This article appeared in the May/June 2002 issue of Soroptimist of the Americas.

Three true stories of indifference, and worse:

In 1996, a pregnant Kajal Khidr of Iraqi Kurdistan was accused of extramarital sex by her husband's relatives. They cut off her nose and threatened to kill her when her baby was born. She received medical treatment and escaped to a women's shelter. Unable to obtain assistance from her own family or elsewhere in her own country, Khidr fled abroad with the help of human rights workers.

At age 15, a girl known in immigration court documents only as Ms. G was traded to her neighbor as his wife, in order to help pay off the mortgage on her parents' farm. Her husband routinely beat and raped her, but neither her parents nor the local police would protect her. At 20, she ran away with her two children. When she was found, her mother held her down while her husband beat her; he later took the children. She fled to the United States in search of asylum, but the immigration judge told her lawyer he would order her deported back to El Salvador.

First-time offender Robin Lucas, serving a sentence at a minimum security work camp program in Dublin, Calif., had a minor altercation with another inmate and was moved to isolation in the adjacent male facility. A man entered her cell one night, having paid the guard, and attempted to rape her. Fearing for her safety, Lucas complained to the prison authorities, who did nothing. Guards then let three men enter her cell, where they raped, sodomized, and beat her. Two weeks later, Lucas was transferred back to the women's facility, but she did not receive medical attention until more than a month after the attack. This happened in 1995.

These accounts of official indifference to violence against women have been documented by Amnesty International as violations of women's human rights and also qualify as torture under the United Nations Convention against Torture. Sadly, these three women represent thousands more each year who are:

Sexually assaulted in prison as authorities leave them unprotected or, worse, charge them with a crime;

Raped repeatedly while detained during wartime, to demoralize them and their families, and as a way of ethnic cleansing, since any baby they produce is part "enemy";

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