Syrian crowdmapping project documents reports of rape
Niall Firth, technology editor for the New Scientist, writes:
Earlier this month, an unnamed woman in the village of Sahl Al-Rawj, Syria, left the safety of her hiding place to plead for the lives of her husband and son as government forces advanced. She was captured and five soldiers took turns raping her as she was forced to watch her husband die.
Her shocking story – officially unverified – is just one of many reports of sexual violence against women that has come out of Syria as fighting continues between government forces and rebels. Now a crowd-mapping website, launched this week, will attempt to detail every such rape and incident of sexual violence against women throughout the conflict.
The map is the creation of the Women under Siege initiative, and uses the same crowdsourcing technology developed by Washington DC-based Ushaidi, which is also being used to calculate the death toll in the recent fighting.
I read not all that long ago that under reporting of rape is 60% among civilians and 80% among the military. Military Sexual Abuse: A Greater Menace Than Combat
Would a mapping service such as the one created for the conflict in Syria help with the under reporting of rape in the United States? That would at least document the accounts of rape victims and the locations of their attacks.
Greater reporting of rapes and their locations is a first step.
Topic maps could help with the next step: Outing Rapists.
Outing Rapists means binding the accounts and locations of rapes to Facebook, faculty, department, government, listings of rapists.
Reporting a rape will help you help yourself. Anonymously or otherwise.
Outing a rapist may prevent a future rape.
A couple of resources out of thousands on domestic or sexual violence: National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence or U.S. Military Violence Against Women.