Events of Jewish interest this week in NYC include a musical review and limited screenings of several movies.

Authorities aim to avoid media circus when bailed film director leaves jail

• Associated Press in Geneva
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 14.58 GMT
• Article history

The Swiss chalet which reportedly belongs to the US film director Roman Polanski. Photograph: Thomas Kienzle/AP

The film director Roman Polanski will be placed under house arrest at his Alpine chalet as soon as possible, the Swiss justice ministry said today, announcing it would not appeal against a court decision to release him on bail.

The ministry said it was still deciding whether to extradite the 76-year-old to the United States, where authorities in Los Angeles want him sentenced for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.

The ministry said, however, that it would not appeal against a Swiss criminal court decision granting Polanski $4.5m (£2.7m) bail on the condition that he wear an electronic bracelet and not leave his Gstaad chalet. Polanski must also surrender his identity documents.

"He must not leave this house," the ministry said in a statement. Should he violate the terms of release, the bail will be forfeited to the Swiss government."

Ministry spokesman Folco Galli said the release would be handled quietly: "We don't want to show him off like an exotic animal," he told The Associated Press.

Polanski was accused of raping the girl after plying her with champagne and a Quaalude pill during a modelling shoot in 1977. He was initially charged with six offences, including rape by use of drugs, child molesting and sodomy, but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of unlawful sexual intercourse.

In exchange, the judge agreed to drop the remaining charges and sentence him to prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation. The evaluator released Polanski after 42 days, but the judge said he was going to send him back to serve out the 90 days.

Polanski fled the US on 1 February 1978, the day he was to be sentenced, and has lived in France since.

The court last month rejected Polanski's first bail offer, with his Gstaad chalet as collateral. Before yesterday's decision, Polanski offered a bank guarantee that would cause him to sacrifice his family's home in Paris if he fled justice again.

"I am very happy and relieved," Mathilde Seigner, Polanski's sister-in-law, told Le Parisien newspaper, adding that the director's imprisonment had had "enormous consequences on a psychological level" for his children. After Polanski's release, "we're going to drink a nice glass of champagne and toast together", she said.

Tracy Barker says she was raped in Iraq by a US state department employee while working as a civilian contractor

• Associated Press
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 November 2009 20.55 GMT
• Article history

An arbitrator has awarded a woman nearly $3m (£1.8m) to settle her claims that she was raped in Iraq by a US state department employee in 2005 while working for a former Halliburton subsidiary.

Court records filed this week show Tracy Barker was awarded $2.93m to settle her claim against military contractor KBR.

Barker had sued Houston-based Halliburton and its former KBR subsidiary in May 2007, alleging she was sexually attacked while working as a civilian contractor in Basra, Iraq.

The Associated Press doesn't usually identify those who report they were sexually assaulted, but Barker made her identity public in her lawsuit.

17th November, 2009

Catholic Priest Rapes Maid

Police arrested a 33-year-old Roman Catholic priest for allegedly raping a 17-year-old girl who worked for him. He raped her a second time and asked her to marry him to cover up the crime, the girl( name withheld ) alleges.

The incident occurred in a Catholic Church in Mwenezi where the priest lived in separate rooms with the maid. Inspector Tinaye Matake, police spokesman for Masvingo Province confirmed the incident to the Sunday News.

He said the priest had since been arrested and was in police custody. Inspector Matake speaking to the press, said the name of the priest would be made public once the case against him is investigated and charges filed in court.

According to the police spokesman, the priest sometime in August this year advertised for a maid to help with Church errands. The priest settled for the 17-year-old victim who is also Catholic, after screening of several candidates. The alleged victim moved from her Gokomere area residence into the Church in Mwenezi. 

In September no sooner than the girl moved into the Church than the priest took her to his room and had sex. The girl alleges that sometime in September, she was required to prepare and serve food at a scheduled event in the Church and when she went to the priest’s room to inform him she was leaving for the event, he invited her to the bed and raped her.

He threatened to terminate her job if she reported the sexual encounter and promised not to do it again, the girl told the police.

The priest breached his promise on October 18. In the evening of that day according to the girl, the priest woke her up for her to prepare food for visitors and caressed her as she prepared the food. His kitchen romance of the girl ended up in a bedroom sex romp as the priest took her to his bedroom.

After the second rape encounter according to the victim, the priest asked her to marry him saying he was in love with her. She believed she was being used and reported the incidents to Masvingo Provincial Police Victim Friendly Unit, while the priest was away in Mutare for a church meeting.

Catholic priests are sworn to celibacy vow, which bars them from marrying and fornication. The priest’s parish nor the Vatican at the time of this report had not made any statement on the case.

Lawyer alleges collusion between Britain and US over ill-treatment of prisoners, including sexual humiliation

• Jenny Percival
• The Guardian, Saturday 14 November 2009
• Article history

The Ministry of Defence confirmed last night that it is investigating 33 cases of alleged abuse, including rape and torture of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers.

One claimant alleges that he was raped by two British soldiers, while others claim they were stripped naked, abused and photographed. Female soldiers are also alleged to have taken part in abuse.

A pre-action protocol letter was served on the Ministry of Defence last week by Phil Shiner, the lawyer representing the Iraqis, according to the Independent.

In the letter to the MoD, reported in the newspaper, Shiner said the allegations raised questions of collusion between Britain and the US over the ill-treatment of Iraqis. "Given the history of the UK's involvement in the development of these techniques alongside the US, it is deeply concerning that there appears to be strong similarities between instances of the use of sexual humiliation," said Shiner.

Responding to the allegations, Bill Rammell, the armed forces minister, said: "Over 120,000 British troops have served in Iraq and the vast majority have conducted themselves to the highest standards of behaviour, displaying integrity and selfless commitment. Only a tiny number of individuals have been shown to have fallen short of our high standards. Allegations of this nature are taken very seriously, however allegations must not be taken as fact and investigations must be allowed to take their course without judgments being made prematurely."

The Guardian reported in September that the Royal Military police had launched a criminal investigation into allegations that British soldiers repeatedly raped and mutilated an 18-year-old Iraqi civilian who was working as a labourer at Camp Breadbasket in Basra, the scene of other abuse allegations.

The man who wishes to remain unnamed alleged that two soldiers raped him, subjecting him to a 15-minute ordeal, then slashed him with a knife. He was treated in hospital for cuts and the military police are understood to have secured the medical records. The victim said he was so traumatised he tried to kill himself.

Shiner also represents Baha Mousa, 26, an Iraqi who died after being taken into UK military custody. Mousa and nine other civilians were arrested at a hotel in Basra in September 2003. The father-of-two died the following day, having suffered 93 separate injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose.

Corporal Donald Payne became the first member of the British armed forces to be convicted of a war crime when he pleaded guilty at a court martial in September 2006 to inhumanely treating civilians. He was dismissed from the army and sentenced to one year in a civilian jail.

At the ongoing public inquiry into Mousa's death, a former British soldier admitted for the first time that he saw Payne and Private Aaron Cooper kicking and hitting the Iraqi shortly before he died. Garry Reader told a hearing on Monday how he had tried to resuscitate Mousa.

Gentlemen. Thank you for reading.

Let me start out by assuring you that I understand you are a good sort of person. You are kind to children and animals. You respect the elderly. You donate to charity. You tell jokes without laughing at your own punchlines. You respect women. You like women. In fact, you would really like to have a mutually respectful and loving sexual relationship with a woman. Unfortunately, you don’t yet know that woman—she isn’t working with you, nor have you been introduced through mutual friends or drawn to the same activities. So you must look further afield to encounter her.

So far, so good. Miss LonelyHearts, your humble instructor, approves. Human connection, love, romance: there is nothing wrong with these yearnings.

Now, you want to become acquainted with a woman you see in public. The first thing you need to understand is that women are dealing with a set of challenges and concerns that are strange to you, a man. To begin with, we would rather not be killed or otherwise violently assaulted.

“But wait! I don’t want that, either!”

Well, no. But do you think about it all the time? Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is. When I go on a date, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police. My activities after dark are curtailed. Unless I am in a densely-occupied, well-lit space, I won’t go out alone. Even then, I prefer to have a friend or two, or my dogs, with me. Do you follow rules like these?

So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me?

Do you think I’m overreacting? One in every six American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. I bet you don’t think you know any rapists, but consider the sheer number of rapes that must occur. These rapes are not all committed by Phillip Garrido, Brian David Mitchell, or other members of the Brotherhood of Scary Hair and Homemade Religion. While you may assume that none of the men you know are rapists, I can assure you that at least one is. Consider: if every rapist commits an average of ten rapes (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then the concentration of rapists in the population is still a little over one in sixty. That means four in my graduating class in high school. One among my coworkers. One in the subway car at rush hour. Eleven who work out at my gym. How do I know that you, the nice guy who wants nothing more than companionship and True Love, are not this rapist?

I don’t.

When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.

Fortunately, you’re a good guy. We’ve already established that. Now that you’re aware that there’s a problem, you are going to go out of your way to fix it, and to make the women with whom you interact feel as safe as possible.

To begin with, you must accept that I set my own risk tolerance. When you approach me, I will begin to evaluate the possibility you will do me harm. That possibility is never 0%. For some women, particularly women who have been victims of violent assaults, any level of risk is unacceptable. Those women do not want to be approached, no matter how nice you are or how much you’d like to date them. Okay? That’s their right. Don’t get pissy about it. Women are under no obligation to hear the sales pitch before deciding they are not in the market to buy.

The second important point: you must be aware of what signals you are sending by your appearance and the environment. We are going to be paying close attention to your appearance and behavior and matching those signs to our idea of a threat.

This means that some men should never approach strange women in public. Specifically, if you have truly unusual standards of personal cleanliness, if you are the prophet of your own religion, or if you have tattoos of gang symbols or Technicolor cockroaches all over your face and neck, you are just never going to get a good response approaching a woman cold. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a life of solitude, but I suggest you start with internet dating, where you can put your unusual traits out there and find a woman who will appreciate them.

Are you wearing a tee-shirt making a rape joke? NOT A GOOD CHOICE—not in general, and definitely not when approaching a strange woman.

Pay attention to the environment. Look around. Are you in a dark alley? Then probably you ought not approach a woman and try to strike up a conversation. The same applies if you are alone with a woman in most public places. If the public place is a closed area (a subway car, an elevator, a bus), even a crowded one, you may not realize that the woman’s ability to flee in case of threat is limited. Ask yourself, “If I were dangerous, would this woman be safe in this space with me?” If the answer is no, then it isn’t appropriate to approach her.

On the other hand, if you are both at church accompanied by your mothers, who are lifelong best friends, the woman is as close as it comes to safe. That is to say, still not 100% safe. But the odds are pretty good.

The third point: Women are communicating all the time. Learn to understand and respect women’s communication to you.

You want to say Hi to the cute girl on the subway. How will she react? Fortunately, I can tell you with some certainty, because she’s already sending messages to you. Looking out the window, reading a book, working on a computer, arms folded across chest, body away from you = do not disturb. So, y’know, don’t disturb her. Really. Even to say that you like her hair, shoes, or book. A compliment is not always a reason for women to smile and say thank you. You are a threat, remember? You are Schrödinger’s Rapist. Don’t assume that whatever you have to say will win her over with charm or flattery. Believe what she’s signaling, and back off.

If you speak, and she responds in a monosyllabic way without looking at you, she’s saying, “I don’t want to be rude, but please leave me alone.” You don’t know why. It could be “Please leave me alone because I am trying to memorize Beowulf.” It could be “Please leave me alone because you are a scary, scary man with breath like a water buffalo.” It could be “Please leave me alone because I am planning my assassination of a major geopolitical figure and I will have to kill you if you are able to recognize me and blow my cover.”

On the other hand, if she is turned towards you, making eye contact, and she responds in a friendly and talkative manner when you speak to her, you are getting a green light. You can continue the conversation until you start getting signals to back off.

The fourth point: If you fail to respect what women say, you label yourself a problem.

There’s a man with whom I went out on a single date—afternoon coffee, for one hour by the clock—on July 25th. In the two days after the date, he sent me about fifteen e-mails, scolding me for non-responsiveness. I e-mailed him back, saying, “Look, this is a disproportionate response to a single date. You are making me uncomfortable. Do not contact me again.” It is now October 7th. Does he still e-mail?

Yeah. He does. About every two weeks.

This man scores higher on the threat level scale than Man with the Cockroach Tattoos. (Who, after all, is guilty of nothing more than terrifying bad taste.) You see, Mr. E-mail has made it clear that he ignores what I say when he wants something from me. Now, I don’t know if he is an actual rapist, and I sincerely hope he’s not. But he is certainly Schrödinger’s Rapist, and this particular Schrödinger’s Rapist has a probability ratio greater than one in sixty. Because a man who ignores a woman’s NO in a non-sexual setting is more likely to ignore NO in a sexual setting, as well.

So if you speak to a woman who is otherwise occupied, you’re sending a subtle message. It is that your desire to interact trumps her right to be left alone. If you pursue a conversation when she’s tried to cut it off, you send a message. It is that your desire to speak trumps her right to be left alone. And each of those messages indicates that you believe your desires are a legitimate reason to override her rights.

For women, who are watching you very closely to determine how much of a threat you are, this is an important piece of data.

The fifth and last point: Don’t rape. Nor should you commit these similar but less severe offenses: don’t assault. Don’t grope. Don’t constrain. Don’t brandish. Don’t expose yourself. Don’t threaten with physical violence. Don’t threaten with sexual violence.

Shouldn’t this go without saying? Of course it should. Sadly, that’s not the world I live in. You may be beginning to realize that it’s not the world you live in, either.

Miss LonelyHearts wishes you happiness and success in your search for romantic companionship.

For more interesting reading, devote 1/2 hour to the comments.