Stop Street Harassment

Making Public Spaces Safe and Welcoming

Thank You, Taylor Swift!

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Have you been following Taylor Swift’s lawsuit the last few days? If not, here is context via an excerpt of an article I wrote for Huffington Post a few days ago:

“Pop star Taylor Swift testified a few days ago about David Mueller, a former radio DJ, allegedly groping her backstage during a meet-and-greet after an event in 2013. Groping is a form of sexual violence. When her team reported the incident to his company, they launched their own investigation and fired him.

If her allegations are true, and I believe they are, then Swift’s experience is not unlike that of millions of Americans. In 2014, my organization Stop Street Harassment worked with national survey firm GfK to conduct a nationally representative survey about sexual harassment and violence in public spaces. Alarmingly, 23 percent of women and 8 percent of men nationwide had experienced some form of unwanted sexual touching while they were in public spaces, including streets, buses, trains, stores, bars, concert venues and parks…

Another common reason why people stay silent about groping is they fear being disbelieved or blamed for the incident. Countless women have written on the Stop Street Harassment site about encountering these kinds of responses when sharing their stories of harassment with friends, relatives or police. Even though she is a megastar, it is telling that these are both responses Swift faced. She had the fortitude to refute them in court saying, “This is what happened, it happened to me, I know it was him,” and “I’m not going to allow you or your client to make me feel in any way that this is my fault, because it isn’t.”

Yesterday, Swift won her lawsuit and today she announced she is donating money to organizations that work with sexual violence survivors.

Via ABC News:

“After a Denver jury found that a preponderance of evidence showed that former radio DJ David Mueller had groped the pop star, Swift said in a statement that her four-year ordeal, which included a two-year-long trial process, was for “anyone who feels silenced by a sexual assault.”

“I acknowledge the privilege that I benefit from in life, in society and in my ability to shoulder the enormous cost of defending myself in a trial like this,” the 27-year-old singer said in a statement obtained by ABC News. “My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard. Therefore, I will be making donations in the near future to multiple organizations that help sexual assault victims defend themselves.”

Two organizations working with victims of assault told ABC News that they have already benefited from Swift taking on Mueller in court [including RAINN].”

Thank you, Swift, for using your platform in this way and for standing so tall in the face of abuse and disbelief. You are an inspiration and a role model.

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Grown Men Harass DC Elementary School Students

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Anti-abortion protesters outside of the Two Rivers Public Charter School, which is next to a new Planned Parenthood facility that is under construction in Washington, D.C., shown here in November 2015. (Courtesy of Two Rivers Public Charter School)
Anti-abortion protesters outside of the Two Rivers Public Charter School, which is next to a new Planned Parenthood facility that is under construction in Washington, D.C., shown here in November 2015. (Courtesy of Two Rivers Public Charter School)

“School leaders at a public charter school in Northeast Washington filed a lawsuit [today] against anti-abortion protesters who they say are harassing students in their efforts to stop construction of a Planned Parenthood facility next door.

Two Rivers Public Charter School alleges in a complaint filed in D.C. Superior Court that the protesters have engaged in “extreme and outrageous conduct” during the past several months, targeting school children as young as 3 years old with gruesome images of aborted fetuses and messages about the “murder facility” going in next to their school. The school is asking the court to order protesters not to talk to the schoolchildren or approach them outside the school.” Read more in the Washington Post.

The DC Mayor’s office reached out yesterday to SSH and other relevant groups to see if we would write a letter in support of this lawsuit. Our board of directors unanimously agreed!

Here it is:

“Stop Street Harassment (SSH) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting and ending gender-based street harassment worldwide. We are based in Reston, Virginia, and do work locally, nationally and internationally.

Locally, one of our initiatives is partnering with WMATA and Collective Action for Safe Spaces on an anti-harassment transit campaign in the Washington Metropolitan Region. We are proud to be part of that effort because we want everyone in the region to feel safe on the Metro trains and buses.

We also want people, including children, to feel safe in other public spaces. For that reason, we are dismayed that people protesting the construction of a Planned Parenthood health center on 4th Street are targeting elementary school children at Two Rivers Public Charter School next door, including with signs reading, “They kill babies nearby! Tell your parents to stop them.”

We believe that street harassment is a human rights violation because it denies harassed persons equal access to public spaces by making them feel unsafe and unwelcome there. This is exactly what the anti-Planned Parenthood protesters are doing. Elementary school children should have the right to go to and from school without feeling unsafe and unwelcome — and without feeling threatened and intimidated — but the Planned Parenthood protesters are denying them that right each time they protest and target them.

We support both the Two Rivers’ complaint and request for preliminary and permanent injunctive relief and the Mayor’s efforts to protect the students at the school and Planned Parenthood’s work in Washington, D.C. from this systematic harassment and intimidation.

Sincerely,

The Stop Street Harassment Board of Directors”

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Judge Throws Out Subway Rape Case

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Remember the young woman in NYC who was raped by a man on a subway platform and sued the MTA and the two employees who essentially sat by (after calling the command center) while she was raped? Well, I just read that the judge has thrown out the suit.

scalejustice“In a nine-page ruling, Queens Supreme Court Justice Kevin Kerrigan concluded a token clerk and a subway conductor had no responsibility to intervene and were following work rules by not confronting the rapist.”

Meanwhile the attacker has never been caught. Surveillance video failed to capture the attack.

The woman who was raped is understandably devastated and she has 30 days to decide whether to appeal the judge’s decision.

It is difficult to say if any of us would have acted any differently had we been the MTA workers, especially if they were following company protocol. But at the same time, I have a hard time not feeling appalled and outraged that they knew this was occurring but they only did the bare minimum to stop it.  I really wish the outcome could have been different.

It’s Sexual Assault Awareness & Prevention Month right now, and while people are much more likely to be sexually assaulted by someone they know, these types of random attacks happen too. At the very least, MTA may want to rethink their procedure and/or protocol for when assaults do occur so that they can respond better to literal cries for help… And maybe if she appeals and gets to have a lawsuit, they will HAVE to rethink it.

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