Posts Tagged ‘Journal of Interpersonal Violence’
Rape prevention: Kenya’s approach
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 10, 2016
Kenya’s unique approach to rape prevention should have the rest of the world taking note.
You may have seen the story circulating around the internet lately about a group of boys in Kenya whose quick thinking and intervention stopped a rape in progress.
Here’s the program that taught them what to do.
Trigger warning for discussion about sexual assault and prevention programs.
For years, Kenya has faced an epidemic of sexual assault.
1 in 4 women and girls living in Nairobi have been sexually assaulted. Schoolgirls were frequently raped by friends and boyfriends. Clothes have been torn from women’s bodies in public.
Here’s what they did.
In 2010, the group No Means No Worldwide began offering self-defense classes to Nairobi schoolgirls, teaching them how to fight back against rape.
In its early stages, the program focused on providing women in the poorest parts of Kenya with self-defense skills. The program focused on empowering women, not shaming them.
After launch, program founders worked to develop Your Moment of Truth, a separate program for boys.
During early No Means No sessions, girls told instructors that the biggest problems were the boys themselves. The most common attackers were boyfriends.
“If they say the boys are actually the problem, the boys can actually be part of the solution.”
Rape by friends and boyfriends dropped by 20% in schools teaching the Your Moment of Truth program.
Later this year, the Journal of Interpersonal Violence plans to publish a study highlighting the positive effect this training has had on boys.
The study found that boys who go through training were more likely to intervene when witnessing a girl being assaulted, and they were less likely to verbally harass girls.
Additionally, schools featuring this program found that rape by girls’ friends and boyfriends dropped dramatically.
By 2017, every secondary student in Nairobi will undergo assault prevention training.
By teaching kids when they’re young, they’re being empowered for the future. Educating young generations is key in effecting long-term social change.
In many parts of the world, assault prevention starts and ends with what women can do to avoid putting themselves in “high-risk” situations. These are not effective.
Researchers used Kenya’s scenario to test the two methods.
One group of women received the No Means No training while the other took a life-skills class. Girls who received the No Means No training saw a nearly 40% decrease in rapes in the year following the program. Girls who took the life-skills offering were raped at the same rate.
Not only is teaching women how to avoid “high-risk” situations ineffective, but it shifts the blame to the victim for being raped instead of putting it on the rapist for actually committing the crime.
Committing a crime is a choice, and the No Means No program empowers young boys to choose not to commit that crime.
The world should take a cue from Kenya: Empower girls and teach men not to rape.
This is a proven program, and it’s time to roll it out around the world. Suggesting that women are somehow “asking for it” because of something they wear or something they do won’t help stop rape.
Kenya’s approach is wonderful because it empowers and educates instead of blaming and shaming.
If there’s hope of removing rape from the world, it needs to start with early education on the topics of consent and assault.
The program learned that many boys believed it’s justifiable to rape girls who are out alone after dark, wear miniskirts, or are taken on expensive dates.
No Means No developed Your Moment of Truth to highlight life’s tough choices, which, in this case, included whether it’s OK to rape someone. The program was a huge success.
Abusive relationships? A study “Why women refrain from breaking it”?
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 25, 2013
Abusive relationships? Why women refrain from breaking it? And vice versa…
As a resident doctor at AUB Medical Center (Beirut), Lubna Abul-Husn took a deep interest in domestic abuse.
Ten years ago, she interviewed dozens of patients, cataloging their experiences at home with “intimate partner violence,” a term that refers to physical, emotional and verbal abuse of a close partner or spouse.
Kareem Shaheen published in the Lebanese daily The Daily Star, this Oct. 19, 2013: “Why do women in Lebanon stay in abusive relationships?”
Lubna Abul-Husn then spent a year in France studying family legal medicine, returned home and ended her engagement with a fiancé from her province.
Her fiance broke into her home, killed her, her mother and her sister, before committing suicide, according to her colleagues at the time.
File – Women activists protest against domestic violence near the Parliament in Beirut, Monday, July 22, 2013. (The Daily Star/Mahmoud Kheir)
“It was devastating,” said Johnny Awwad, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and head of the division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at AUB Medical Center, and Abul-Husn’s colleague.
Awwad, along with other doctors at AUB, completed the analysis of Abul-Husn’s research. The paper was finally submitted for publication this year in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.
“We couldn’t really look at this paper for the longest time,” he said. “We had been avoiding looking back at this phase but I don’t think that gives her justice.”
The study polled 100 married women aged 20-65 who were visiting the AUB Medical Center for gynecological care. 91 women responded to the survey.
It is one of the few studies that tries to quantify the prevalence of domestic abuse in Lebanon, and that looks at the reasons behind why women here stay in abusive relationships.
But perhaps its most startling discovery is how even women in these relationships find it completely normal for such abuse to happen – a testament to how ingrained the gender imbalance is in society.
“Intimate partner violence is an underestimated problem in Lebanon and has been largely ignored by the local authorities,” the study said.
“The Lebanese health care system has failed so far to play a proactive role in identifying and referring abused women, mostly because the recognition of an abusive pattern in women is often blurred by cultural and societal taboos.”
Over 40% of the women polled said they had suffered from physical abuse. A third endured sexual abuse, nearly two-thirds were victims of verbal abuse, and 19% said they had experienced emotional abuse.
More than a fifth of the women had suffered social isolation imposed by their husbands.
The top reasons women expressed as a reason for staying in an abusive relationship were a lack of familial and social support, lack of financial resources and fear that their husband would take away the children.
In 8 of the cases that suffered physical abuse, medical attention was required and three cases were admitted to hospital with vertebral fractures and miscarriages.
But the study went further, selecting a subsample of 33 women and asking them open-ended questions on their husbands’ treatment.
All the women, including those who were abused, said they were satisfied with their husbands’ treatment.
“Many abused women are totally resigned to their situation and decide to stay in an abusive relationship because of the fear of losing their children, the need to conform to social expectations, the lack of financial independence, the lack of family support, and the duty to obey their spouses,” the researchers said.
Domestic abuse appeared to usher in other social ills.
Women who suffered physical and verbal abuse were more likely to be smokers.
Husbands who had a history of alcohol abuse were more likely to impose social and economic isolation on their wives.
Declining monthly income made it more likely for a husband to use a weapon against his wife, while a higher number of children offered a protective factor for women, illustrating the challenges wrought by economic, security and political instability in the country.
The head and the extremities were the most frequent areas of the woman’s body suffering from physical injury, and hitting was the most frequent mechanism of abuse followed by slapping and pushing.
The rate of domestic violence in Lebanon is in sync with other developing countries and Arab societies, where comparable rates of abuse are present as well as similar justifications for staying in abusive relationships.
As part of their recommendations, the study’s authors, who are all doctors at AUB Medical Center, said that health centers in Lebanon ought to routinely screen patients in order to identify victims of domestic abuse.
Awwad said that such a step, while there is no evidence that it reduces abuse, would be a first step toward referring victims of abuse to support groups and treating the root causes of some of their problems.
But part of the issue is that the conversation around domestic abuse in Lebanon often focuses on anecdotal cases of violence, rather than tracking the prevalence of the issue in society.
“It is not enough to create support groups in our society that come and tell you that he’s been hitting you, he’s been abusing you, come to us and we’re going to support you,” Awwad said.
“Then what? Who is going to support the kids and secure her re-entry into society that stigmatizes her,” he said. “They cannot create another society for her. It’s a dead end, unfortunately, in this part of the world.”
That is partly because of the tribal nature of Lebanese society.
“Lebanon is a big tribe,” he said. “Where you go people would know you and would stigmatize you. You would have to travel and leave the country. So you’d have to stay with the family and your husband and believe that it’s normal.”
This, Awwad said, leads to an acceptance of domestic abuse as a normal part of existence. The other issue is cultural.
The study’s authors said that domestic violence against women tends to be seen as a private, internal matter and not a major public health issue in Arab societies that are “patriarchal and characterized by male authority and dominance.”
That is reflected in how intimate partner violence had been largely ignored by local legal and religious authorities.
Awwad and his colleagues point to the initial rejections by religious authorities of domestic abuse legislation, which they saw as usurping the role of religion which already deals with the issue of domestic violence, and the continued failure to pass laws against domestic abuse.
A law protecting women from violence has been in legislative limbo for a long time due to Parliament’s failure to convene. Religious authorities initially opposed the legislation because they said Islam already deals with women’s rights and domestic relations.
“It would be a good step to pass this law,” Awwad said, adding that it could help deter some abuse, but would not be able to erase the “inherent right” that many men feel they have in wielding power in the household.
That built-in inequality is what poses enormous challenges to those who seek to challenge domestic abuse and society’s complacency toward it. There is little recourse but to begin at a young age, when minds are malleable and prejudice has not yet taken hold.
Values such as equality of women should be introduced at an early stage in education in order to combat such attitudes, Awwad said.
“I think it needs a generation, unfortunately,” he added.
Note: Let’s give priority for women acquiring full citizenship rights as men have.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on October 19, 2013, on page 3.
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2013/Oct-19/235036-why-do-women-in-lebanon-stay-in-abusive-relationships.ashx#ixzz2iBqWpFD1
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)