Trigger warning for survivors of sexual assault
The names, addresses and phone numbers of the two women at the centre of sexual assault claims against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange have been published.
The ‘outing’ of the women, who say they were sexually assaulted by Assange, is clearly designed to target and punish them. Here’s an extract as reported in the Washington Examiner:
People first started emailing me Ardin and Wilen’s information on Tuesday night, when Assange was arrested. I didn’t post it until after I’d thought carefully about what would happen. I’m not interested in vigilante justice, and I don’t want to see either of them raped or killed. I realize that if either of those things happen to one or both of them, I’ll have played a big role in making it happen. I’m not going to try to evade blame.
Posting their addresses and phone numbers isn’t intended to encourage vigilantism, but to send a bigger message to women like Ardin and Wilen – if you lie about being raped, this is what will happen to you. Your anonymity will be compromised, your life will be laid bare for all to see, and your name will be destroyed. No rape shield law or journalistic ethic can protect you. You will suffer as the man whose name you vindictively dragged through the mud has suffered.
I want women to see that their choices have consequences. If enough false rape accusers have their identities and personal data exposed to the jeering Internet hordes, others will think twice before they accuse men of heinous crimes for petty and selfish reasons.
The author says he is not interested in vigilante justice. But he’s already decided the claims are false. He wants the women to be jeered. By exposing their personal details, he has placed them in danger.
Julian Assange is in custody in London. He’s wanted by prosecutors in Sweden over the claims. Sky News has this update this morning.
There are four allegations, described here.
One woman said he used his body weight to hold her woman down in a sexual manner and that he sexually molested her “in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity”. Another claimed he had sex with her while she was asleep in her home.
I’m wondering about the two women. Have they had to leave their homes? Change their phone numbers? Go underground? How much abuse have they received ?
Of course I don’t know if Assange is guilty of these crimes. Of course I don’t know if Britain, Sweden and Interpol have other motives for pursuing Assange. Of course it’s possible the claims may not stand up in a court of law. But these are separate matters.
I do know this. Publishing these women’s names, addresses and phone numbers will make it even more difficult for other women to speak out against sexual assault.
Imagine the horror of a sexual assault survivor thinking that if she reports her assault, this could happen to her too.
It’s hard enough to report assault at all. The fact is the vast majority of sexual assault crimes are never reported. They never see the light of day for a range of reasons. Many women fear being blamed for what happened.
Nina Funnell, an advocate for sexual assault survivors, says that victims delay or avoid coming forward for fear that they will not be believed, that they might be blamed or – as in this case – they fear that they will be publicly humiliated and denigrated.
“This is the exact sort of thing that makes other victims reluctant to come forward. This is a major setback for victims of rape and sexual assault. As it is, sexual assault victims have enough to deal with, without others undermining or interrogating them, let alone, having others post personal details on public forums about them without their knowledge or consent. It’s a gross violation of their privacy”, she told me.
Naming and shaming these women shames all women who have been assaulted and are thinking about whether to take action…or whether it’s just safer to suffer in silence.
When I first read this in The Australian, I did a double take.
On the charges his client was facing in Sweden, Mr Stephens said the original allegation of rape brought against his client had been dropped and that he had now been charged with “sex by surprise”…They are now investigating something called sex by surprise.”
A country like Sweden, having a law relating to “sex by surprise”? How could this be possible?
It reminded me of these rape-proud t.shirts (above, left), which I’ve written about here before. As it turns out “sex by surprise” is not a real law and Assange has not been charged with it. For more on this see here.
Sounds like something invented by rape apologists to me. But how does it end up being treated seriously by the mainstream media?
Wolf wrote in The Huffington Post that Assange had been captured by “the world’s dating police”. She referred to the hurt “personal feelings” of his accusers. In her sarcastic piece, she wrote:
Thank you again, Interpol. I know you will now prioritize the global manhunt for 1.3 million guys I have heard similar complaints about personally in the US alone — there is an entire fraternity at the University of Texas you need to arrest immediately. I also have firsthand information that John Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, went to a stag party — with strippers! — that his girlfriend wanted him to skip, and that Mark Levinson in Corvallis, Oregon, did not notice that his girlfriend got a really cute new haircut — even though it was THREE INCHES SHORTER.
Her mockery of the claims, given her status, was extraordinary.
Amy Siskind, wrote in response: When a feminist trivialises rape. It’s worth reading.
Without mentioning her first piece and the criticism it evoked, Wolf has now penned this, also in The Huffington Post. While the overview she gives of rape around the world – and the lack of prosecutions on a global scale – is naturally horrific, it doesn’t quite explain the trivialising tone she took in her first piece.
This piece by Laure Penny in The New Statesman is also worth a read.
If global justice movements had to rely solely on people of impeccable character to further their cause, we would probably still be trying to end slavery. And yet, now that the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested over rape allegations – just as his organisation happens to be spearheading the biggest revelation of military secrets in history – this has led many on the left to assume his innocence is beyond question.
The substance of the allegations is for the courts to decide. So why does the left-wing logic run that Assange is one of the good guys – and everyone knows that good guys don’t rape, particularly not good guys who are the public face of crusading international whistle-blowing organisations? Full article here
I like how Jaclyn Friedman puts it in The American Prospect:
This week, as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was taken into custody by Interpol on charges of sexual assault, and pundits right, left, and center got busy painting the accusations as frivolous and the accusers as lying, scheming sluts, I joined a small but dedicated chorus of feminist voices calling for a serious inquiry into the charges…We did it because once rape charges break into the news cycle, lives depend on what gets said about them.
Here’s how it works: As soon as a rape accusation makes it into the news cycle (most often because the accused is famous), it’s instantly held up against our collective subconscious idea about what Real Rape (or, as Whoopi Goldberg odiously called it, “rape-rape”) looks like. Read full article here
Just before posting this blog, I saw this report from the ABC which has barrister Geoffrey Robertson categorising the claims as “not serious”.
High-profile barrister Geoffrey Robertson QC, representing Mr Assange, argued his client… was not a flight risk.
He told the court the allegations made against his client by two Swedish women should not be taken seriously.
“It was very clear this is not an extremely serious offence. It is arguably not even a rape offence,” Mr Robertson said.
Silencing victimsThe last word on this goes to Elizabeth at Spilt Milk in a piece titled ‘Who hears you when you speak about rape?’
You have a choice, when you speak about rape, any rape.
You can make victims and survivors hurt more. You can take justice further out of reach. You can encourage the disrespect and objectification of women. You can further silence marginalised victims…and make it ever harder for those who can face the greatest resistance to telling their stories, like male victims, or those raped by celebrities and ‘heroes’.
Or, you can not.
In case you are not aware, in 2009 Wikileaks published the Australian Communication and Media Authority’s blacklist of banned web content. The list contained child pornography sites. It was leaked to Wikileaks and published, making illegal child rape sites conveniently available to anyone who wanted them.
University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt said at the time that the leaked list “constitutes a condensed encyclopedia of depravity and potentially very dangerous material”.
Think of the victims. Already sexually violated, now they were violated again, with the images of their rape, abuse and torture broadcast to the world in the name of free speech. What about their freedom not to have their images circulated around the world for the sexual gratification of untold numbers of men?
A hero? A champion? Not for these children.
12 Responses
That’s messed up.
Thank you for another brilliant piece, Melinda.
As a self-identified feminist, who also supports free-speech and abhors censorship, I am disgusted – but not surprised – that the accusations of rape and sexual assault against Julian Assange are not being taken seriously. It seems that popular opinion seems to fall into one of two camps at present – that he is an evil man who should be punished to the fullest extent of the law – but not for the rapes as they are inconsequential – or that he is a champion of free speech and the rape allegations are trumped up for the purpose of discrediting him.
How can people not see that there is no ‘typical’ rapist? That men who do good in one arena can certainly do great evil in others, and who are talented at some thing may very well also be talented at misogyny and rape? I don’t understand how people can be so blind as to believe that the concepts are mutually exclusive.
In any case, thank you for highlighting this very serious and important issue. I can only hope that the ‘journalist’ who released the names and addresses of (at the least) legal defendants and likely victims of rape is punished the fullest extent of the law. He disgusts me.
First, let me say that I absolutely agree that the victim-bashing these women have undergone is simply wrong. Jill at Feministe has the best post on the topic, I think:
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/12/06/some-thoughts-on-sex-by-surprise/
and Kate Harding’s piece at Salon (linked from the Feministe piece) is also good (It’s also up on ABC’s The Drum).
That being said, this post is also full of hypocrisy. Julian Assange’s name shouldn’t be in the news over this matter either until he has actually been convicted. It would be ironic if there wasn’t a clear and distinct difference between the privacy of individuals and secrets kept from the people by governments.
You remarks on the ACMA blacklist are just ill thought out too. Firstly, the main point of publishing it was to demonstrate how incredibly easy it is to reverse engineer blacklists. Anyone with slightly advanced computer skills can do it. Enforcing a list that actually contained child pornography would only make it easier for those interested in child pornography to have access to it. The government would essentially be providing them a list of material to get off on, with only an easily bypassed lock. The secondary point was to demonstrate that governments can’t be trusted to actually make accurate lists. This list also contained school tuck shops and dog kennels.
Further a German study demonstrated that the ACMA blacklist was of particularly poor quality compared with other countries blacklists. It contained almost no actual child pornography. Almost all the pornography listed on the ACMA blacklist was fully compliant with the US 2257 regulations, requiring proof that all performers are over the age of 18. The German study further pointed out the counter productive nature of the list, by emailing the providers of every link on countries blacklist and having the majority of the actual child pornography taken down within 12 hours. Online bank users suffer from phishing websites. Banks can act world wide to have such sites removed permanently from the Internet within hours. Why can’t governments do the same when it comes to the greatest of crimes, child abuse?
Finally, were is your outrage against the Catholic Church? The recent Wikileaks cable dumps from the Vatican shows that the Church was angered by Irish authorities attempting to seek justice for the victims of priestly misconduct there. That actually is a case of institutionalised child abuse by men, and worse, covered up by men, and worse still, anger when light was finally shed on the problem. Yet you will condemn Wikileaks for demonstrating the problems with knee-jerk, feel-good reactions to the problem of online child abuse?
I sought some further information and clarification from Minister Conroy’s office. Here’s the facts I’ve gleaned:
Wikileaks obtained a list purporting to be the ACMA blacklist of prohibited content from one of the filter software providers – who receive the list from ACMA to provide to customers as requested. (The list was not reverse engineered but hacked if you like to obtain the list). It was not actually the ACMA blacklist because the filter vendor had added some additional sites to the list which it could do because it is providing a customer service (ie parents purchase or obtain for free a software filter they can put on their PC to block harmful content).
Under existing legislation (and since 2000) the ACMA blacklist includes URLs of prohibited content that is based overseas and is the subject of a public complaint (ie it is wider than RC which is what mandatory ISP filtering will be). Prohibited content as defined under the Broadcasting Services Act includes RC material, X18+, R18+ that is not behind an age verification scheme, and commercially available MA 15+ that is not behind an age verification scheme. Prohibited content cannot be hosted on an Australian based website under existing legislation.
A URL leading to an empty page on a dentist’s website was included on the ACMA blacklist, along with several other small businesses’ URLs – as these had been hacked by a paedophile ring and had child abuse material embedded on empty pages of the websites and had been the subject of a public complaint. Only these particular webpages would have been blocked, and only to people who had downloaded one of the software filters. (ie the rest of the website would have been available to everyone, and only the pages in question would have been blocked to a very small percentage of people – and then, the only content on the page was child abuse material).
In response to this particular issue, the Government announced transparency and accountability measures which can be found at http://www.dbcde.gov.au/online_safety_and_security/cybersafety_plan/transparency_measures. This includes notifying owners of websites that RC content has been found on their site, using a block page to notify people that content has been blocked and appeal processes if someone believes the content has been incorrectly classified and the appointment of an independent person to ensure the processes for content being added to the list are completely appropriate.
The Minister said he would refer a review of the RC content category to the Standing Committee of Attorney’s General, and they agreed to a review of the National Classification Scheme and the categories last Friday.
As at 30 September 2010 the ACMA blacklist contained 1,588 individual URLs, of which 788 URLs contained Refused Classification content. Of these 439 URLs contained child abuse material (not just a few as some try to claim).
Arved says we should just be able to have child abuse content taken down. This is what happens in Australia for content hosted in Australia, however the Australian Government doesn’t have the jurisdiction to require this in other countries, and in some countries child abuse is not a crime, and their police and Government’s do not act.
Regarding the comments that compiling a list provides easy access to child abuse content that’s exactly the reason why it is illegal to publish a list of links to child abuse content (which is what Wikileaks did). It is the reason why the Government cannot publish the list for transparency reasons and why the transparency measures will be put in place so that people can have confidence that the only material to be blocked is Refused Classification content. Of course this will only happen if legislation is passed. In the meantime Australia’s three largest ISPs – Telstra, Optus and Primus will voluntarily block a list of child abuse URLs.
Wow – silencing women all for the sake of free speech.
Melinda, can you name the countries where the hosting of child abuse images is not a crime? I think you’ll find no country on this planet would allow such a thing. It’s often cited that Japan and Russia don’t have such laws, but this is not true. It is illegal to distribute and publish child porn and child abuse material in both countries.
Secondly, the Internet Watch Foundation released a report in 2009 that said 48% of child abuse urls are hosted in the US, 44% in Europe, 7% Asia, 1% South America the last tiny sliver in Australia. It’s illegal in all these places. To me, I think it’s rather sick that people would want to cover this stuff up rather than take it down.
Melinda you said “of these 439 URLs contained child abuse material (not just a few as some try to claim)”. Excuse me Melinda, but if the list is secret, how do you know? The previously leaked lists have absolutely no child porn on them (unless one of the parked domains or dead links was formerly a child porn site – most are only active for few days at best). Why should we trust a government who has lied continually through this whole filtering debacle?
“What about their freedom not to have their images circulated around the world for the sexual gratification of untold numbers of men? A hero? A champion? Not for these children”.
Seeing as most of the links were normal legal porn and the rest were mish-mash of oddities, dead links and parked domains (as of the original published date on Wikileaks), no child had their freedom trampled on due to Wikileaks. And what about the children who were wounded in the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrikes as captured and released in the “Collateral Murder” by Wikileaks? Asange is no hero and justice must be done by having a fair trial in Sweden, but Melinda you’re being rather hypocritical here.
I have been following the Internet filter proposal since 2007. I work in the technology field, although not directly with networks. My educational background is information technology and engineering. You will find something I wrote in the ironically named submission you linked to. I have personally had press releases put out by Senator Conroy corrected for including factually incorrect information. In short, I am something of an expert in the Australian Classification System and this particular proposal in particular.
Currently obtaining the blacklist from filter venders is the easiest and simplest vector for anyone interested. There is no point doing something more elaborate if it is so easy to obtain the list currently. There are almost 400 ISPs in Australia. As the Americans have just painfully learnt, when you make sensitive information available to large numbers of people, it will eventually find a way out. Even if you can guarantee the security of the list at all Australia’s ISPs, you can’t prevent the list from being extracted by people with skill and determination. No computer system is absolutely safe from someone determined unless it is physically disconnected from the Internet, and even that isn’t always enough, as the Iranians discovered with their nuclear program. The most obvious and straight forward way to recompile the list is the brute force method, where every URL is tested in Australia and from a computer overseas that is not filtered. This kind of solution can easily be distributed to solve it in a relatively short amount of time. There are more sophisticated means to extract the list that do not require as much work, including, of course, taking advantage of security vulnerabilities to steal it. It is also worth considering that none of these ISPs have designed their hardware to work with a filtering system. Many will be forced out of business, many more will be forced to by filtered streams from larger ISPs, and the rest will do the minimum work required to meet the legislation requirements. That inherently means poor security. Compiling and releasing such a list when it is guaranteed to leak is abhorrent. It is not technologically possible to prevent the list from leaking.
What is particularly worrying about a mandatory blacklist is that it doesn’t have to be made public for the damage to be done. It only needs be recovered by one person interested in child pornography, and then traded among their peers. No mainstream media, nor organisations like Wikileaks, need be involved for that to happen.
All that doesn’t begin to address the easy with which the filtering system can be bypassed. If you read the government’s own reports, you’ll see that even ISPs that were designed from the very beginning to provided filtered solutions could not prevent someone from bypassing their filters. Many teenagers tend to be very sophisticated with this kind of technology, and will take it as a challenge to bypass filtering. This already happens in schools were local filtering systems are in place. Indeed, the very design of the Internet makes filtering an impractical solution for anyone with an interest in routing around it.
My point with bringing up the tuck shop and dentist was to demonstrate how bloated the government is in these matters. If you read what law enforcement experts have to say about child abuse websites, you will see that majority have a very short half-life. Typically, web space is hacked from legitimate companies and the material is uploaded there and the links then shared among those interested. None involved expect the links to be active for more than a few hours, which is far less than the time required for government to respond. That’s mostly moot, however, as the vast, vast majority of child abuse material is not traded via websites, but via peer-to-peer software which is completely unmolested by mandatory filtering of this nature.
It is important to remember that all the material on the current (and future) blacklists is only material that has been reported to the government. As I described above, the vast majority of this problem will not be even be touched by such a solution, as it relies on Australians stumbling across this material and then reporting it. Real child abuse material is so hard to find on the web that the AFP will generally not believe claims of ‘I stumbled across it by accident’. You have to go looking for the stuff to find it.
It is also worth remembering that Refused Classification is not synonymous with illegal. It is legal to posses and view Refused Classification material throughout Australia (except WA and some parts of NT). Child abuse material is explicitly illegal, but the definition is vague, and is also covered at the state and territory level differently around Australia. Suffice to say, material that includes only adults, or indeed includes no people at all, can be considered child abuse material according to the current legislation. While such material may certainly be distasteful, no children were involved in its production and even the police don’t treat it with the same concern. This is largely the problem of conflating pedophilia with hebephilia and ephebophilia. They are different, and there are many instances of the last two that most of society does not think is wrong; a 20 year old with an 17 year old partner, for instance. At the very least, it demonstrates there are areas here were reasonable people can disagree. No one serious doesn’t have a problem with 10 year olds being abused. Reasonable people can disagree about a fully grown adult posed to look younger.
There are numerous companies devoted to taking down phishing websites targeting online bank customers; there is money in it. Are you seriously going to suggest that something that private industry can do when money is on the line, when the same jurisdictional issues exist, cannot be accomplished for an abhorrent crime like child abuse?
This is a solution in search of a problem. My largest grip with it isn’t technological or even the free speech angle. It is that this will be touted as a solution, and the government will then move on to something else. In practice, nothing will be done about these terrible crimes and they will continue as they are now, but the government will point to the filter and claim it has already done all it can. I, for one, would rather the money be spent on helping real victims and tracking down real offenders. To solve the problem by sweeping it under the rug is morally repugnant.
Odd is it not that suddenly commentators are more concerned with what Wikileaks have disclosed rather than the fact two women have been ‘outed’ and their identities published because they dared to charge a white male with rape. Of course we can forget about the fact every minute of every day somewhere in the world a male/males is/are committing sexual violence against a woman/women/girl/girls.
No the issue as always is about men and their interests – women are not human in these men’s opinion. As regards the pseudo feminists such as Wolfe and co.- they are pawns of the male supremacist system and no they won’t be given any ‘cookies’ by the men for parrotting rape myths. What these pseudo women will receive will be patronising pats on the head from the men because these women are doing the male supremacists’ work for them.
The reason why male sexual violence against women in all its forms is so hotly contested is because feminists and female survivors of men’s violence who dare to hold men accountable are going to the root of pseudo male sex right to women and girls. Men have awarded themselves sexual autonomy for centuries but for women and girls this right is still only a dream.
What is happening and continues to happen is the male perpetrator(s) actions/accountability are always ignored because the focus is always on what the woman/women did/said/wore etc. Diverting attention away from the central issue is ingrained in men who refuse to accept the fact they do not have the innate right of raping and committing sexual violence against any woman or girl. Oh but I forget – men do have this right unless of course other more powerful men say ‘no you do not.’
So male sexual violence against women is ‘not a serious issue is it not?’ So says the male lawyer Geoffrey Robertson and he of course because he is male knows what is and is not rape. Women of course never know what ‘rape’ is unless and until a powerful male defines it. That is how male power and male domination over women operates – keep telling women ‘you are liars because only men know what is and is not rape.’
The thing is, the whole internet filter thing is a strawman in this circumstance.
The point is, publishing the name and pictures of the accusers makes it even harder for people who have been assaulted to come forward, and makes it easier to victim blame. It is hard enough to get a conviction without adding fear, public condemnation and even further guilt to the situation, not to mention this case publicly suggests that people make false allegations. The whole rape thing is hard enough without this.
Sure, in theory, the guy who is accused shouldn’t be published either, but I think in this case all it has done is provide positive free advertising.
Larry, the list is published by ACMA and was requested at a recent Senate Estimates Committee hearing in the Australian Parliament. The info is publicly available and as part of transparency measures will soon be published on ACMA’s website.
Jennifer Drew said; “Odd is it not that suddenly commentators are more concerned with what Wikileaks have disclosed”.
Jennifer, I’m assuming you are including Melinda as well. As you can see above she has gone completely off topic and included references to the ACMA blacklist and t-shirts. The focus should not be on Assange, but the bloggers and journalists who have exposed the women’s identities and exposed their writings which could prejudice a jury. I’m unsure exactly how the legal system works in Sweden, but this exposure could lead to case being dismissed. Reading up on the appalling rate for conviction for rape in Sweden in the Huffington Post, unfortunately I think the women in this case will not see any justice.
Jennifer Drew said; “So male sexual violence against women is ‘not a serious issue is it not?’ So says the male lawyer Geoffrey Robertson and he of course because he is male knows what is and is not rape”
Um Jennifer, Robertson is Assange’s DEFENCE LAWYER. Surely you do understand his role in this matter? He is paid to defend Assange. That’s his job. It doesn’t matter if his client is Garry Glitter or Charles Manson. He defends his client. It’s not some sort of worldwide conspiracy against women Jennifer, it’s how the courts work.
Jennifer Drew said; “As regards the pseudo feminists such as Wolfe and co”
Considering where you’ve posted that, oh, the irony!
Melinda said; “Larry, the list is published by ACMA and was requested at a recent Senate Estimates Committee hearing in the Australian Parliament”
Melinda, I think you’ll find the list is NOT published by ACMA anywhere (well except Wikileaks). The list has never been published in any official manner. I think what you are alluding to are the “Online content complaint statistics” which they publish on their website. All it says is something like “RC – Child – depiction: 63 Overseas-hosted items”. It doesn’t say what the urls are. Seeing as the previously published ACMA lists by Wiki apparently had child porn (according to previous stats on ACMA’s website) and they actually didn’t, why would I start believing the stats now? The way they collect the sites to be put on the list, the criteria for sites to be put on the list and most importantly the extremely broad criteria for child porn (if a person over 18 maybe-kinda looks 17) hasn’t changed since the lists were initially leaked.
Thank you very much Arved for your enlightening contribution, I enjoyed reading what you had to say, and as someone who has always had a sceptical view of people campaigning for so-called civil liberties that don’t prioritise children’s welfare, your contribution clarified for me the issues I had not, could not have, considered, until now. I feel educated! What you say makes sense. Thank you too to Larry for making some things clear to all.
Regarding the alleged rape issue, I think some contributors are jumping the gun. From what I hear, there was no allegation of rape from the women until they sought advice from some high-powered lawyers – and if I know anything about lawyers (in the general sense), they smell money. It is only what I have read, of course, but the women allegedly only wanted to track Assange down to ask him to take tests when they discovered he’d had unprotected sex with both of them, but he was hard to get hold of, evading the other matters in his life. When they approached a lawyer to help them, it turned into rape suddenly. Also the Swedish prosecutor was said to have thrown the case out, but it was reinstated at the behest of a politician. And womens rights groups have been angry at the women, not Assange. It is clear Assange is under threat from powerful interests, and I am a supporter and glad he has Robertson to assist him. He’ll need all the support he can get because noone is interested in justice, only retribution.