“If women and children do not survive this pandemic, the human race faces extinction,” said one of the founders of the RINJ Foundation last night in an online conference on recruiting more expert helpers for the RINJ helpline.
This article will share some of the wisdom gained and shared by experts who for years have been trying to prove that rape is no joke (RINJ). Those experts have survived the misogyny and rape of ISIS and get in the faces of national governments in some countries where leaders are saying that harming women is funny and that women should just laugh it off.
A pandemic within a pandemic: violence against women & girls.
by Sharon Santiago
Author’s note: “I bit my lip and tried to swallow a lump in my throat. I was touched deeply when the women stopped the virtual meeting and we all virtually held hands and prayed silently for sisters lost to a pandemic within a pandemic. Yes. We must somehow stop the violence.”
Click to enlarge any image.
Battered mother attends suffering pre-teen child.
A pandemic within a pandemic: violence against women and girls. Photo Credit: Melissa Hemingway. Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine
Rising suicides reveal humanity’s greatest shame: mistreatment of women and girls.
The most calamitous outcome of rape, is suicide. This is an outcome that is increasing among children who have become new victims of rape or incest.
Transmission of a communicable disease like HIV or HBV to the rape survivor would be the next most dangerous outcome. This starts new morbid epidemics.
Many children who are raped or forced into sexual slavery are carriers of disease and transmit the disease to the people who victimize them. Sadly, vulnerable children are victimized by many offenders, often.
Today, one can add COVID-19 to the list of diseases that children suffering incest or rape are passing on to their attackers who then pass their disease to unsuspecting life partners and their families.
Women and children are holding the fort but they must be at the breaking point.
“The psychological trauma for women and children is complex. They must run the household under difficult circumstances as they face hunger, abuse, fear and sickness all the while enduring all forms of horrendous violence,” commented humanitarian worker Helen Brisbois from Washington DC.
Having sexual contact with a consenting person is normal, healthy activity. But that is only true when the event is consented and when the parties are physically eligible.
Kids cannot consent. A pre-pubescent child is not eligible to have any type of intimate sexual relationship, regardless of appearance or behaviours.
“Minors Can’t Consent—Thus Sex with a Minor by an Adult is rape ,” according to the RINJ Women.
“The possible exception would be sex with a minor above a certain age (usually 14 plus) is criminalized only if the offender is older than the victim by a certain number of years (i.e.: teenage boy friend/girl friend of close age but not more than four years.)”
During the pandemic, with literally billions of people ‘locked down’ in various measure of curfew and quarantine, the cost in women’s safety and children’s safety has become immeasurable.
“I bit my lip and tried to swallow a lump in my throat. I was touched deeply when the women stopped the virtual meeting and we all virtually held hands and prayed silently for sisters lost to a pandemic within a pandemic.“
Stop the Violence.
Photo, Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective Magazine
Helpline Calls are heartbreaking, but helpers save lives.
“Please urge people to contact a helpline, ours or a local one—any helpline or all helplines they can reach,” urges nurse Karinna Angeles who works a shift on the phone. “They can specify the person they have been talking to and an effort will be made to schedule calls,” she added.
“I am positive that within the repeat callers I am talking to, I can clearly see the survivors are benefitting. Why? Because they are no longer alone,” she added with emphasis, during a Skype interview.
The RINJ Foundation operates a global helpline using a plethora of quick contact voice over IP (VOIP) methods. The global women’s group says that the number of calls in the past 12 months are growing an average of 307% each month during the pandemic.
According to Katie Alsop, one of the founding women of the global RINJ group, “The number of women and their children requiring immediate shelter is on the upswing as the reports of domestic violence, incest and rape have now become staggering. But we fill those needs one way or the other.”
Nurse Angeles tells FPM.news she not only wants to invite distressed girls and women to contact the helpline, but also invites anyone anywhere in the world who can lend a hand, to contact the helpline as well.
The RINJ Women offer a global HelpLine