Violence By Women On The Rise (UK)

The number of women in the UK who received court sentences for violence has risen 40% in a decade according to new research on violence by women from the think thank Civitas.

95% of abuse of juvenile inmates perpetrated by females (USA)

The January 2010 report from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics titled "Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities Reported by Youth," found that 95% of children reporting sexual misconduct by juvenile corrections staff reported it was perpetrated by a female correctional officer, even though there are more male correctional officers than female correctional officers in juvenile correctional facilities. Of course, that may be due, in part, to the fact that male children are much more likely to be incarcerated for their offences than female children are. Even so, the report goes on to say that 10.8% of male juvenile inmates in the U.S. reported sexual misconduct on the part of facility staff, as compared to only 4.7% of the female juvenile inmate population. That means that your odds of being sexually molested in a juvenile correctional facility are twice as high if you are a boy than if you are a girl.

Rundle: police procedures ignored in Assange interviews

A Swedish legal activist has told Crikey that police interviewing the two women accusing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of rape and sexual misconduct did not follow the recommended procedure for sex crime investigation. According to Göran Rudling, who has seen the police report of the first interviews, there is no full record of the first and most important interviews. “The police did what is known in Sweden as a ‘konceptforhor’, a summary of the interview,” Göran Rudling told Crikey today. “This is where the police simply make general notes on the statement being given. Since the interview was not recorded nothing of what the women actually said is recorded or registered. This makes it impossible after the fact to ascertain what’s actually been said.”

Rundle: timeline of Assange’s visit to Sweden and events that followed

Guy Rundle presents a timeline and summary of the public record of Julian Assange’s visit to Sweden, incidents therein, and accusations arising therefrom. Since what would otherwise be a private legal issue has become a global public cause, and since the level of misinformation has been excessive, Crikey has presented this run-down of events in the interests of clarifying debate. All material, unless otherwise marked, is a matter of public record. Even parts that are marked unconfirmed have multiple separate sources. Nothing that is purely directed towards the character or the history of the two female complainants has been included. Material that has been included is that which goes to questions of reliability of evidence in court proceedings. The timeline has been prepared from public sources in English and Swedish media, and from first-person interviews by Guy Rundle.

Assange accuser wrote of need for revenge against cheating lovers

Julian Assange’s Swedish lawyer has delivered his strongest broadside yet against the prosecution of his client for rape and misconduct, telling an English newspaper that the case is based on lies and conscious connivance between the two women complainants. The remarks are the strongest yet made by Bjorn Hurtig, one of Sweden’s most distinguished defence lawyers, and constitute a departure from the reserve that usually characterises Swedish legal process. They come as Crikey exclusively reveals that one of Assange’s accusers has written of the need for revenge against former lovers, writing on a since-deleted blog post about revenge on cheating lovers that “Sometimes it is difficult to go on without some kind of payback”.