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Harvey Weinstein leaving court after a bail hearing in December. Credit Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Harvey Weinstein, the universally accepted villain of the #MeToo movement, is a sinner, not a rapist, his defense attorney Donna Rotunno told Gayle King in a televised interview last September. Asked about her strategy in his criminal trial on charges of sexual assault and rape, set to begin on Monday, Ms. Rotunno offered an advance peek. There are always “blurred lines” and “an area of gray” between men and women in sexual circumstances, she said. And memory can be faulty “years later.” But she’s confident the evidence will exonerate her client.

Over 80 women have made public accusations against Mr. Weinstein; on Monday, he was charged in Los Angeles with four counts of sexual assault.…  Seguir leyendo »

On Sunday, the Vatican ordered U.S. bishops to stop considering proposals about how to respond when bishops are accused of sexual abuses. Those proposals were on this week’s agenda at the fall gathering of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore.

Why were the bishops considering action now? For several reasons. This summer, the Vatican removed retired Archbishop Theodore McCarrick from ministry after finding that allegations that he had sexually abused young men were credible. In August, the Pennsylvania attorney general released a grand jury report revealing extensive clerical sex abuse in the state, prompting several other state attorneys general to investigate church abuse records.…  Seguir leyendo »

Separemos todo lo que hay de política en el caso Kavanaugh—que es mucho, puesto que la designación de un juez vitalicio para el Tribunal Supremo es una de las más importantes decisiones políticas que un presidente puede tomar a lo largo de su mandato— y comprobaremos la magnitud de la guerra cultural que se libra actualmente en Estados Unidos y seguramente en la mayoría de los países desarrollados.

Hemos visto frente a frente al juez Brett Kavanaugh y a la profesora Christine Blasey Ford, la mujer que le acusa de haberla agredido sexualmente cuando ella tenía 15 años y él 17.…  Seguir leyendo »

De Lisístrata a #me-too

El pasado jueves me encontraba en Times Square, en Nueva York, donde todos los medios de comunicación tienen su sede. Eran las diez de la mañana, el momento en que normalmente la multitud se amontona y se empuja. Pero ese día no. Miles de curiosos estaban clavados en el sitio, como fascinados por el espectáculo que ofrecían las pantallas de televisión gigantes de los escaparates y las fachadas. Nunca, desde la llegada del primer estadounidense a la Luna y los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001, habían permanecido los estadounidenses inmóviles durante tantas horas para contemplar un espectáculo que quizá en el futuro suponga un giro tan significativo en la historia como los primeros pasos de Neil Armstrong sobre nuestro satélite.…  Seguir leyendo »

El juez Brett Kavanaugh testificando ante el Comité Judicial del Senado de Estados Unidos la semana pasada CreditErin Schaff para The New York Times

Cuando Matt Damon hizo su imitación de Brett Kavanaugh en Saturday Night Live, pudimos ver que logró capturar su esencia antes de que dijera una sola palabra. Se trata de la cara —esa mueca de desprecio, llena de rabia, con el ceño fruncido—. La semana pasada, en su audiencia ante el Senado, Kavanaugh no sonó como un juez (ya no digamos un posible ministro de la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos) ni siquiera logró verse como uno.

Sin embargo, tampoco Lindsey Graham, quien pasó la audiencia con casi la misma mueca, se vio como un senador.

Se han llevado a cabo muchos estudios sobre las fuerzas que motivan el apoyo a Trump, en específico la ira, que es una característica tan dominante del movimiento MAGA, “Make America Great Again” (“Hagamos a Estados Unidos grandioso de nuevo”).…  Seguir leyendo »

Watching Dominique Strauss-Kahn plummet from managing director of the International Monetary Fund to criminal defendant, one could be forgiven for believing that diplomats do not get away with crimes committed in the United States. But one would be wrong.

Strauss-Kahn had functional immunity as head of the IMF, so only acts that fell within his official duties were covered. But if Strauss-Kahn had been a diplomat, even a low-ranking attaché, this story might have been quite different.

Envoys posted to the United States, like their American counterparts posted abroad, enjoy full diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. But in almost all cases, this immunity translates into impunity when those diplomats commit crimes.…  Seguir leyendo »

Every two minutes, someone is raped in the United States. Every year, more than 200,000 rape victims, mostly women, report their rapes to police. Most consent to the creation of a rape kit, an invasive process for collecting physical evidence (including DNA material) of the assault that can take up to six hours. What most victims don't know is that in thousands of cases, that evidence sits untested in police evidence lockers.

The backlog of untested evidence gained national attention in 2001 when Debbie Smith, a rape victim, testified before Congress. The Debbie Smith DNA Backlog Grant Program was started in 2004 with the goal of processing the nearly 400,000 untested rape kits nationwide.…  Seguir leyendo »

President Bush has won support abroad and bipartisan praise at home for his efforts to combat human trafficking, the slavery of our time. But now that work is imperiled by his own Department of Justice.

At the United Nations in 2003, Mr. Bush denounced the sex trafficking of women and girls around the world. A little more than two years later, he signed into law a bill that included a broad array of measures to reduce the domestic demand for sex trafficking.

Sex slavery is not the only modern incarnation of this ancient institution — factory slavery, farm slavery and domestic servitude are still with us — but it is the largest category of slavery in the United States.…  Seguir leyendo »

This Memorial Day, as an ever-increasing number of mentally and physically wounded soldiers return from Iraq, the Department of Veterans Affairs faces a pressing crisis: women traumatized not only by combat but also by sexual assault and harassment from their fellow service members. Sadly, the department is failing to fully deal with this problem.

Women make up some 15 percent of the United States active duty forces, and 11 percent of the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly a third of female veterans say they were sexually assaulted or raped while in the military, and 71 percent to 90 percent say they were sexually harassed by the men with whom they served.…  Seguir leyendo »

At the height of the potato famine, Queen Victoria of England made a state visit to Ireland. Facades were built in Dublin to prevent her from seeing the dire suffering of the people who lived along her route from ship to castle, where she was wined and dined. The wrenching issue of the famine was totally ignored.

As Pope Benedict XVI visits the United States, will he likewise be shielded from a scandal that has brought an unprecedented harvest of shame for the Roman church in America (and elsewhere)? I am speaking, of course, of the plague of clerical sexual abuse.…  Seguir leyendo »