Multiple Gang Rape Cases Shock Italy, Mexico Decriminalizes Abortion And More

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Furious Italians are taking to the streets to show solidarity and demand justice after two separate cases of gang rape against teenage girls came to light in July.

In one case, a 19-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped by seven men aged between 18 and 22 in Palermo, Sicily, in July.

The men had met the woman at a club, got her drunk and then carried her, barely walking, to an abandoned construction site, where they filmed themselves gang-raping her.

The seven men, including a minor who later turned 18, have since been arrested and an investigation is ongoing.

In a series of leaked WhatsApp conversations, one of the men later said that the incident was disgusting but that “flesh is flesh”, causing an uproar on social media with people showing their support for the woman with the hashtag #IoNonSonoCarne (#IAmNotFlesh).

In the other case, two girl cousins, aged 10 and 12, were allegedly repeatedly raped by a group of six teen boys, aged between 11 and 19, over several months.

The girls have since been moved to a foster home, and an investigation is ongoing.

Italy’s far-right, first woman prime minister Giorgia Meloni paid a visit to Caviano, where the second case happened on Thursday Aug. 31.

Shhe called the crime “barbaric” but did not speak about the incident from a women’s rights perspective, saying only that authorities would clean up the town from “illegality and drugs”.

She also did not address comments made by her partner, Andrea Giambruno, a TV presenter, that blamed the 19-year-old woman victim in the Palermo case.

“If you go dancing, you have every right to get drunk,” Giambruno said, according to Reuters. “But if you avoid getting drunk and losing your senses, you might also avoid running into certain problems and being found by the wolf”.

Also Happening Around The World

🇬🇦 Gabon’s military has seized power in a coup after the president was re-elected for a third term.

🇪🇸 Spain’s women’s soccer team coach has been fired after its president forcibly kissed a player.

After decades of campaigning from women’s rights activists, Mexico’s Supreme Court has decriminalized abortion, becoming the latest country to do so in Latin America.

12 out of 32 states in Mexico have decriminalized abortion, but the Supreme Court decriminalized it across the whole country Wednesday Sep. 6.

In its ruling, the high court found that Mexico’s laws making abortion a crime are unconstitutional because they violate the rights of women and girls.

It ordered abortion be removed from the penal code, meaning that federal public health institutions will be required to offer abortion to anyone who requests it.

The move comes two years after the Supreme Court voted in 2021 to strike down a law in the northern state of Coahuila that criminalized abortion, finding it unconstitutional.

In 2020, Argentina became the largest Latin American country to legalize abortion after a long push by women’s rights activists whose green handkerchiefs have since spread across movements in Mexico and around the region.

This was followed by Colombia, which decriminalized abortion in 2022.

More Women You Should Know About

🇵🇪 Also in Latin America, this 11-year-old girl in Peru who became pregnant with her rapist’s baby has finally been granted an abortion.

🇮🇷 These two Iranian women journalists were jailed for allegedly for reporting on the Mahsa Amini protests.

🇪🇸 Women in Spain are protesting for the football president to resign after his unconsensual kiss.

🇪🇸 This Spanish former soccer player has now been named as the first woman coach of the country’s women’s national soccer team.

Hong Kong’s Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must provide a legal framework to recognize same-sex partnerships.

In Hong Kong, the constitution only recognizes “marriage” as being between between a man and a woman.

The move comes after Jimmy Sham, a pro-democracy activist, sued the government for not recognizing same-sex marriage.

Sham married his partner in the USA in 2013, but his marriage is not recognized in Hong Kong.

Sham, who is currently in prison under the national security law, argued that this is unconstitutional and brought the case forward in 2018.

On Sep. 6, the court ruled that the government must provide a legal framework to recognize same-sex partnerships as there are currently no options like civil unions.

However, it still did not recognize that its ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.

The government now has two years to create an alternative legal framework that will protect same-sex couples’ rights.

More Good News For Your Week

🇸🇰 This Slovakian woman race walker’s boyfriend proposed to her at the finish line at the World Athletics Championships, and it’s so sweet.

🇬🇧 Zoo keepers at London Zoo held its annual weigh-in for its animals, and it was adorably wholesome.

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