When Dr. Christine Blasey Ford broke a decades-long silence about nearly being violently raped by Brett Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court nominee, her allegations were met with death threats. Her address was published, forcing her family to relocate; people followed her on freeways and attempted to enter her place of work. At the same time,
North Carolina is one of just three states, along with Alaska and Oklahoma, that don’t explicitly protect LGBTQ youth in their juvenile justice systems from discrimination, according to the advocacy organization Lambda Legal. Now, a year after a reporter first began inquiring about the state’s policy, that’s about to change—somewhat. The N.C. Department of Public Safety, which
For nearly two decades, the inmates inside Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Alabama were raped, sodomized, forced to engage in oral sex and fondled by corrections officers as state corrections officials looked the other way. In 2013, the prison was considered among the 10 worst prisons in the nation. At least one third of
California prison inmates filed 1,150 complaints last year alleging they were mistreated sexually behind bars, a 29 percent increase over 2016. The numbers are striking, but victim advocates and state prison officials say the trend might actually reflect greater confidence among inmates that their complaints will be taken seriously since the department adopted policies complying
For a long time in the popular imagination, prison rape was, quite literally, a joke. Most cop shows could be counted on for a biting aside or two about dropping soap in a jail shower. But in Washington, some prisoner advocates took the problem seriously, pushing for the passage of the federal Prison Rape Elimination