Anu and other Members, Have you heard of the study by CIET that was singled out as the best among more than 400 international papers presented from 68 countries at a World Health Organisation conference in New Delhi this month. The CIETafrica (Community Information Empowerment and Transparency) report focused on the role of the police in cases of sexual violence, and shows how only one rapist is convicted for every 400 women raped in south Johannesburg. They found a culture that supports sexual violence in adults and in school age children.
They published the report in June 20, 2000. Here is a summary report and it has contact information at the end should you chose to see the report. I am hoping to do volunteer research with their organization. www.ciet.org Dorothy Lemmey, Ph.D., RN 107 Calder Ct. Forest Hill, Md 21050 USA E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------ Dispactch Online Monday, November 19, 2001 http://www.dispatch.co.za/2001/11/19/southafrica/RAPE.HTM Survey finds rape ingrained in SA society JOHANNESBURG -- The recent spate of child rapes were not isolated events but were rooted deep in the country's culture of violence, the non-governmental organisation for Community Information, Empowerment and Transparency (CIET) said here. According to the CIET researcher Neil Andersson, who conducted a social audit of sexual violence in southern Johannesburg, one in every three girls aged 15-18 suffered sexual harassment at school. The social audit, which involved more than 27000 youths, found one in every 20 schoolgirls aged 15 to 18 had been raped in the year prior to the survey. Many male youths had also been sexually abused. Male and female youth were at almost the same risk of unwanted sexual touching or verbal abuse. "If the frequency of sexual abuse of children was shocking, the opinions expressed by schoolchildren about sexual violence revealed a dangerous and destructive culture of violence," Andersson said. Eight out of every 10 boys interviewed said women who were raped "asked for it" and two out of every 10 said they thought women enjoyed being raped. "More surprising than the views of boys were those of the girls, who had internalised the daily risk of sexual violence as a set of disturbing attitudes and practices," Andersson said. Only two percent of adult women in the same communities thought they had no right to avoid sexual abuse, but 12 percent of school-going girls believed they had no right to avoid sexual abuse. More than one half of the school-going respondents said forcing sex with someone you know was not sexual violence. "Deputy President Jacob Zuma has announced he will host a moral summit early next year. ''The question is what this will do about the culture that produces such extreme behaviour as the rape of a nine-month-old baby -- and the sexualisation of violence against children and women throughout the country," Andersson said. A moral summit may be a first and necessary step for government to show it was beginning to take sexual violence seriously, but it also had to address the culture of sexual violence, he said. "Communities urgently need material and technical support for local efforts to combat sexual violence. ''They need to know what has worked to reduce the problem in other places and they need to know how their own efforts add up to prevent it," Andersson added. The CIET social audit covered schools and communities in a multi-ethnic cross-section of South African society. The audit, conducted in collaboration with the local government and with support and original data from the South Africa Police Service, gave rise to a number of community-based interventions against sexual violence. These included a local politician creating a regular forum where mothers and daughters could discuss sexuality, a principal in Orange Farm who arranged for counselling to be available for learners and a guidance teacher who went beyond the call of duty to improve communication between teachers and learners. "Even in the highly fractured communities of south Johannesburg and Louisvale in the Northern Cape," Andersson said, "people declared their revulsion in this kind of sexual violence and their desire to develop their own solutions to it."-- Sapa Contact information: Dr Neil Andersson, Executive Director, CIETafrica, Postnet Box 164, Yeoville, 2198, South Africa; Tel: (011) 648 0434; Fax: (27-11) 867 4574 ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe end-violence OR type: unsubscribe end-violence Archives of previous End-violence messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/end-violence/hypermail/
