Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/caitlincowie...n-ads-with-men

Commercials tend to show women in provocative poses no matter what product is being sold, so we decided to recreate three of them with men.

[Kobi]

FORT BRAGG, North Carolina (Reuters) - A U.S. Army general at the center of a rare court-martial of a top military leader was cleared of sexual assault charges on Monday, but admitted to mistreating a junior officer during their inappropriate sexual relationship.

Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair pleaded guilty to several lesser military criminal offenses as part of an agreement with the government that dismissed the most serious allegations against him.

The 27-year Army veteran said he knew the female Army captain with whom he had a three-year extramarital affair was enamored by his rank, and he led her on despite knowing he would never divorce his wife.

When he realized his subordinate was emotionally committed to the affair in a way he was not, he flirted with other women and was cold to her in hopes she would become angry enough to break off their secret liaison that spanned two war zones, Sinclair told a judge.

"I failed her as a leader and as a mentor and caused her harm to her emotional state," the one-star general said.

Though vindicated of charges that he forced the captain to perform oral sex and engaged in "open and notorious sexual acts" with her, Sinclair's decorated military career is almost certainly over.

Sinclair's attorneys will argue during the sentencing phase on Monday that he should avoid jail time and be allowed to retire at a reduced rank in keeping with how officers in similar cases have been treated.

The lawyers say Sinclair's case is one of the first courts-martial of a general in nearly 60 years and was fueled by political concerns at a time when the U.S. military is grappling with how to handle rising sexual assault in its ranks.

"Clearly what General Sinclair did was wrong, but it certainly had the appearance that he was being the scapegoat for the bigger sexual assault problem that the military's going through," said Morris Davis, a retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who is not involved in the case.

TRIAL HALTED BEFORE PLEA

Sinclair, a 51-year-old married father of two, has remained on active duty at the sprawling base at Fort Bragg after being stripped of command in southern Afghanistan in May 2012 as a result of the criminal allegations.

His trial was already under way this month when a judge ruled that politics appeared to have improperly influenced the Army's decision to reject an earlier offer by Sinclair to plead guilty if the charges of coercive sex acts were dropped.

The former lead prosecutor in the case resigned after military leaders refused to dismiss the sex charges despite concerns about the key accuser's credibility. The new chief prosecutor said the government did not doubt the woman's underlying allegations.

The judge last week allowed Sinclair to renew his plea offer, and the general's attorneys announced on Sunday that a resolution to the case had been reached.

The agreement called for the government to drop the sexual assault charges involving the captain, as well as two additional charges that could have required Sinclair to register as a sex offender.

The identity of the captain, a military intelligence officer, is being withheld by Reuters due to the nature of the charges.

Sinclair pleaded guilty to maltreating his accuser, using his government credit card for personal purposes related to the affair and using demeaning language to refer to female staff officers.

He admitted to calling a female major "a red-headed troll" but told the judge he was joking when he said "I'm a general, I'll say whatever the fuck I want."

Sinclair also faces punishment after pleading guilty this month to having an adulterous affair, asking junior female officers for nude photos and possessing pornography on his laptop while deployed in Afghanistan.

He could have been sent to prison for life if he had been convicted of the sexual assault charges, but now faces a far less severe maximum sentence.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/sex-assault...154520589.html

[Kobi]

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - An Army general who carried on a three-year affair with a captain and had two other inappropriate relationships with subordinates was reprimanded and docked $20,000 in pay Thursday, avoiding jail time in one of the military's most closely watched courts-martial.

Sinclair, the former deputy commander of the storied 82nd Airborne Division, was believed to be the highest-ranking U.S. military officer ever court-martialed on sexual assault charges, but earlier this week those charges were dropped when he pleaded guilty to inappropriate relationships with the three women.

Sinclair smiled and hugged his two lawyers in the courtroom. Outside the building, he said "the system worked" and all he wanted to do now was "hug my wife and sons."

As part of the plea deal, Sinclair's sentence could not exceed terms in a sealed agreement between defense lawyers and military attorneys. The agreement, unsealed Thursday, called for Sinclair to serve no more than 18 months in jail, but the judge's punishment was much lighter.

Prosecutors did not immediately comment.

In closing arguments, prosecutors argued Sinclair should be thrown out of the Army and lose his military benefits, while the defense said that would harm his innocent wife and children the most. The two sides also offered contrasting arguments about the seriousness of the misdeeds that felled the general.

"It's not just one mistake. Not just one lapse in judgment. It was repeated," said prosecutor Maj. Rebecca DiMuro. "They are not mistakes. We are not in the court of criminal mistakes. These are crimes."

The defense had called a host of character witnesses this week to laud Sinclair as a selfless leader in hopes of getting a lenient punishment.

After both sides finished, Judge Col. James Pohl adjourned the hearing until Thursday. Sinclair's sentencing comes as the military and Congress grapple with sex crimes in the ranks.

Prosecutors did not ask the judge to send Sinclair to jail, even though the maximum penalty he faced on the charges to which he pleaded guilty is more than 20 years.

The judge could have dismissed Sinclair from the Army, which would have likely wiped out his Veterans Administration health care and military retirement benefits.

The general also pleaded guilty to adultery - a crime in the military - as well as using his government-issued credit card to pay for trips to see his mistress and other conduct unbecoming an officer.

Sinclair had been accused of twice forcing the female captain to perform oral sex during the three-year affair.

The Army's case against Sinclair started to crumble as questions arose about his primary accuser's credibility and whether military officials improperly rejected a previous plea deal because of political concerns.

A military lawyer representing Sinclair argued that his wife, Rebecca, had made a significant investment in the Army herself by holding leadership positions in organizations that helped soldiers' families. Maj. Sean Foster said Rebecca Sinclair and the couple's two sons would be hurt the most if the general lost benefits.

"These three are the only truly innocent people in this case," he said.

Sinclair broke down in tears multiple times during Wednesday's hearing.

When a letter from his wife was read aloud, Sinclair buried his head in his hands, appeared to cry and dabbed his eyes with two tissues.

In the letter, Rebecca Sinclair says she hasn't fully forgiven her husband but doesn't want the Army to punish him and his family further with a significant reduction to his pension and other benefits.

"Believe me when I tell you that the public humiliation and vilification he has endured are nothing compared to the private suffering and guilt that he lives with every day," writes Rebecca Sinclair, who hasn't attended her husband's hearings.

Jeffrey Sinclair broke down at several points as he read a statement to the judge, pausing to collect himself. He apologized to his family and the women with whom he admitted inappropriate relationships.

"I've been frustrated and angry, but I don't have to look any further than the mirror for someone to blame," he said, noting the hearing came exactly two years after the captain came forward with allegations on March 19, 2012.

http://www.postandcourier.com/articl...ed-in-sex-case

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So much for the rhetoric about the military being serious about dealing with sexual assaults and indiscretions.

Yes, General, "the system worked". For YOU. The good old boys, once again, managed to discredit his accuser, get charges dismissed, and gently slap you on the wrist.

The system, once again, did not work for the women you exploited and assaulted.

[EnderD_503]

Originally Posted by Kobi

FORT BRAGG, N.C. - An Army general who carried on a three-year affair with a captain and had two other inappropriate relationships with subordinates was reprimanded and docked $20,000 in pay Thursday, avoiding jail time in one of the military's most closely watched courts-martial.

Sinclair, the former deputy commander of the storied 82nd Airborne Division, was believed to be the highest-ranking U.S. military officer ever court-martialed on sexual assault charges, but earlier this week those charges were dropped when he pleaded guilty to inappropriate relationships with the three women.

Sinclair smiled and hugged his two lawyers in the courtroom. Outside the building, he said "the system worked" and all he wanted to do now was "hug my wife and sons."

As part of the plea deal, Sinclair's sentence could not exceed terms in a sealed agreement between defense lawyers and military attorneys. The agreement, unsealed Thursday, called for Sinclair to serve no more than 18 months in jail, but the judge's punishment was much lighter.

Prosecutors did not immediately comment.

In closing arguments, prosecutors argued Sinclair should be thrown out of the Army and lose his military benefits, while the defense said that would harm his innocent wife and children the most. The two sides also offered contrasting arguments about the seriousness of the misdeeds that felled the general.

"It's not just one mistake. Not just one lapse in judgment. It was repeated," said prosecutor Maj. Rebecca DiMuro. "They are not mistakes. We are not in the court of criminal mistakes. These are crimes."

The defense had called a host of character witnesses this week to laud Sinclair as a selfless leader in hopes of getting a lenient punishment.

After both sides finished, Judge Col. James Pohl adjourned the hearing until Thursday. Sinclair's sentencing comes as the military and Congress grapple with sex crimes in the ranks.

Prosecutors did not ask the judge to send Sinclair to jail, even though the maximum penalty he faced on the charges to which he pleaded guilty is more than 20 years.

The judge could have dismissed Sinclair from the Army, which would have likely wiped out his Veterans Administration health care and military retirement benefits.

The general also pleaded guilty to adultery - a crime in the military - as well as using his government-issued credit card to pay for trips to see his mistress and other conduct unbecoming an officer.

Sinclair had been accused of twice forcing the female captain to perform oral sex during the three-year affair.

The Army's case against Sinclair started to crumble as questions arose about his primary accuser's credibility and whether military officials improperly rejected a previous plea deal because of political concerns.

A military lawyer representing Sinclair argued that his wife, Rebecca, had made a significant investment in the Army herself by holding leadership positions in organizations that helped soldiers' families. Maj. Sean Foster said Rebecca Sinclair and the couple's two sons would be hurt the most if the general lost benefits.

"These three are the only truly innocent people in this case," he said.

Sinclair broke down in tears multiple times during Wednesday's hearing.

When a letter from his wife was read aloud, Sinclair buried his head in his hands, appeared to cry and dabbed his eyes with two tissues.

In the letter, Rebecca Sinclair says she hasn't fully forgiven her husband but doesn't want the Army to punish him and his family further with a significant reduction to his pension and other benefits.

"Believe me when I tell you that the public humiliation and vilification he has endured are nothing compared to the private suffering and guilt that he lives with every day," writes Rebecca Sinclair, who hasn't attended her husband's hearings.

Jeffrey Sinclair broke down at several points as he read a statement to the judge, pausing to collect himself. He apologized to his family and the women with whom he admitted inappropriate relationships.

"I've been frustrated and angry, but I don't have to look any further than the mirror for someone to blame," he said, noting the hearing came exactly two years after the captain came forward with allegations on March 19, 2012.

http://www.postandcourier.com/articl...ed-in-sex-case

---------------------


So much for the rhetoric about the military being serious about dealing with sexual assaults and indiscretions.

Yes, General, "the system worked". For YOU. The good old boys, once again, managed to discredit his accuser, get charges dismissed, and gently slap you on the wrist.

The system, once again, did not work for the women you exploited and assaulted.

It doesn't seem the article even says how his accuser was discredited to begin with... What bullshit, and I get the sense that the things that supposedly "discredited" her were the usual ones when it comes to sexual assault cases. Also dislike the emphasis on his wife and children, as though the fact that the husband/father committed sexual assault is more painful to them than the actual victims. But it's the usual "family values" shit, I guess.

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

One of four gubernatorial candidates introduced to California Republicans recently is a registered sex offender who spent more than a decade in state prison, convicted of crimes including voluntary manslaughter and assault with intent to commit rape.
Glenn Champ, 48, addressed hundreds of GOP delegates and supporters Sunday at the site of the state party's semi-annual convention. Introduced by party chairman Jim Brulte and allotted 10 minutes, Champ spoke in between the main GOP candidates, former U.S. Treasury official Neel Kashkari and state Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of San Bernardino County.
Champ, a little-known political neophyte from the Fresno County community of Tollhouse, did not directly mention his criminal past during his speech but said, "In my life, I've been held accountable because of my stupidity. I do not want anyone else to be enslaved because of their lack of knowledge."


Champ's rap sheet is lengthy. Court records show that in 1992, he pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed firearm. In 1993, he was convicted of two counts of assault with intent to commit rape and as a result was placed on the state's sex-offender registry.
In March 1998, he accepted a plea deal on a charge of loitering to solicit a prostitute; later that year, he pleaded no contest to a voluntary manslaughter charge after hitting a man with his vehicle, for which he was sentenced to 12 years in state prison, according to court records.

In March 1998, he accepted a plea deal on a charge of loitering to solicit a prostitute; later that year, he pleaded no contest to a voluntary manslaughter charge after hitting a man with his vehicle, for which he was sentenced to 12 years in state prison, according to court records.
In an interview Friday, Champ acknowledged his criminal record, which was reported by KMJ radio in Fresno.
Champ said the assault case "was just for picking up some underage prostitutes" and resulted in a 90-day jail sentence. He said he turned his life around after the incident.


http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-g...#ixzz2wk6M8QGY

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

[Kobi]

Rennie Gibbs’s daughter, Samiya, was a month premature when she simultaneously entered the world and left it, never taking a breath. To experts who later examined the medical record, the stillborn infant’s most likely cause of death was also the most obvious: the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck.

But within days of Samiya’s delivery in November 2006, Steven Hayne, Mississippi’s de facto medical examiner at the time, came to a different conclusion. Autopsy tests had turned up traces of a cocaine byproduct in Samiya’s blood, and Hayne declared her death a homicide, caused by “cocaine toxicity.”

In early 2007, a Lowndes County grand jury indicted Gibbs, a 16-year-old black teen, for “depraved heart murder” — defined under Mississippi law as an act “eminently dangerous to others…regardless of human life.” By smoking crack during her pregnancy, the indictment said, Gibbs had “unlawfully, willfully, and feloniously” caused the death of her baby. The maximum sentence: life in prison.

Seven years and much legal wrangling later, Gibbs could finally go on trial this spring — part of a wave of “fetal harm” cases across the country in recent years that pit the rights of the mother against what lawmakers, health care workers, prosecutors, judges, jurors, and others view as the rights of the unborn child.

A judge is said to be likely to decide this week if the case should move forward or be dismissed. Assuming it continues, whether Gibbs becomes the first woman ever convicted by a Mississippi jury for the loss of her pregnancy could turn on a fundamental question that has received surprisingly little scrutiny so far by the courts: Is there scientific proof that cocaine can cause lasting damage to a child exposed in the womb, or are the conclusions reached by Hayne and prosecutors based on faulty analysis and junk science?

The case intersects a number of divisive and difficult issues — the criminal justice system’s often disproportionate treatment of poor people of color, especially in drug prosecutions; the backlash to Roe v. Wade and the conservative push to establish “personhood” for fetuses as part of a broad-based strategy to weaken abortion laws. A wild card in the case — Mississippi’s history of using sometimes dubious forensic evidence to win criminal convictions over many years — could end up playing a central role.

Prosecutors argue that the state has a responsibility to protect children from the dangerous actions of their parents. Saying Gibbs should not be tried for murder is like saying that “every drug addict who robs or steals to obtain money for drugs should not be held accountable for their actions because of their addiction,” the state attorney general’s office wrote in a brief to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

But some civil libertarians and women’s rights advocates worry that if Gibbs is convicted, the precedent could inspire more prosecutions of Mississippi women and girls for everything from miscarriage to abortion — and that African Americans, who suffer twice as many stillbirths as whites, would be affected the most.

Mississippi has one of has one of the worst records for maternal and infant health in the U.S., as well as some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease and among the most restrictive policies on abortion. Many of the factors that have been linked to prenatal and infant mortality — poverty, poor nutrition, lack of access to healthcare, pollution, smoking, stress — are rampant there.

“It’s tremendously, tremendously frightening, this case,” said Oleta Fitzgerald, southern regional director for the Children’s Defense Fund, an advocacy and research organization, in Jackson. “There’s real fear for young women whose babies are dying early who [lack the resources to] defend themselves and their actions.”

Those who share such worries point to a report last year by the New York­–basedNational Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) that documented hundreds of cases around the country in which women have been detained, arrested and sometimes convicted — on charges as serious as murder — for doing things while pregnant that authorities viewed as dangerous or harmful to their unborn child.

The definition of fetal harm in such cases has been broad: An Indiana woman whoattempted suicide while pregnant spent a year in jail before murder charges were dropped last year; an Iowa woman was arrested and jailed after falling down the stairs and suffering a miscarriage; a New Jersey woman who refused to sign a preauthorization for a cesarean section didn’t end up needing the operation, yet was charged with child endangerment and lost custody of her baby. But the vast majority of cases have involved women suspected of using illegal drugs. Those women have been disproportionately young, low-income and African American.

Lynn Paltrow, the executive director of NAPW, said that decisions to arrest and charge women often have political and moral overtones and are mostly based on unproved or discredited notions about the effects of prenatal drug exposure.

The U.S. Supreme Court has established stringent rules limiting the use of unproved science in legal proceedings, but these often fall by the wayside in fetal harm cases, Paltrow said. She said that women are typically convicted based on evidence that would be demolished by lawyers with the time and resources to effectively refute it in court – lawyers, say, for pharmaceutical companies whose drugs are challenged in court as being unsafe.

“If a pregnant, drug-using woman were a corporation, her case wouldn’t even get to trial because the rules of evidence require that there be science to prove causation,” Paltrow said.

The quality of the science is very much an issue in the Gibbs case.In a motion to throw out Hayne’s autopsy report, defense lawyers have claimed that that the medical examiner misinterpreted toxicology results and failed to explore alternative causes of death.

Those claims are not the first time Hayne’s work has come under attack. Indeed, Hayne — who effectively served as Mississippi’s statewide medical examiner from the late 1980s to 2008, eventually performing 80 to 90 percent of the autopsies in the state annually — has been a hugely influential and controversial figure in the criminal justice system there for years.

In litigation (much of it by the Mississippi Innocence Project) and news reports (many of them by Radley Balko, now of the Washington Post), defense lawyers and other medical examiners have accused Hayne of being sloppy, exaggerating his credentials, and leaping to conclusions that sometimes had no basis in science. At least four murder convictions based on Hayne’s evidence — one involving an innocent man sentenced to death for the killing of a three-year-old girl — have been overturned since 2007.

Despite having failed to complete his certification test by the American Board of Pathology, Hayne not only practiced for two decades in Mississippi and nearby states, but by his own estimate he performed as many as 1,800 autopsies a year (the National Association of Medical Examiners recommends that a single doctor conduct no more than 250). Mississippi stopped hiring Hayne in 2008, but he continues to testify in cases that he handled before then.

In their court filing, Gibbs’s lawyers cited a capital murder conviction of a 14-year-old boy that the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned because of what it called “scientifically unfounded” testimony by Hayne. That case involved both the prosecutor and the judge handling the Gibbs prosecution. (To read more about Hayne, go here, here, and here.)

Prosecutors have yet to respond to the filing by Gibbs’s lawyers, and they did not return a telephone call from ProPublica seeking comment. But they have vigorously defended Hayne in other cases where his methods and conclusions have been called into question.

Hayne also didn’t respond to a request for an interview.

Michael V. Cory Jr., a Jackson attorney, represented Hayne in a defamation suit against the Innocence Project, which had criticized his work and record. The national organization paid Hayne $100,000 as part of a settlement in that case. Cory said many of the claims against Hayne are unfounded.

“Given the number of autopsies he’s performed, there’s certainly going to be some errors,” Cory said in an interview last week. “But a lot of the criticisms don’t turn out to be fair. Just because he’s been criticized in some cases doesn’t mean there’s any inherent unreliability in his findings. Certainly Dr. Hayne would want the truth to come out.”

Gibbs’s lawyers would not provide many specifics about her background or the events leading up to her baby’s death. The records make this much clear: Gibbs, pregnant at 15, tested positive three times for marijuana and or cocaine during her pregnancy. She then missed several doctor’s appointments.

In November 2006, 36 weeks into her pregnancy, Gibbs ended up in the emergency room at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Columbus, where “fetal demise” was diagnosed and labor was induced. A urine test on Gibbs again detected the presence of cocaine and marijuana. By the day after Samiya’s delivery, Hayne had noted that the probable cause of death was homicide.

Gibbs’s lawyers spent the first several years trying to persuade the Mississippi Supreme Court to throw out the murder charge. (Gibbs, now 23, has been out on bail for much of the time.) They filed their motion to exclude Hayne’s testimony last year.

Expert witnesses hired by the defense claim that the toxicology results didn’t actually support Hayne’s findings. Although Samiya’s blood showed traces of benzoylecgonine, a cocaine byproduct, cocaine itself was “not detected,” according to the lab that did the tests. Kimberly Collins, a forensic pathologist in Atlanta associated with Emory University, said in an affidavit: “It is impossible to conclude from the very small amount of benzoylecgonine that the stillbirth was caused by cocaine toxicity.” Two other defense experts concurred.

The experts maintain that there were other problems with the findings as well. Hayne, they say, did not order tests to rule out infection or fetal abnormality, two common causes of stillbirth. Hayne said that Gibbs’s placenta was normal, but closer examination, the defense experts assert, showed the presence of blood clots — a sign that the baby’s oxygen supply had been cut off. (In a 2011 study by a consortium of researchers around the U.S., 24 percent of stillbirths were caused by blood clots or other placenta abnormalities.)

The experts said cocaine has been linked to one kind of devastating outcome — placenta abruption (when the placenta pulls away from the uterus), which can lead to stillbirth. That was not present in Samiya’s death.

In Gibbs’s case, the evidence pointed to “umbilical cord compression” as the likeliest explanation for Samiya’s death, the defense experts said.

At the same time, Gibbs’s attorneys are challenging the very notion that cocaine exposure in utero causes widespread fetal mortality or serious, long-lasting harm in children. The idea dates back to the 1980s and ‘90s, when the crack epidemic led to fears about a generation of developmentally impaired “crack babies.” And it has gained a kind of credence over the years as OB/GYNs, parenting sites, and many others have urged women to avoid all kinds of substances during pregnancy — everything from tobacco and wine to raw-milk cheese, sushi and hair dye.

But the concerns about cocaine have proven to be “wildly overstated,” said Deborah A. Frank, a pediatrician and researcher at Boston University School of Medicine who has participated in numerous studies on the topic over the past two decades.

“There is no consistent association between cocaine use during pregnancy and serious fetal harms, birth defects, or serious long-term physical or developmental impairments,” Frank wrote in an affidavit. “There is no convincing evidence that prenatal cocaine exposure is more strongly associated with fetal harm or developmental deficits than exposure to legal substances, like tobacco and alcohol, or many other factors.”

Frank and other researchers said they have been trying to set the record straight for years, but their arguments have rarely had a hearing in court, Paltrow said. Defense lawyers — often public defenders — don’t have the resources to hire experts to challenge prosecutors, and they may not even realize what the science actually says. It’s not unusual for women to plead guilty in such cases to avoid the risk of losing at trial — and getting a longer sentence. (Indeed, at least two mississippi women are believed to have pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the early 2000s, Gibbs’ lawyers said.)

“For a whole host of reasons, women should not be prosecuted for this sort of thing,” said Robert McDuff, one of Gibbs’ lawyers. “But if they are going to be, it needs to be based on scientific research and analysis that is more reliable than what we have now.”

Cory, Hayne’s lawyer who also does criminal defense work, acknowledged that, “In the criminal justice system, where the stakes are higher, the resources are not there to challenge the science. The judge, who is the gatekeeper, has to use the information they have. You get some crazy results in criminal cases. Science where there is no consensus gets admitted as if there was consensus.”

Gibbs’ attorneys are hopeful that the judge in their case may yet throw out the depraved-heart murder charge. Meanwhile, one thing the evidence does suggest: “Incarceration or the threat of incarceration have proved to be ineffective in reducing the incidence of alcohol or drug abuse,” the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s Committee on Health Care for Underserved Women wrote in 2011.

Moreover, the committee determined, pregnant women who fear the legal system avoid or emotionally disengage from prenatal care — the very thing that might help assure that they give birth to healthy babies.

“Drug enforcement policies that deter women from seeking prenatal care are contrary to the welfare of the mother and fetus,” it said.

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/22/a_te...ium=socialflow