Gabriel Marinoaica, 20, dragged victim, who could not swim, out of her depth and attacked her

A man who raped a 15-year-old girl who could not swim after taking her out of her depth in the sea off Bournemouth beach has been sentenced to six and a half years’ detention.

Gabriel Marinoaica, who was 18 at the time, grabbed the girl as she played a game of catch with her friends and dragged her off the crowded beach into a water.

Mary Dispenza spent years as a nun and working in the church before her buried memories rose to the surface. It was the start of her long journey towards justice and peace

Mary Dispenza was almost 50 when she experienced her first flashback. At the time, she was in a workshop entitled Sexual Misconduct on the Part of the Clergy, which she had been asked to attend as part of her job in pastoral support for the Roman Catholic archdiocese in Seattle. To this day, she isn’t sure what words unleashed that memory.

She recalls only how clammy her hands became and how the room suddenly started spinning as she saw her seven-year-old self being lifted on to the lap of a priest in a dark, empty auditorium. She knew in an instant who he was.

Since 2021, eight employees of Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, charged with assaulting female prisoners

The US Bureau of Prisons (BoP) is closing a federal women’s prison in California that has been plagued by rampant staff sexual abuse of incarcerated residents.

Colette Peters, the BoP director, said in a statement to the Associated Press on Monday that Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Dublin is “not meeting expected standards and that the best course of action is to close the facility”.

Concerns that rare sleep disorder is being used as an ‘escape route’ in sexual offence trials prompt calls for safeguards to protect victims and the public

Experts and lawyers involved in sexual offence cases in Britain have warned that suspected rapists are evading justice by claiming to have a rare sleepwalking disorder that causes them to engage in sexual activity while asleep.

They said there had “definitely” been cases where guilty people had been found not guilty, and warned of the potential for further miscarriages of justice – and harm to the public – without more robust challenges to “sexsomnia” claims put forward by defendants.

As a gen X feminist who survived and ignored a violent assault in the 80s, I didn’t identify as a victim – but #MeToo gave me a crucial new perspective

In the scorching summer of 1987, young, invincible and hungry for adventure, I left my cloistered life at the University of Sydney to hitchhike to Darwin. I wanted to discover the “real” Australia, that classless utopia of rugged, self-made blokes in the Foster’s ads; the quixotic outback of explorers and mavericks celebrated by Xavier Herbert and Patrick White. Hitchhiking for art was a masculine pursuit, mythologised by Jack Kerouac and the beatniks. I wanted to update their 60s machismo with some brazenly female 80s cool. I would document my 8,000km trip, return to Sydney unscathed, and write a novel. Or so I thought.

My companion, Andrew Peisley, and I hit the highway at Lithgow, armed with a tarp, seven books and a guitar. We’d survive on Peisley’s dole cheque and busk for counter-meals in pubs along the way. We agreed to remain platonic, accept every lift that got us closer to Darwin, and never split up. Four days in, at a Cunnamulla roadhouse, our rules imploded. I was kidnapped by truckies. Four of them, driving two road trains in convoy. They couldn’t fit us both in one truck so they offered to take me in the first and Peisley in the second. I climbed, just as Kerouac would, into the first rig and we drove off. But when Peisley approached the second truck, the driver slammed the door in his face.

Complaint accuses 26-year-old Christian ‘King’ Combs of assault aboard yacht chartered by music mogul father in December 2022

Music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs and his 26-year-old son Christian “King” Combs are both named in a lawsuit that accuses the younger man of sexual assault aboard a yacht in December 2022.

The suit, filed in Los Angeles superior court on Thursday and first reported by Rolling Stone , accuses the younger Combs of assault, battery, sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The elder Combs, who is facing several lawsuits alleging sexual abuse and was recently subject to federal raids in a sex-trafficking investigation, is accused of aiding and abetting.

Ukraine’s fight for justice for women, men and children who suffer terrible sexual crimes shows this battle goes far beyond territory

Atrocities are Russia’s means of warfare. Since the beginning of its aggression against Ukraine in 2014, the Kremlin has weaponised actions that are internationally considered as crimes, including sexual violence. With the all-out invasion in 2022, Russia’s sexual violence has expanded in its prevalence and gravity. It makes for difficult reading, but the extent of documented crimes includes rapes; gang rapes ; sexual slavery; beating and mutilation of genitalia; castration ; threats of rape and forcing family members to witness abuse of their loved ones.

Sexual violence is common in war. But these are not only isolated battlefield incidents. Russia has allowed toxic gender hierarchies to become the norm within its borders, and allowed more brutal expressions to flourish on the frontlines of its war. This begins at the top, with President Putin demanding Ukraine’s fulfilment of the Minsk agreements with a joking reference to sexual coercion, saying “ My beauty, it’s your duty ”. His words won’t shock a country with an ingrained tolerance to violence against women and sexual and gender minorities. Russia has all but decriminalised domestic abuse. Its persecution of gay people has peaked in designating the LGBTQ+ movement as extremist . The same labelling for feminism and child-free movements is looming, as are the proposals to limit abortions .

Kateryna Busol is a Ukrainian lawyer. She is an associate professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, a fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and a former academy associate at Chatham House

Cambridge talk claims early male writers introduced idea real beauty is within to control how women dressed

Some called the women who put on makeup and dyed their hair, deceptive and artificial. Others said women who wore jewels and fine clothes could not be trusted, even by their husbands. But they all agreed: if a man ever encountered one of these unchristian women, and wanted to rape her, it was her fault – not his.

According to a talk at the University of Cambridge, it was in the third-century that the Christian idea that “real” beauty is within was first used by influential male writers to try to control how women dressed.

Court rules 4-3 to overturn law that allowed victims to file civil suits over sexual abuse that took place decades ago

In a split ruling that has major implications for hundreds of child sexual abuse victims, the Louisiana state supreme court has struck down a law that allowed victims to file civil lawsuits over molestation that happened decades ago.

Child molestation victims and their advocates were devastated by the 4-3 ruling from a court whose members are elected.