October has been Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Domestic violence continues to occur, affecting the lives of countless children, women and men who suffer in silence. The month brings awareness to those most affected.
Domestic violence, the horrendous pattern of abusive behavior whereby an intimate partner inflicts violence on their significant others, is impacting women and men across the U.S. But, Latinos are ready to challenge domestic violence victimization.
Groups known as "family councils" are encouraging Nicaraguan rape victims to marry their aggressors. In two cases that involved victims as young as 14, the girls' parents decided to turn them into the brides of the alleged rapists, who were more than 30 years of age.
Hot on the heels of a viral video that caught "Orange Is the New Black" star Lea DeLaria confronting an anti-gay subway preacher on New York City's F subway train last week, another startling video has surfaced online and the women of "The View" had something to say about it.
Dead Guatemalan women are being dumped in alleyways, dropped by the roadside, and deserted in parks, bodies bound by trash bags, plastic blankets, or left bare for the world to see, abandoned by the wayside like discarded trash.
Sexual violence, in the form of rape, forced prostitution, and abductions, plagues Colombia, and often that violence goes uninvestigated and unpunished — until now. Earlier this month, Colombia's senate passed a monumental bill that will help aid and protect survivors of sexual violence — particularly those who were victimized by paramilitaries.
In Bolivia, 2009, nine “religious” Mennonites were jailed for sedating and raping at least 100 women and girls, in what was being called “the ghost rapes of Bolivia.” And, though these men are jailed, the epidemic continues.
