Research for the novel HUDSON:
Matt Jacob shared an early cut of Leslie Thomas' film The Prosecutors with me, it's powerful and heartbreaking. There is a moment in an interview with a human rights leader (name withheld) in coastal Columbia that struck me so completely, a woman talking about the devastating effect of the paramilitary troopers taking the women from her village.
She describes how they came into the village with their guns and their machismo, how they would take a woman for maybe a week and then bring her back, give her back. When they did this the village gave up, "immediately the community loses all its strength."
It strikes me because for too long we have thought of rape as having one victim, but it is the entire community, the culture, that is broken by these acts of aggression and violence.
We are being broken in an ancient way when we can not protect our women and children.
To remain whole as families, communities, nations, we can have zero tolerance for sexual assault by the paramilitary, or by celebrities, or by presidents.
Zero tolerance.
From the site for The Prosecutors
How do you accuse your neighbor of a war crime? How do you stand in front of uniformed officers and make the claim that rather than liberators, these people are rapists? What does it take to demonstrate to a village that all of the crimes that have been perpetrated against its people are worthy of conviction - including long-ignored sexual violence?
Rape and pillage are concepts as old as war itself. Certainly war carries with it the idea of gathering the spoils found by those who stand victorious on the battlefield. But does sexual violence have to be a part of war? And what are the risks and sacrifices involved in ensuring that the legal system provides justice for everyone?
It is our contention that with perseverance there will be a global understanding that sexual violence cannot be tolerated as a by-product of war and that victims and combatants will expect that these crimes will be prosecuted.
The legal framework for this type of prosecution is changing. Globally, lawyers, governments, and civil society members are developing and expanding the important historical precedence for this effort. For practitioners working today and students who will fill the legal ranks tomorrow there is much to be learned by what is happening in the courts of Colombia, Bosnia, Congo and beyond.