FiLiA

FiLiA is a UK-based feminist charity, platforming and connecting women through our annual conference, blog posts, and podcasts. Listen to women sharing stories, wisdom, experience, feminism, sisterhood and solidarity. Find us at: www.filia.org.uk

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#56 FiLiA discusses: Rape Case in Cyprus with Bracha Barad

February 10, 2020 • FiLiA • Episode 56

0:00 | 15:06

FiLiA has covered the case of a young British woman who reported being gang raped while staying at a resort in Cyprus. FiLiA called on the UK Government to take action: read our piece Cyprus: trial by porn culture

In this podcast, FiLiA speaks with feminist activist Bracha Barad, who flew from Israel to Cyprus to show support for the victim. Bracha Barad is a Co-founder and Executive Director of Kulan, an Israeli feminist NGO. She began producing the Tel Aviv Slut Walk in 2016, administration that is part of an international movement against sexual violence and victim blaming. Under her leadership the TLV Slut Walk has become the biggest feminist annual protest in Israel. She is also part of the managing team of the biggest feminist virtual community, Feminist Discourse, and together they founded Kulan, an organization that builds a community of women struggling for social change, and helps sound the voices of women in the field, in the media, and on social networks. Julian Norman joins her in a discussion about the case in Cyprus.

Kulan Website

Follow Bracha on Twitter and Facebook

Sign the petition for the Cypriot government to drop all charges

Find out updates about the case on BBC News

#56

Julian from FiLiA discusses rape case in Cyprus with Bracha Barad

Julian: Hello, this is Julian from the FiLiA team and I'm here this evening interviewing Bracha Barad, who is the CEO of Kulan and is an organisation which exists for the promotion of feminist discourse and activism in Israel. Thank you so much for coming to speak to us.

Can you just give us, to start with, a little bit of information about your organisation, how it came to be and what sort of work it does?

Bracha: We were actually born on social network in a Facebook group called Feminist Discourse, which became the largest feminist community online in Israel. We are today about 45,000 women and it's basically a Facebook group that in its next lifetime exists as an NGO. It's an NGO that's based on the community supporting it and basically paying for it.

The mission is to sound out the voices of women to amplify the voices of women and particularly sexual violence victims because we believe that victim blaming is the cause of women not going to the police or to the authorities to complain when they're being attacked.

I think in order to fight this epidemic we need to have women feel that they have a reason to go to the authorities. And this is why we work supporting the victims, the survivors, and going against the offenders. Speaking about the court giving small verdicts and it's, for instance, in this Cyprus case, the Israeli media did not bring an objective coverage of this case.

They were very, very lenient towards the Israeli boys’ side, and they were mostly sounding out the defender of the boys, of the young Israeli boys.

Julian: So just for anybody who may have missed this in the news or who is listening to it in the future, this is a case in which a young British woman in Cyprus reported that she was gang raped by eleven Israeli boys and young men. Then, she says, coerced by the police into withdrawing the allegation without access to a lawyer. She was then charged with essentially an offense of perjury, lying about it for, it was said, having made a false report because she had then withdrawn the allegation and she was found guilty earlier this week. So that's the context of that.

So Bracha, I think you went to Cyprus, is that right?

Bracha: Yes, I did. I went there with about 60 other men and women from Israel. About four activists from my organisation came along and we all basically stopped our lives for a couple of days to go to the Cyprus court when the verdict was read, and we were basically standing outside the court and supporting her and saying that we believe her and that what's going on is not justice and those kind of things.

And it was I think one of the most important milestones in activism, I think, for women in Israel and in the world, because we do this in Israel sometimes, that we go and we stand outside the court and we support the victims.

We fight victim blaming, and I personally believe that telling women that we believe them is a very, very powerful thing and going across birders to say this is an extremely powerful statement, it's saying a lot when we do this.

Julian: I think it is really, really moving to have seen how women across the world are coming together against victim blaming.

What was the atmosphere like at the court when you went there?

Bracha: Well, first of all, you could see that they weren't used to this many protestors. I have to say that even some of the protests in Israel will have less demonstrators than what we had in Cyprus because this, this was a high profile case and a lot of people felt obligated to stop everything and come and as I said, I don't think we would've gone to a demonstration at the north of Israel, even if it's less travel.

I think a lot of us felt, first of all, felt very shameful because of this entire incident and the way it was portrayed in Israeli media and the way the public atmosphere supported the side that was offending and blaming the side that was offended.

I kept saying feminists know this in every country. This isn't particular to Cyprus or to Israel or to Britain or to the United States. I don't think I met a woman, let alone a feminist activist in the world that doesn't speak the same story about the authorities not giving justice to sexual assault victims and the numbers are increasing with women not going to the authorities because they do not trust the authorities, because they don't have a reason to trust the authorities.

It was very clear to us when we came to Cyprus that this is not different than what we see at home and you also saw in the crowd of the Israeli women, a lot of us were victims ourselves that we spoke about in different situations, whether it was Me Too or each of us spoke about it in our own time, and for us it was very obvious that we have to go there and tell this woman that we believe her because this is the really, the very least thing that we can do.

There is not much that we can do against the authorities, but we know from Israeli victims that coming there and telling them that we believe them, it can change the way they feel.

Julian: And has there been any backlash against you as an organisation? Because we know in the UK there have been charges towards feminists who were supporting the victim, of anti-Israeli motivation or even anti-Semitic motivation. so has there been anything like that towards you?

Bracha: Well, I think I've heard of this and I know that we were also blamed for doing this out of a left wing position. I've spoken to a lot of people who understand that this is just basic morals because I keep saying, how can you hear this story that this young woman is telling and say, that for sure, she's lying and the boys are all telling the truth. When you can see that they've changed their version three times and you can see that Israeli reporters found in the room things that investigators didn't find. You have very clear and cut proof that she's the victim here.

And then I'm saying, is there anything that a victim can do that will get the public to say, oh, that's okay. She's the victim. Because I haven't heard of a single case, including in cases where you have serial rapists that are convicted. Even then you hear people blaming their victims and saying that they're at fault.

I'm not sure there is anything that this young girl could have done, she did everything okay. She was bruised. She went to the paramedics. They convinced her to go to the police. She went to the police. And then, you know, she was very naive to trust the authorities and she paid very high price for it with long months away from home.

Julian: That’s something that’s really quite striking, is that she should have been able to, it shouldn't ever be naive for a woman to trust the authorities, and yet, sadly, the authorities prove themselves across countries, not just in Cyprus, but across countries to be untrustworthy when it comes to women.

What do you think we could do to improve that? Do you think the authorities will ever be in a position where, where they are trusted by women?

Bracha: I think we have a very long way to go. I think in the past few years we've seen changes that are very dramatic. That may be like a very, a very needed jump in the progress of the feminist movement.

But I think we still have a very long way ahead of us, and I think it's going to be a lot harder than we think. for instance, you could see that in Israel, you could see that the way the public is speaking is changing, but the courts are not that much changed and the number of years that rapists are getting are ridiculous, like six months or no time or just like social work. It's a ridiculous punishment.

So it's nice that the public is changing, but we still have a long way to go until we see the entire system changing here.

Julian: Last month in the UK we had a report that showed 3.28% of rape allegations, so just over 3% are currently ending in a conviction so 97% are not even ending in a conviction, never mind any sentence at the end of it.

So it is a problem that is across borders. It's not just Britain. It's not just Israel. It's not just Cyprus.

In terms of changing attitudes as well, something that really struck me with Cyprus case was the search for the video that was made by some of the young men became top search on porn sites, basically pornography.

Do you think that porn culture has had an effect on sexual violence?

Bracha: Yes, I have no doubt. I don't think that we can doubt it. We know that kids today are exposed to porn at the age of eight and we know that the level of thrill that you need when you watch porn, it rises and it rises and you become numb to violence. We know these things.

I have no idea what happened in this room to this young girl. I know that her testimony is extremely hard to hear. The version that she's telling about this night is very, very, very hard to hear and from what I understand, they had planned the entire thing in a very cruel manner and I don't think that if they hadn't seen porn movies that show 12 men and one woman, I don't think, I'm not saying that it's impossible, but I'm saying it definitely enabled them.

Julian: And what do you think we can do about that? I mean, moving aside from the legal system and the criminal justice system, what can we do to stop that and to stop the porn industry from taking violence against women and selling it back to men as healthy masculinity.

Bracha: I'm really not sure what we can do, except for, as I said, we work on public opinion. I believe we need to convince people in a very slow and hard manner like our organisation does.

We go to classes and we speak about these subjects and we do social network, advocacy, and we do mainstream media coverage to have our approach sounded out in the news in the mainstream channels.

So I think you can do a lot, but I'm a big believer in change that comes from the people, from educating the people, from reaching as many of them and letting them know the true nature of this thing, because I think it's very hard to deny it when you look at it.

Julian: I absolutely agree. So changes to the justice system and you are doing absolutely everything over there in Israel, to be one of people leading that change. So thank you ever so much for speaking to us and we’re looking forward to working with you in the future as well.