almost ineligible to be a victim.

A: One of the reasons we have these untested rape kits ... and I can use Detroit as an example, 86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color.

As a Royal Commission in Australia wraps up its investigation into decades of rape by priests (especially rape of children), and decades of Church officials obstructing investigation into the rape, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart says he'll ask the Pope to change the rules so that celibacy for priests is voluntary, not mandatory. Read the rest

Though already released from the very light sentence imposed on him by a sympathetic judge, Stanford rapist Brock Turner wants to have his verdict overturned all the same.

Turner's lawyers argued in their appeal filed Friday that the initial trial was "a detailed and lengthy set of lies."

They are also hoping to overturn the lifetime requirement that Turner register as a sex offender.

Turner's case became a flashpoint in the debate on campus sexual assault after an impassioned victim impact statement from the accuser went viral.

He served only three months of his six-month sentence. One of the high notes in the appeal is its objection to his being described in court as assaulting his victim behind a "trash bin," when it was in fact a "garbage receptacle."

In either case, Turner was gotten off his victim by passers-by who then chased him down.

Just before 1 a.m. on Jan. 18, 2015, Jonsson and Arndt were riding their bikes along a path near the Kappa Alpha fraternity. Jonsson told the cops that movement by a dumpster caught his eye, and he saw a guy on top of a female who was lying on her back, according to a police report.

At first, Jonsson and Arndt assumed the interaction was consensual. But Jonsson said he noticed that the female wasn’t moving as he peddled by. “Something seemed weird,” he told police, because the woman appeared to be unconscious.

Jonsson and Arndt approached the dumpster and yelled “Hey” to the guy who was later revealed to be Turner.

A Michigan repeat rapist was awarded joint custody of the child he impregnated one of his victims with 8 years ago.

Via Patch Michigan:

A Michigan man accused of raping a 12-year-old nine years ago has been awarded joint custody of the child he fathered in the attack, according to media reports. The victim’s attorney is fighting the decision by Sanilac County Circuit Judge Gregory S. Ross under the federal Rape Survivor Custody Act. The case is believed to be the first of its kind in Michigan and perhaps the nation.

In a new development Tuesday, Ross stayed the controversial order in the case against Christopher Mirasolo, 27, of Brown City, after widespread outrage, The Detroit News reported. A hearing will be held Tuesday, Oct. 17.

The case has been poorly handled from the beginning, Rebecca Kiessling, the attorney for the now 21-year-old woman has said. Mirasolo was arrested about a month after the incident when the girl found out she was pregnant, but he took a plea deal for a lesser charge: third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

A rape conviction would have put Mirasolo behind bars for anywhere from 25 years to life. Instead, Mirasolo served only six-and-a-half months in the county jail. The girl and her family were told the plea deal was offered and that first-time sex offenders don’t get prison time “because people come out worse after they go there,” Kiessling told The Detroit News.

After Mirasolo was released from jail, he raped again and served four years in prison, according to “The Steve Gruber Show,” a Lansing-area radio program that initially reported the judge’s decision.

A GOP lawmaker swears he's not the notorious internet misogynist who said this... Read the rest

A woman in Newport Beach was raped by her Uber driver on the way home from a social gathering, according to charges filed by prosecutors in Southern California on Wednesday. Read the rest

District Judge John McKeon sentenced an unnamed man to 60 days in prison plus a suspended 30-year prison sentence (which he will avoid if he completes a sex-offender treatment program and other parole conditions) after the man pleaded guilty to repeatedly raping his own daughter, who was 12 years old at the time. Read the rest

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh had thoughts yesterday on the problems faced by Donald Trump, whose campaign for president is falling apart after a recording emerged of him boasting about sexually assaulting women. Read the rest

Tonight the New York Times published two women who claim to have experienced acts of sexual abuse by the Republican candidate for President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. With great speed the Trump campaign declared these claims "fiction."

This "fiction" claim seems to spit in the face of his soul-less, truth-allergic campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. Conway has been clear, pounding the networks over and over, justifying Trump's shockingly ugly display at the second Presidential debate, that all women accusers must be heard. Even when presented with sworn depositions by the women that said events never occurred! Conway has also falsely accused Hillary Clinton of trying silence these women.

Will it be that Kellyanne only thinks long debunked allegations need to be heard? Will Kellyanne call for Trump to explain these allegations, or that of his raping a 13 year old? Will Kellyanne now try to silence these women? How can they blame Hillary?

Read the rest

Prompted by allegations made against celebrity Bill Cosby, California is ending its 10-year statute of limitations on rape.

Current California law requires prosecution for rape to begin within 10 years of the alleged offence, with some exceptions. Under the new legislation, SB813, there will be no time limit. The change will also apply to crimes for which the statute of limitations has not expired as of 1 January 2017.

Senator Connie Leyva, who introduced the bill, said it told victims of sexual assault that they could seek justice "regardless of when they are ready to come forward".

"Rapists should never be able to evade legal consequences simply because an arbitrary time limit has expired."

Historical cases (such as many of Cosby's victims) are not addressed in the bill, as it will not apply retroactively to crimes that reach the 10-year-limit before Jan 1, 2017. Which is to say, Dec 31, 2006 is the last date for crimes to escape the new legislation.

The U.S. has a patchwork of state-level sexual assault laws, with 43 applying a statute of limitations to rape. The lengths differ widely: Minnesota has the shortest, at 3 years, whereas Ohio's is 20 years. Read the rest

Brock Turner is scheduled to be getting out of jail this week, three months early. Read the rest

Christopher Simcox, who co-founded the now-disbanded Minuteman Civil Defense Corps white supremacist militia group, received a prison sentence of over 19 years today from an Arizona court. Read the rest

According to Mayor Libby Schaaf, Police Chief Sean Whent resigned for "personal reasons," and not because of a report in the East Bay Express that revealed that at least 14 of his officers (along with 4 Alameda County sheriff's deputies and a federal officer) trafficked and had sex with a prostitute who was underage when the trafficking began. Read the rest