Posted on 04/04/2013 10:08:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
We've seen an alarming number of stories about sex attacks on female travelers in recent weeks, from a Swiss tourist who was gang-raped in India to an American student who was raped in a van in Rio de Janeiro.
It doesn't mean that women shouldn't visit foreign places or that no parts of those countries are safe. But women traveling in these areas should do so with extreme caution and a knowledge of the culture.
We rounded up eight popular tourist destinations where women should be extra cautious, based on reports from Human Rights Watch, the State Department, and crime reports in the media.
1) India
From the Taj Mahal to river boat cruises, India's tourism industry generates $17.7 billion each year.
But the recent gang rapes of a Swiss tourist and a New Delhi student, and a British tourist jumping from her window for fear of being raped have caused tourism to drop 35 percent since December.
And Human Rights Watch writes that reports of violence against women have been increasing, and "the government had yet to properly investigate and prosecute sexual abuse in police custody."
2) Brazil
Rio de Janeiro is billed as the most popular tourist destination in the Southern Hemisphere, but women should be on alert after an American tourist was raped in a van while her French boyfriend was handcuffed, AP reports. The three suspects were arrested, but Brazil is known for its a machismo culture and history of gender-based violence, according to Human Rights Watch.
It will be hosting next year's World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
3) Turkey
Tourists in Turkey largely flock to historical sites in Istanbul or the country's gorgeous seaside resorts.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Dearborn is majority Christian.
How about Wyoming?
they forgot certain areas in the USA where feral subhumans rule and any Blonde blue-eyed female is quickly attacked and used to satisfy the aboriginal subhuman barbarian lust.
Scarier is that many of these countries are also Latin American....and politicians in BOTH parties are working to give those nations people’s Illegal Alien Amnesty
Which means that they will be bringing their RapeShow to America
Reported rapes, I fear.
If I ever go there, I would prefer to wear soemthing like this: 
The issue is to be reasonably sensitive to aspects of their culture. Too many people (including Americans and especially Russians!) tend to throw their weight around and be offensive when visiting a foreign country.
Rapes per 100,000 population. Grey areas - statistics unavailable.
The US has a far, far more serious rape problem than India does, far higher overall and per-capita rape statistics, and a much greater social tolerance of the problem. The trivialization of sex here is partly to blame, of course.
Indian reaction to the New Delhi gang rape is in many ways more promising than American reactions to US rapes. Take the Steubenville, Ohio, case, which hasn’t generated the same public outrage as the case in
March 15, 2013
PHILADELPHIA, Penn.: The December 2012 gang rape in New Delhi, India, deserves the public condemnation and outrage that it has brought. But much of the commentary on the case has gone beyond this, holding up the case as evidence of India’s larger flaws. The subtext writes India off as a backward and incorrigible third world country, whose primitive norms and lack of rule of law put it outside of modern democracies with more reliable norms and laws.
The unfortunate truth is that India’s reported rape rate, and even the slightly higher rate in New Delhi where the gang rape occurred, is less than that of typical European and American rates. In the days following the attack, scores of protests were held all over India but mostly in the New Delhi region where the attack occurred. Democracy went on the move, as thousands upon thousands of people joined in the calls for justice.
The Indian reaction to the incident is in many ways more gratifying and promising than reactions to American rape cases. Take the Steubenville, Ohio, case, which began trial on Wednesday. It has not generated nearly as much public outrage as the case in India. If there is a larger lesson that the gang rape and the public outcry that followed teach us about India, it is one of promise and hope, not alienation and despair.
But commentators have painted a different picture. Lakshmi Chaudhry wrote in The Nation: “[T]here is only one India, a social Darwinian nation where there is no rule of law; where might always makes right, whether your power derives from your gender, money, caste or sheer numbers, as in the case of a gang rape….The young girl who paid an astronomically steep price for an evening out at the movies proved that the so-called ‘new India’ exists in a bubble built on the delusion of safety.”
Is India indeed “a social Darwinian nation,” to be marked off from other, civilized democracies?
According to UN figures, India’s reported rape rate is 1.8 per 100,000 population (Delhi City’s is 2.8), as compared, for example, to Ireland’s 10.7, Norway’s 19.2, or America’s 27.3. Of course, given the intimate nature of the offense and its social stigma, the actual rape rates are generally higher than these official rates based on reports to police. By last official US estimate, only a half to a third of rapes are reported; and it could be that the reporting rates are even worse in other countries, including India. But the larger picture suggests that the India rape problem may not be that different from the West’s.
Perhaps it is the outrageousness of the conduct that sets the Indian case apart?
Sadly no. Last August in Steubenville, Ohio, for example, young men carried a drunken, incapacitated 16-year-old girl from party to party where two high school football players, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, are accused of repeatedly raping her, one party being hosted by the assistant football coach. Photos of the girl in compromised positions later surfaced on social media.
In October 2009, outside a school dance in Richmond, Calif., a 15-year-old was gang-raped over several hours as others looked on. Two years previously, several teens in Dunbar Village, Fla., were convicted of a brutal gang rape, torture, and forced incest of a woman and her 12-year-old son.
Perhaps it is instead the insensitive reaction by some Indians to the New Delhi rape that marks out India as different?
Unfortunately no. In the Steubenville case, the young men charged with rape and the people at the parties were calling and texting about their alleged exploits in real time. No one at any of the parties apparently did anything to stop the alleged rape or to report it to police.
The rapes at the Richmond high school dance went on for hours, with many observers. After the perpetrators were charged in the Dunbar Village case, neighbors told a local paper that the boys were just kids and didn’t think they should go to jail.
If one is appalled by indifference and inaction in the face of horrendous rapes, the US cases would seem to offer as much or more to condemn than does the Indian case.
Certainly the public outrage in each of these US cases did not rival the mass protests in India and the international attention the reaction drew. Commentary on the New Delhi gang rape should avoid condemning and ostracizing India but should rather join, support, and praise its people for their outpouring of support for the victim, the outrage at the rape, and the overwhelming calls for justice and changes to India’s legal system and culture. This is the process by which a society – be it in India, the US, or any other country – changes and internalizes important norms.
None of this is meant to deny the fact that the New Delhi gang rape does highlight problems that are specific to India. Because the Indian criminal justice system is severely backlogged, with millions of cases pending before criminal courts, justice for victims of sexual violence is often elusive. To make things worse, rape victims in India routinely encounter resistance from local police when reporting their rapes and during the subsequent investigations of the crimes.
All of this is exacerbated by the general disrespect that women are commonly subjected to in Indian society and the impunity with which they are frequently harassed in public places – realities that the outrage and protests in India highlighted.
Yet what was perhaps most striking in the Indian public’s outrage at the incident, in their identification of the malaises in society’s treatment of women, and in their call for change, was the fundamental belief that the law and the legal system had a continuing (and critical) role to play. A commitment to the rule of law and to refining how it works were front and center in the public rallies. This fact is both heartening and inspiring – and is hardly reflective of a “social Darwinian” society.
In taking stock of the New Delhi rape case, we ought to recognize that India is a young democracy, struggling in fits and starts to move its laws and criminal justice system to better reflect its people’s shared judgments of justice in the modern world. That is a path of promise, not despair.
> Reported rapes, I fear.
Fear not, for Obama is only the reported president of the United States. You are the real one.
The article was not really very helpful. A country’s issues with prosecuting domestic violence, for example, don’t necessarily reflect a risk of assault on a woman tourist, especially one who uses common sense.
The countries you named are societies where rape victims are more likely to report the crime, than in countries like Brazil, India, etc. So I fear your point was not valid.
It will be welcome news if conditions for women and children have improved in the U.S. since this report came out:
Excerpts:
The horrible treatment of children and women in the United States
The most serious crimes against women are rising at a significantly faster rate than total crimes: during the past 10 years, rape rates have risen nearly four times as fast as the total crime rate.
Every hour, 16 women confront rapists; a woman is raped every 6 minutes.
Every 18 seconds, a woman is beaten; 3-4 million women are battered each year.
Since 1974, the rate of assaults against young women (20-24) has jumped almost 50%. For young men, it has decreased.
Three out of four women will be victims of at least one violent crime during their lifetimes.
A woman is 10 times more likely to be raped than to die in a car crash.
Only 50% of rapes are ever reported; of those reported, less than 40% result in arrest.
One third of all domestic violence cases, if reported, would be charged as felony rape or felonious assault.
Each year, more than one million women seek medical assistance for injuries caused by battering. The crime rate against women in the United States is significantly higher than in other countries — the United States has a rape rate that is 13 times higher than England’s, nearly 4 times higher than Germany’s, and more than 20 times higher than Japan’s.
Of the American women alive today, 25 million either have been, or will be, raped at least once during their lives.
Last year, the number of women abused by their husbands was greater than the number of women who got married.
In 1950, police caught 83% of all rapists; in 1988 police caught only 53% of them.
Nearly 50% of abusive husbands batter their wives when they are pregnant, making them four times more likely to bear infants of low birth weight.
Of all those arrested for major crimes — murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson — rapists are the most likely to escape conviction.
If every woman victimized by domestic violence last year were to join hands in a line, the string of people would span from New York to Los Angeles and back again.
More than half of all homeless women are on the street because they are fleeing domestic violence. More than 40% of college women who have been raped say that they expect to be raped again.
There were more women injured by rapists last year than marines wounded by the enemy in all of World War II.
There are nearly three times as many animal shelters in the United States as there are battered women’s shelters.
Although campus studies suggest that 1,275 women were raped at America’s 3 largest universities in 1989, only 3 of those rapes were reported to police.
1 out of every 7 women currently attending college has been raped.
486,000 of the girls now attending high school will have been raped before they graduate.
The average age of a rape victim is 18 1/2 years old.
Young women 16-19 years old are the most likely to be raped.
57% of college rape victims are attacked by dates.
Girls raped before age 18 are least likely to report the incident to the police.
Girls aged 12-15 are the most likely to be raped by strangers.
Rape victims aged 12-19 are the least likely to receive hospital care.
Since 1974, the rate of assaults against young women (20-24) has jumped 48%. For men of the same age group, it has decreased 12%.
Half the cases of women killed in this country are victims of domestic violence.
Compiled by the majority staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, July 31, 1990
There’s more apathy in the US than in India for violent rapes. Several of them matching the barbarity of the Delhi rape incident took place in cities around the US after the incident in India.
Barely any American public reactions to them, hardly any news coverage, any political announcements, concerning it. The reaction in India was phenomenal by comparison - It brought the country to a standstill.
It’s not a far stretch to see that America’s rape problem is far more dire.
> There’s more apathy in the US than in India for violent rapes....
It follows that there is a great likelihood of rapes going unreported in the U.S.
Plus any new gun control laws WILL and I repeat WILL be landing up in the courts again.
Indian culture ascribes shame to rape. Here many glorify it (rap music; celebration of prison rape).
Interesting to see France as No. 1. A year ago a friend told me her daughter’s friend was out to dinner in Paris with a Frenchman she had met at a party. As they were walking away from the restaurant he pulled her into a doorway and raped her. When she tried to file a report with the police she was told they don’t even take reports as it is so common!
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