Witness to Rape: The Limits and Potential of International War Crimes Trials for Victims of Wartime Sexual Violence

¹Despite the proliferation of trauma and memory research inrecent years, we know very little about the contribution oftransitional justice mechanisms to psychological healing andsocietal reconciliation in the aftermath of genocide, armedconflict and politicized violence. Many scholars in this areahave argued that the disclosure of traumatic experiences isbeneficial to the psychological recovery process for survivorsof gross human rights violations. This article critically examinesthis therapeutic assumption within a transitional justice paradigm.The article explores the potentials and limitations of internationalwar crimes trials for victims of wartime sexual violence, focusingspecifically on the International Criminal Tribunal for theformer Yugoslavia (ICTY). The article provides a theoreticalframework for analyzing the significance of testimony at internationalwar crimes trials and raises some critical questions relatedto the psychological impact of trials. It is argued that dueto the sheer diversity and heterogeneity of wartime rape victims,the experience of giving testimony is likely to be mixed: whilesome victims may suffer under the constraints of legal process,under the right circumstances, war crimes trials may help othersto make sense of their suffering.     

Lost Horizons: Rereading and Reclaiming Victorian Women Writers

"The girls of today cannot see themselves in Miss Yonge and that is their chief demand from literature" -Edith Sichel, Monthly Review, May 1901 The depths to which the reputation of popular conservative Victorian novelist, Charlotte Yonge, had sunk by the end of the nineteenth century are reflected in Oscar Wilde's reaction to being told a condemned man was reading one of Yonge's novels: "My heart was turned by the eyes of the doomed man, but if he reads The Heir of Redclyffe it's perhaps as well to let the law take its course" (Ellman 202).     

Harvests of shame: enduring unfree labour in the twentieth-century United States, 1933–1964

This article reframes the discussion on vulnerable and exploited agricultural labour in twentieth-century United States using the overarching category of unfree labour. In order to do so, it bridges two usually distinct historiographies by linking the phenomenon of ‘peonage’ during the New Deal, with the one of immigrant contract labour in southern Florida, under the H2 visa. Archival research on the practices at the U.S. Sugar Corporation in southern Florida illustrates this link. The article draws on Federal archives, U.S. Government proceedings, papers of political activists and legal and labour scholarship to argue: firstly, that unfree labour has been an enduring feature of agricultural labour relations at regional level during the twentieth century, through both a transmission and a transformation of practices that had their origin in the control of black emancipated labour; secondly, that the introduction of `guest workers’ under the H2 and Bracero programme meant a modernisation in the practices of unfree labour, pivoting on the lack of citizenship rights, racial discrimination, debt at home and threat of deportation; and, finally, that the failure to recognise forms of legal and economic deprivation and coercion as unfree labour has hurt the ability of the United States to enforce protection of human rights at home.     

Ideology and the Economy: Capital Issues Controls,Inflation and the Menzies Government, 1950–51

The Defence Preparations Act 1951 was conceived as a solution to an ideological as much as the constitutional dilemma the Menzies government faced as a result of the inflationary crisis of 1950–51. Drawing on Cabinet Notebooks, we argue that the government used the Act to facilitate peacetime access to capital issues controls under the defence powers, but also to reassure its supporters and the public that turning to direct economic controls was not a vindication of the “socialism” it promised on election to stand against. While the Act enabled the government to convince the High Court that imposing anti‐inflationary controls was linked to defence preparations, it was also a way for it to maintain ideological coherence as it sought to breach a principal tenet of its political philosophy.     

Trade union censorship

This article describes the author's experience of commisioned reseach, outlining its main findings and the response of the funding body to the final report. The research examined the effects of shiftwork on women. It was found that the sexual division of labour within the family in Britain makes it difficult for women to work certain hours, including the ‘normal’ full-time day hours, and so hours of work can discriminate against women with responsibility for young children. Protective legislation is not the cause of inequality in wages and affords some protection to women from certain hours of work in industries that are covered by these laws. Trade union attitudes and practices towards women at local level help to reinforce rather than transform the sexual divisions of labour within the workforce and within the family.The final report contained three pages specifically on trade unions and their attitude towards women and shiftwork. The trade union group at the evaluation colloquium demanded their exclusion from the final report, virtually accusing the researchers of fabrication.     

Suicide with two guns represents a special type of combined suicide

Suicide by simultaneous gunshots with two firearms is rare. The case of a 90-year-old man who killed himself with two 6.35 mm pistols fired at the temples at the same time is presented. The victim was found dead on the terrace of his home; two guns and two cartridges were present near the corpse. Cases of suicides with two guns published in the literature are compared, and the Italian cases are illustrated briefly. The authors describe the circumstances and autopsy findings that permitted the assertion that it was a case of suicide and to exclude an homicide and show, by figures, the three-dimensional reconstruction of cranial shooting injuries. The use of two guns is considered a representation of a special type of "combined suicide" or "planned complex suicide."     

Halogenated solvent interactions with N,N-dimethyltryptamine: formation of quaternary ammonium salts and their artificially induced rearrangements during analysis

The psychoactive properties of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) 1a are known to induce altered states of consciousness in humans. This particular attribute attracts great interest from a variety of scientific and also clandestine communities. Our recent research has confirmed that DMT reacts with dichloromethane (DCM), either as a result of work-up or storage to give a quaternary N-chloromethyl ammonium salt 2a. Furthermore, this was observed to undergo rearrangement during analysis using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) with products including 3-(2-chloroethyl)indole 3 and 2-methyltetrahydro-beta-carboline 4 (2-Me-THBC). This study further investigates this so far unexplored area of solvent interactions by the exposure of DMT to other halogenated solvents including dibromomethane and 1,2-dichloroethane (DCE). The N-bromomethyl- and N-chloroethyl quaternary ammonium derivatives were subsequently characterised by ion trap GC-MS in electron and chemical ionisation tandem MS mode and by NMR spectroscopy. The DCE-derived derivative formed at least six rearrangement products in the total ion chromatogram. Identification of mass spectrometry generated by-products was verified by conventional or microwave-accelerated synthesis. The use of deuterated DCM and deuterated DMT 1b provided insights into the mechanism of the rearrangements. The presence of potentially characteristic marker molecules may allow the identification of solvents used during the manufacture of controlled substances, which is often neglected since these are considered inert.