Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Woman is believed, her sexual assaulter is sentenced to prison

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Luis Enrique Sossa Maltese

Luis Enrique Sossa Maltese, a 39-year-old carpenter, was recently sentenced to four years and six months in prison for groping a 25-year-old woman near Central Park and the Plaza of Social Guarantees in San Jose, Costa Rica. First he groped her butt and crotch and then he came back around and made an upskirt grab!

The survivor of this sexual assault came forward, she said, to seek justice and the ability to to walk through the streets without fearing he will assault her again. Fortunately, the judge said he believed her, and the man will be in jail for a while. Hopefully his arrest will deter would-be gropers and sexual assaulters from harming other women.

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Turkish Mayor tells women if they want to be safe, stay home

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I think that Turkish Mayor Necmittin Dede must hang out with the Toronto police officer who said that if women stopped dressing like sluts they wouldn’t face sexual assault (his comment led to the global SlutWalk movement, starting with SlutWalk Toronto in April).  They must sit around brainstorming flawed, offensive, and misogynistic public statements they can make to stir up trouble and keep women’s rights activists up at night.

From Hürriyet Daily News:

“Women complaining about sexual harassment on the streets of the eastern province of Muş should deal with the problem by simply staying at home, the province’s mayor has said.

Do not walk around, sit in your homes,” 71-year-old Justice and Development Party, or AKP, Mayor Necmittin Dede recently told Muş representatives of the Women’s Center, or KAMER, when they told authorities that high employment in the city had resulted in men spilling out of the overcrowded teahouses in the area to verbally harass female passersby.”

Not only is this statement truly ludicrous for its impracticality and pointless for placing the onus on women to try to stay safe from men on the streets instead of placing the onus on men on the streets to treat women with respect, but it’s also ironic. The women asking for help in addressing street harassment actually work at a domestic violence shelter! They of all people know that, thanks to domestic violence, homes can be as, if not more, dangerous for women than the streets.

From the domestic violence shelter workers:

“We have appealed to the authorities time and time again, yet they do not allow us into the schools to conduct training sessions about women. So we visit households instead. We conducted surveys in 700 households until now that show the rate of domestic violence stands around 70 percent,” said Necmiye Boz of KAMER.

Muş municipality does maintain a women’s shelter in the area – although the building is prominently identified by a large sign, allowing potential attackers to find women seeking refuge in the building.

A total of six honor killings have been committed in the province over the past two months although some of the deaths have been passed off as suicides, according to Boz and another KAMER representative, Ayşegül Söylemez.”

Outrageous. What will it take before the mayor and others care that domestic violence AND street harassment are prevalent (and inter-related)? A 100% rate instead of a 70% rate? Maybe not even then;  with those high statistics, the probability suggests the mayor could be one of those abusers so why would he care about stopping it?

The silver lining in the story is that the police seem to care.

“Among state authorities, local police have led the way in trying to combat domestic violence, releasing preparing a report titled “Survey Report on Cases of Domestic Violence.” Law enforcement officers have also rented billboards to create awareness about the problems facing women. One such billboard features the portrait of a happy family, with text underneath saying, “Not everything is what it seems.”

KAMER was officially founded in 1997 and continued to grow and strengthen itself in the following years. At the moment, the group is trying to expand its activities in 23 provinces of eastern and southeastern Anatolia to more districts, villages and remote areas.

Since 1984, thousands of women have joined the group, which advocates for and extends aid to victims who face attack, arrest, torture and even death around Turkey.

The group also aims to provide analysis on the people who are convicted of beating, stabbing or raping women.”

Police and women of KAMER, keep up your important work. Even though you face resistance at home, you’ve got a lot of support around the world.

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Harassment on Islamabad transportation is “rife”

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Let’s add another city to the list of places where a study shows harassment on public transportation is a big problem, shall we? It’s Islamabad, Pakistan.

The Social Research and Development Organisation (SRDO) surveyed 75 women commuters in Islamabad, aged 19 to 45, to find out more about women’s experiences with sexual harassment during their commute, particularly on “public transport wagons and buses.”

In the survey, the women “disclosed that inappropriate touching, making sexual comments and staring by male passengers is overwhelmingly rife. The respondents, however, made it clear that the incidents of harassment are far lesser in rickshaws and taxis.”

Via The International News:

“Farhana Hussain, a women rights activist, said, ‘We should not see the issue, harassment of women in public transport, in isolation as it is an open fact that harassment and violence against women inside four walls and on the streets is just one feature of our male dominated structure that always put blame on victims instead of helping them.’

She said successive governments have taken very positive steps and introduced specific legislation to curb violence and harassment against women in houses, at workplace and in public transport, but its implementation mechanism has made it difficult to provide any relief. A large majority of respondents, 59 per cent, informed that insufficient space for women passengers in buses and wagons is a major problem for them.

A nineteen-year girl student told the survey team that due to repeated incidents of harassment at the bus, she and her friend have started commuting in rickshaw. ‘Though travelling in rickshaw is quite expensive for us, we feel quite secure in it,’ she said, adding, ‘In my opinion the government should introduce women-only buses in big cities to tackle the issue of harassment of women passengers. ”

Women-only public transportation can provide much needed relief for women facing frequent harassment, but it doesn’t challenge or end the harassment! The harassment continues elsewhere. For example, in a recent study of more than 200 youth in Gujranwala, Pakistan, 96 percent of the girls experienced street harassment. So, do we need women-only streets, too?! No, we need comprehensive and multi-layered action to address and end the pervasiveness of public harassment.

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“There is no peace when you are a woman of color”

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A lot of black women feel as if Italy is a place where their “beauty is celebrated.” Unfortunately, there are a lot of prostitutes in Italy who are women of color from Brazil and Nigeria. That said, living here can be uncomfortable.

The mention of street harassment conjures up many different experiences.

I remember when I first arrived, I refused to go to the store alone after always having men slow down in passing cars.

I remember walking out of my house and having a group of Italian females in a passing car, make a “fellatio” gesture in an attempt to taunt me because they assumed I was a prostitute- based on brown skin alone.

Two days after the birth of my child, I was released from the hospital but my child needed clearance from the doctors. I returned to the hospital. I was wearing my husband’s Adidas warm up suit with my hair in a bun. As I walked, I heard someone whistling as if whistling for a dog. It was an old 60 something year old wrinkled man, trying to get my attention.

I could go on, but such is life for me everyday. It’s a beautiful country but there is no peace when you are a woman of color. That is, if they don’t know that you are American. If they look at you and think you are any other type of woman of color, the assumption is that you are “working’ the streets.

– Anonymous

Location: Italy

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

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