Sex as A Weapon

1994's feel good movie, House Party, starred the women of the popular TLC, as the fictional female group, Sex as a Weapon. How fitting to have a girl group called Sex as a Weapon. Sure it was funny and the movie was mildly amusing, but it seems that the mantra of sex as a weapon is taking hold around the world. This country sat stunned as CNN reported the brutal gang rape of a 15-year-old girl at her homecoming at Richmond High School in California. The girl was raped for almost two and a half hours by as many as ten assailants while at least another ten looked on. Some witnesses even claimed that some people heard what was going on and went over to see and participate. The police in Richmond posted a $20,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest. Since that grim day last week, we have all sat captivated as the story unfolded, and soon after we got a glimpse of two of the young men as they were arraigned in a California court.

As horrific as this crime was and as traumatizing as this girl's experience, she is not the only one. She is hardly the first either. Women are in danger from every corner of the globe. Across the world and even in our own backyards, these crimes are becoming more frequent and more violent. Acts of violence against women have gone unnoticed and unchallenged in many ways. In some of the conflicts around the world rape is even seen as a perk; par for the course for a soldier. Some claim it's just boys being boys, especially following a tiring day of carrying a gun and committing mass murder. Recent history and documentaries have shown that organized patterns of rape are a component of deliberate ethnic cleansing. Even the slave masters of old used rape to control their female slaves as their reproductive rights. These aren't just crimes of passion or boys being boys, this is torture; systematic and deliberate torture. 3,500 women and girls have been raped just this last month in the Congo, some as young as four-years-old.

Rape has always been considered a crime against customary international law, and Peter von Hagenbach was convicted and executed in the first ever recorded international criminal tribunal held in 1474. The Leiber Code listed rape as a capital offense. The Hague Conventions, World War II prosecutions, and the Geneva Conventions all reinforced the ban on rape and other sexual violence.
Some evidence of sexual violence was presented before the International Military Tribunals, after World War II before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East where rape was first specifically referenced in the judgments. But, in the Tokyo Trials sexual violence and rape weren't put on the same level as other crimes, and as such they couldn't stand alone. They were throwaway crimes. The Tribunal lumped the acts of sexual violence under the residual umbrella of crimes against humanity.

Thus, rape was lost in the shuffle of other crimes against humanity. It became just a cautionary tale of horror. As a result no one knew if rape could stand alone as a prosecutable offense in international criminal courts. However in 1993 and 1994 after rape, and sexual violence, was specifically codified for the first time as a recognizable and independent crime within the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda (ICTR). These two historic international instruments are now the foundation upon which crimes of rape and sexual violence are punished.

Now there is solid case law holding that rape and sexual violence are a form of genocide. It started in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In the case of Jean-Paul Akayesu, for the first time, rape and acts of sexual violence were put on equal footing with all other offenses. The Tribunal captured the grave nature of the crime finding that just like torture, rape is used as intimidation, degradation, humiliation, discrimination, punishment, control or destruction of the person. The Rome Statue said it best, "Like torture, rape is a violation of personal dignity."