Married Lesbian Couple Rescues 40 kids during Norway Shooting

A lesbian couple were among the first responders to assist victims following the shooting massacre in Norway on Friday, when gunman Anders Behring Breivik went on a shooting rampage at a youth camp on Utoya island.

Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen.
Photo: Maija Tammi via Helsingin Sanomat

Hege Dalen and her spouse Toril Hansen made four trips back and forth in their small boat, picking up injured, bloodied and scared young people.

The Finnish capital city’s largest daily newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, published this account (translated from Finnish):

Hege Dalen and her spouse, Toril Hansen were near Utöyan having dinner on the opposite shore across from the ill-fated campsite, when they began to hear gunfire and screaming on the island.

“We were eating. Then shooting and then the awful screaming. We saw how the young people ran in panic into the lake,” says Dale to HS in an interview.

The couple immediately took action and pushed the boat into Lake Tyrifjorden.

Dalen and Hansen drove the boat to the island, picked up from the water victims in shock in, the young and wounded, and transported them to the opposite shore to the mainland. Between runs they saw that the bullets had hit the right side of the boat.

Since there were so many and not all fit at once aboard, they returned to the island four times.

They were able to rescue 40 young people from the clutches of the killer.

“We did not sleep last night at all. Today, we have been together and talked about the events,” Dalen said.

Norway’s Television 2 verified the accuracy of the Finnish account by phone, adding that the couple’s actions have been publicly noted by the Norwegian government.

At least 76 people are confirmed dead in the attacks, which included detonating a bomb in Oslo.

Brody Levesque is Chief Washington D.C. Correspondent for LGBTQ Nation.

Gay? Disabled too? Then TWO ABOMINATIONs!

 

Oh, the random Right Wingnuts are at it again, this time in Hazard, Kentucky. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water… (that will make sense in a couple of minutes, I swear!)

The drama unfolded in the city of Hazard when two developmentally challenged young men began larking about at the side of the pool. Apparently, they did something so disgusting! Yes, one sat on the others knee! Oh the abhorrence, Gods eyes must have bled!

They attended the pool with a group called Mending Hearts Inc, a charitable organization connecting individuals and providing services to the Intellectually and developmentally challenged. Organizations like Mending Hearts Inc provide invaluable services, offering respite and support to parents, carers and families, and disabled individuals with a vitally important path into the community.

So what happened when this apparent abhorrent behavior was spotted? In rushed a gaggle of staff who seemingly happen to be religious (these people must be trained by Ninjas, always creeping about just waiting for their homophobic moment, and then, Shark Attack! – UK readers might understand that joke more than others).

These staff obviously had nothing better to do than to upset a group of people already struggling with equality and life in general, telling them all that they had to leave. Apparently, God doesn’t like gay people swimming in his pool in Hazard Kentucky.

I kid you not, the staff member quoted the Bible and suggested that he had the right to remove them based on that. Forget law, forget the inalienable rights to Freedom and Liberty, the Bible apparently ignores all of that (as is too often the case in the translation of some) and advises that the local pool in Hazard Kentucky is not to be used by disabled gay people. I must have missed that section because I don’t recall any mention of swimming pools and recreation centers the last time I read through it.

And this is the part that really upsets me; the two young men left in tears, humiliated and simply not understanding what they had done wrong. As if the world doesn’t already seem like a baffling and unfriendly place to them, they’re humiliated and embarrassed by complete strangers and made to feel even more like outcasts on a day when fun and inclusion should have been key.

Mending Hearts Inc did what any sensible person or group facing disgusting homophobia and discrimination should, they filed a formal complaint with their local gay rights group, in this case the Kentucky Equality Federation, and in partnership they requested an apology and that the employee who removed them be transferred to another department of the STATE RUNrecreation center. They also planned a protest outside of the facility to highlight the issue.

As you’d expect, this minor skirmish has brought the truly religiously insane out of the woodwork, with Jordan Palmer (President of the Kentucky Equality Federation) receiving death threats if their planned protest outside of the facility were to go ahead.

In steps the Mayor of Hazard, Kentucky, Nan Gorman, 83. And how does she pour oil on turbulent water? By being the equivalent of that racist guy who says “some of my friends are black”, stating that the Pool once hired a gay lifeguard.

Insert.Face.Palm.Here

Oh they did? Well that’s fine then, all is forgiven. There cannot possibly be anything wrong if the Center was once so open and equal as to hire one gay Lifeguard! Move along, nothing to see here after all.

When asked, Charlotte Sizemore, executive director of the recreation center, declined to comment on the incident directly because she hadn’t witnessed it. But forgive my naiveté, as head of the facility you don’t need to witness every footfall and intolerant uttering to have an opinion and issue a sensible statement. But it appears that she let slip that although she holds such a position, others have authority, stating “They don’t want us to talk about it”. Hmm, intriguing. Gagged huh? By whom?

Charlotte Sizemore added:

“We are getting all kinds of phone calls,” she said. “We’re sorry it happened. We’re just fair to everybody. … We never have any trouble here, period.”

One of those phone calls was allegedly from a blogger (NewProgressiveMuckraker) who had the balls to call Ms. Sizemore for a direct comment. Nice to offer a chance for both sides of the story, far more professional than me. But it seems the executive director had been having a very tough day, and with the words “You don’t fucking know, Fuck you!” she hung up.

Yep, them Hazard Pavilion folks are real professionals, such a classy way to hold such a coveted position in the community.

Well, clearly her more sensible statements are not correct. I may be being unfair, but saying you’re sorry it happened is not the same as saying sorry to the two guys who were humiliated and left feeling less Human than when they arrived. Stating “we’re just fair to everybody” is clearly not true, otherwise the employee would have been moved already and a public statement would have been issued clarifying the cock-up. And finally, they obviously do have“trouble” there, this story is testament to that.

I don’t know if the protest went ahead, unfortunately. I can’t find mention of it since the initial incident. I sincerely hope they get the apology they so desperately deserve, and the fact that it has been so long in coming is evidence of the lunacy and true opinions of all involved. Forget the initial incident for just a moment, because the silence since then is deafening.

Moral of the story is, reconsider who are the ones truly “developmentally challenged”.

Second moral of the story is, don’t go to Hazard Pavilion if you’re gay, disabled, or moral, nice, decent… just don’t go. http://www.dailydoseofqueer.com/

Drug Dealer on Worlds Largest Gay Cruise Busted-Now pleas GUILTY!

by Chris Owen (RSS feed)  

 

Not long ago we reported on a drug dealer busted on the Worlds Largest Gay Cruise aboard Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas. The man pleaded guilty this week in a U.S. Virgin Islands court to dealing drugs on board a cruise ship.

Steven Barry Krumholz admitted selling ecstasy, methamphetamine and ketamine to fellow passengers on board the Allure of the Seas in February reports the Associated Press. 


"Krumholtz, 51, of West Hollywood was busted aboard Royal Caribbean's Allure of the Seas as the cruise ship was docked in St. Thomas", a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said in a statement to AOL Travel News at the time.


Federal Chief District Judge Curtis Gomez set sentencing for November 2. The West Hollywood man faces as long as 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

"Agents searched Krumholz's cabin and allegedly found more than 142 ecstasy pills, nearly 3 grams of methamphetamine, a small quantity of ketamine and about $51,000 in cash,reported the AP. While waiting for the suspect to return to his cabin, two more passengers came to buy drugs, according to the affidavit.


Allure of the Seas departed from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida February 6 with 5,400 passengers on a trip chartered by Atlantis Events. Atlantis specializes in gay and lesbian vacations both on land and at sea. The company has chartered Allure on the same itinerary in January 2012.


Royal Caribbean International maintains a zero-tolerance policy on illegal drugs at sea and cooperated fully with authorities.


Flickr photo by triplezero

http://www.gadling.com

What if at an Amusement Park Your Partner told? Reverse Shirt-too gay

Saul Young AP

In a July 25, 2011 photo, lesbian couple Jennifer Tipton, left, and Olivier Odom are seen at a coffee house in Knoxville, Tenn. The couple are calling for Dollywood Splash County to be more inclusive to its guests after they were asked to reverse the pro-gay marriage T-shirt worn by Odom, during a recent visit. (AP Photo/Knoxville News Sentinel, Saul Young

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A lesbian couple is asking for changes at Dollywood after an employee asked one of the women to turn her T-shirt reading "marriage is so gay" inside-out to avoid offending others on a recent visit to the Tennessee theme park complex.

Olivier Odom and Jennifer Tipton told The Knoxville News Sentinel they want the park to be more inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families after Odom was asked to reverse her shirt when they visited Dollywood Splash Country next to the Pigeon Forge amusement park. The story was first reported by WBIR-TV in Knoxville.

Dollywood spokesman Pete Owens said on Tuesday that Dollywood is open to all families, but their dress code policy is to ask people with clothing or tattoos that could be considered offensive to change clothes or cover up.

Owens said the couple was not asked to leave and complied with the rules to reverse the shirt when asked.

"The park is open every day to everybody," Owens said. "We try to provide an environment for families of all shapes and sizes to enjoy themselves.

Owens said park officials are discussing the matter and will speak to the couple directly.

Odom said that they visited the water park July 9 with friends and their friends' children when she was asked by a person at the ticket booth to turn her shirt inside out because it was a family park.

Odom said she complied so as not to make a scene in front of the children, but felt offended.

"Our whole deal is about marriage equality and being treated equally," said Tipton. "It's not that we're trying to cause a big stir."

Odom and Tipton are not legally married, but held a ceremony last year in North Carolina. They wrote an email to the park asking the park "to implement policies that are inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people; conduct staff sensitivity training; and issue a public statement indicating that the park is inclusive of all families.

By KRISTIN M. HALL Associated Press © 2011 The Associated Press
 

Facebook: Should Reactivate Justin Aaberg's personal facebook page

SIGNATURES

2,501

PETITIONING

facebook

STARTED BY

Tammy Aaberg

Fridley, MN

It is very important that Justin Aaberg's facebook page be reactivated as since he died and I (Tammy Aaberg, his mom) have been speaking out against bullying and harassment of LGBT youth and their allies, and trying to gain protections for these kids, I have met and have given support to many LGBT youth from across the world.

Many of these kids look for Justin's page as they identify with HIM. They like to read his personal comments and see how happy he was in his pictures. They relate to HIM, but they look up to me as a mom who supported and continues to support who her son was as a person.

I do NOT support suicide as an option out of the pain he endured and I tell kids this. I give them links or numbers to resources to reach out to and often times I just listen to them and reassure them they are special. So many classmates, or the youths own family members, or political leaders put them down and say bad things to them or about them constantly. This is not fair. I have had many youth tell me they do NOT consider suicide as an option anymore due to my families pain and the hope they say I give them by speaking out against hate and fighting for protections in schools. They want to be able to learn and be safe at school.

Also, Justin had many friends when he was alive who he personally added as friends and had personal conversations with on his page. He also had many pictures that he uploaded himself that we no longer have access to.

Justin's facebook page was disabled Friday, July 8, one day before the 1-year anniversary of his death (July 9). This devastated us as his family and his friends. We hold onto Justin's facebook page in order to grieve in a healthy way and with other friends of his and to remember him. It felt like we lost him again when the page was taken away. Some friends write him personal emails like they are talking to Justin (like journaling). I do not respond to these and leave these personal thoughts to the person they were meant for which is not me. I also keep Justin's friends and other youth who come to his site updated via articles of things going on that they should know about like the It Gets Better Project or articles at events in which I've spoken.

There was nothing inappropriate about Justin's facebook page. I never pretended to be Justin. I told them it was his mom running it after he died. I believe Justin's facebook page has helped save lives. Actually, I know it has as some youth have told me. Please help sign the petition to tell facebook to please bring Justin's facebook page back again.

Read Petition Letter

Traitor or Whistleblower? The Life of Bradley Manning

 

By Marcel Rosenbach

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Activists hold signs in support of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Chat transcripts by Bradley Manning, the alleged source of secret US government documents for WikiLeaks, will be used as evidence in his military trial. They reveal a conflicted and lonely young soldier who felt strongly about revealing "almost criminal" behavior. He's spent 14 months in jail, but there is still no date for his trial.

As far as his commander in chief is concerned, the verdict on Pfc. Bradley Manning is already in. Following a fundraiser held in San Francisco in April, US President Barack Obama said that Manning "broke the law."

A small group of Manning supporters had interrupted the president's speech before a well-heeled audience and held up signs saying "Free Bradley Manning!" The protesters then broke into a song lamenting the treatment of the 23-year-old US Army intelligence analyst whom the US Department of Defense has accused of passing on an untold amount of confidential and secret material to the WikiLeaks website.

Even US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to have formed a clear opinion on Manning. She recently told the American magazine Vanity Fair that she cannot fathom how a soldier with psychological problems and a "drag queen" for a boyfriend could embarrass the United States in this way.

These premature judgments at the highest level are as unusual as they are questionable. The presumption of innocence is normally respected even in the United States. But there's hardly anything normal about this case.

'Aiding the Enemy'

For the last 14 months, Manning has been jailed awaiting trial. But no trial date has been set for what will be a military tribunal, which are usually much briefer than trials in civilian courts. The most serious charge against Manning is of "aiding the enemy" by allegedly leaking military secrets, including American war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq as well as diplomatic dispatches. If found guilty, Manning could face the death penalty at worst and decades in prison at best.

Though senior officials apparently passed judgment on Manning long ago, new transcripts of some of Manning's online chat sessions are now being published that throw fresh light on the suspected informant. In the chats, Manning grapples with the issue of being a homosexual in the US Army and comes across as having sophisticated political thoughts. If authentic, the chats provide a striking repudiation of the widely held view of Manning as an unscrupulous traitor. Indeed, with the moral justifications he submits in defense of his actions, Manning meets the key requirements for being categorized a whistleblower.

In previously released passages of an online exchange he had with Adrian Lamo, a former hacker, Manning provides political reasons for his decision to leak classified material. Discussing the diplomatic cables released late in 2010, for example, Manning expresses a desire to trigger debate on what he sees as the "almost criminal political back dealings" of American officials.

In the now-public chat from 2009 that Manning held with Zack Antolak, a 19-year-old activist at the time, the young soldier also expresses his thoughts on the Guantanamo military prison camp. He says he agrees with Obama's efforts to close the prison. Though he acknowledges that some individuals held there are dangerous, he also believes that some of them have only become dangerous because of their time in the camp.

Writing as "bradass87," Manning also explains why a homosexual, free-spirited man like himself would enlist in the US Army, where provincial and homophobic feelings set the tone. He says the motivation was money for college, where he hoped to study physics and maybe even earn a doctorate if he is "smart" enough to do so.

Other passages in his online exchanges seem to shore up speculation that Manning was giving serious thought to a sex change. For example, in one exchange he tells Lamo that he was willing to go by the name "Breanna." He also writes about "three breakdowns" and excruciating loneliness in Iraq.

Chasing Assange

These transcripts of Manning's online conversations might not just play a role in his own military trial: For months, a grand jury has been meeting in Virginia to consider whether charges should be brought against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. One person summoned for the grand jury claims it will be tasked with finding whether there is sufficient evidence to prove a link between Manning and Assange.

In his chats, Manning speaks in detail about his contact with WikiLeaks and the "crazy white-haired Aussie" who reportedly even offered him a job at WikiLeaks. As "bradass87," Manning also describes having poked around in the online archives of the US government and military for a year.

However, the exchanges do not provide any hard evidence that Manning had entered into a conspiracy with Assange. In fact, most evidence points the other way. For example, Manning writes Lamo that Assange knows "very little" about him and that "he takes source protection extremely seriously." He also writes that Assange had just asked him to make some things up about himself, adding: "He won't work with you if you divulge too much about yourself."

Two passages in these exchanges might also cause the Obama administration some discomfort. In them, Manning reveals his own political sympathies. At one point, he proudly recounts having gone to a fundraising gala held for Gavin Newsom, the Democratic former mayor of San Francisco and current lieutenant governor of California. Later on, he even sends Lamo an autographed photo of himself with Newsom.

At another point, he also claims to have a contact in the White House named Shin Inouye. This man really exists, and he happens to be a member of the White House Office of Communications responsible for handling equality issues for President Barack Obama, Manning's commander in chief.

ukgaynews.org.uk/latest

In World Conflicts Men Also Get Rape

Sexual violence is one of the most horrific weapons of war, an instrument of terror used against women. Yet huge numbers of men are also victims. In this harrowing report, Will Storr travels to Uganda to meet traumatised survivors, and reveals how male rape is endemic in many of the world's conflicts.

Of all the secrets of war, there is one that is so well kept that it exists mostly as a rumour. It is usually denied by the perpetrator and his victim. Governments, aid agencies and human rights defenders at the UN barely acknowledge its possibility. Yet every now and then someone gathers the courage to tell of it. This is just what happened on an ordinary afternoon in the office of a kind and careful counsellor in Kampala, Uganda. For four years Eunice Owiny had been employed by Makerere University's Refugee Law Project (RLP) to help displaced people from all over Africa work through their traumas. This particular case, though, was a puzzle. A female client was having marital difficulties. "My husband can't have sex," she complained. "He feels very bad about this. I'm sure there's something he's keeping from me."

Owiny invited the husband in. For a while they got nowhere. Then Owiny asked the wife to leave. The man then murmured cryptically: "It happened to me." Owiny frowned. He reached into his pocket and pulled out an old sanitary pad. "Mama Eunice," he said. "I am in pain. I have to use this."

Laying the pus-covered pad on the desk in front of him, he gave up his secret. During his escape from the civil war in neighbouring Congo, he had been separated from his wife and taken by rebels. His captors raped him, three times a day, every day for three years. And he wasn't the only one. He watched as man after man was taken and raped. The wounds of one were so grievous that he died in the cell in front of him.

"That was hard for me to take," Owiny tells me today. "There are certain things you just don't believe can happen to a man, you get me? But I know now that sexual violence against men is a huge problem. Everybody has heard the women's stories. But nobody has heard the men's."

It's not just in East Africa that these stories remain unheard. One of the few academics to have looked into the issue in any detail is Lara Stemple, of the University of California's Health and Human Rights Law Project. Her study Male Rape and Human Rights notes incidents of male sexual violence as a weapon of wartime or political aggression in countries such as Chile, Greece, Croatia, Iran, Kuwait, the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia. Twenty-one per cent of Sri Lankan males who were seen at a London torture treatment centre reported sexual abuse while in detention. In El Salvador, 76% of male political prisoners surveyed in the 1980s described at least one incidence of sexual torture. A study of 6,000 concentration-camp inmates in Sarajevo found that 80% of men reported having been raped.

I've come to Kampala to hear the stories of the few brave men who have agreed to speak to me: a rare opportunity to find out about a controversial and deeply taboo issue. In Uganda, survivors are at risk of arrest by police, as they are likely to assume that they're gay – a crime in this country and in 38 of the 53 African nations. They will probably be ostracised by friends, rejected by family and turned away by the UN and the myriad international NGOs that are equipped, trained and ready to help women. They are wounded, isolated and in danger. In the words of Owiny: "They are despised."

But they are willing to talk, thanks largely to the RLP's British director, Dr Chris Dolan. Dolan first heard of wartime sexual violence against men in the late 1990s while researching his PhD in northern Uganda, and he sensed that the problem might be dramatically underestimated. Keen to gain a fuller grasp of its depth and nature, he put up posters throughout Kampala in June 2009 announcing a "workshop" on the issue in a local school. On the day, 150 men arrived. In a burst of candour, one attendee admitted: "It's happened to all of us here." It soon became known among Uganda's 200,000-strong refugee population that the RLP were helping men who had been raped during conflict. Slowly, more victims began to come forward.

I meet Jean Paul on the hot, dusty roof of the RLP's HQ in Old Kampala. He wears a scarlet high-buttoned shirt and holds himself with his neck lowered, his eyes cast towards the ground, as if in apology for his impressive height. He has a prominent upper lip that shakes continually – a nervous condition that makes him appear as if he's on the verge of tears.

Jean Paul was at university in Congo, studying electronic engineering, when his father – a wealthy businessman – was accused by the army of aiding the enemy and shot dead. Jean Paul fled in January 2009, only to be abducted by rebels. Along with six other men and six women he was marched to a forest in the Virunga National Park.

Later that day, the rebels and their prisoners met up with their cohorts who were camped out in the woods. Small camp fires could be seen here and there between the shadowy ranks of trees. While the women were sent off to prepare food and coffee, 12 armed fighters surrounded the men. From his place on the ground, Jean Paul looked up to see the commander leaning over them. In his 50s, he was bald, fat and in military uniform. He wore a red bandana around his neck and had strings of leaves tied around his elbows.

"You are all spies," the commander said. "I will show you how we punish spies." He pointed to Jean Paul. "Remove your clothes and take a position like a Muslim man."

Jean Paul thought he was joking. He shook his head and said: "I cannot do these things."

The commander called a rebel over. Jean Paul could see that he was only about nine years old. He was told, "Beat this man and remove this clothes." The boy attacked him with his gun butt. Eventually, Jean Paul begged: "Okay, okay. I will take off my clothes." Once naked, two rebels held him in a kneeling position with his head pushed towards the earth.

At this point, Jean Paul breaks off. The shaking in his lip more pronounced than ever, he lowers his head a little further and says: "I am sorry for the things I am going to say now." The commander put his left hand on the back of his skull and used his right to beat him on the backside "like a horse". Singing a witch doctor song, and with everybody watching, the commander then began. The moment he started, Jean Paul vomited.

Eleven rebels waited in a queue and raped Jean Paul in turn. When he was too exhausted to hold himself up, the next attacker would wrap his arm under Jean Paul's hips and lift him by the stomach. He bled freely: "Many, many, many bleeding," he says, "I could feel it like water." Each of the male prisoners was raped 11 times that night and every night that followed.

On the ninth day, they were looking for firewood when Jean Paul spotted a huge tree with roots that formed a small grotto of shadows. Seizing his moment, he crawled in and watched, trembling, as the rebel guards searched for him. After five hours of watching their feet as they hunted for him, he listened as they came up with a plan: they would let off a round of gunfire and tell the commander that Jean Paul had been killed. Eventually he emerged, weak from his ordeal and his diet of only two bananas per day during his captivity. Dressed only in his underpants, he crawled through the undergrowth "slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, like a snake" back into town.

Today, despite his hospital treatment, Jean Paul still bleeds when he walks. Like many victims, the wounds are such that he's supposed to restrict his diet to soft foods such as bananas, which are expensive, and Jean Paul can only afford maize and millet. His brother keeps asking what's wrong with him. "I don't want to tell him," says Jean Paul. "I fear he will say: 'Now, my brother is not a man.'"

It is for this reason that both perpetrator and victim enter a conspiracy of silence and why male survivors often find, once their story is discovered, that they lose the support and comfort of those around them. In the patriarchal societies found in many developing countries, gender roles are strictly defined.

"In Africa no man is allowed to be vulnerable," says RLP's gender officer Salome Atim. "You have to be masculine, strong. You should never break down or cry. A man must be a leader and provide for the whole family. When he fails to reach that set standard, society perceives that there is something wrong."

Often, she says, wives who discover their husbands have been raped decide to leave them. "They ask me: 'So now how am I going to live with him? As what? Is this still a husband? Is it a wife?' They ask, 'If he can be raped, who is protecting me?' There's one family I have been working closely with in which the husband has been raped twice. When his wife discovered this, she went home, packed her belongings, picked up their child and left. Of course that brought down this man's heart."

Back at RLP I'm told about the other ways in which their clients have been made to suffer. Men aren't simply raped, they are forced to penetrate holes in banana trees that run with acidic sap, to sit with their genitals over a fire, to drag rocks tied to their penis, to give oral sex to queues of soldiers, to be penetrated with screwdrivers and sticks. Atim has now seen so many male survivors that, frequently, she can spot them the moment they sit down. "They tend to lean forward and will often sit on one buttock," she tells me. "When they cough, they grab their lower regions. At times, they will stand up and there's blood on the chair. And they often have some kind of smell."

Because there has been so little research into the rape of men during war, it's not possible to say with any certainty why it happens or even how common it is – although a rare 2010 survey, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 22% of men and 30% of women in Eastern Congo reported conflict-related sexual violence. As for Atim, she says: "Our staff are overwhelmed by the cases we've got, but in terms of actual numbers? This is the tip of the iceberg."

Later on I speak with Dr Angella Ntinda, who treats referrals from the RLP. She tells me: "Eight out of 10 patients from RLP will be talking about some sort of sexual abuse."

"Eight out of 10 men?" I clarify.

"No. Men and women," she says.

"What about men?"

"I think all the men."

I am aghast.

"All of them?" I say.

"Yes," she says. "All the men."

The research by Lara Stemple at the University of California doesn't only show that male sexual violence is a component of wars all over the world, it also suggests that international aid organisations are failing male victims. Her study cites a review of 4,076 NGOs that have addressed wartime sexual violence. Only 3% of them mentioned the experience of men in their literature. "Typically," Stemple says, "as a passing reference."

On my last night I arrive at the house of Chris Dolan. We're high on a hill, watching the sun go down over the neighbourhoods of Salama Road and Luwafu, with Lake Victoria in the far distance. As the air turns from blue to mauve to black, a muddled galaxy of white, green and orange bulbs flickers on; a pointillist accident spilled over distant valleys and hills. A magnificent hubbub rises from it all. Babies screaming, children playing, cicadas, chickens, songbirds, cows, televisions and, floating above it all, the call to prayer at a distant mosque.

Stemple's findings on the failure of aid agencies is no surprise to Dolan. "The organisations working on sexual and gender-based violence don't talk about it," he says. "It's systematically silenced. If you're very, very lucky they'll give it a tangential mention at the end of a report. You might get five seconds of: 'Oh and men can also be the victims of sexual violence.' But there's no data, no discussion."

As part of an attempt to correct this, the RLP produced a documentary in 2010 called Gender Against Men. When it was screened, Dolan says that attempts were made to stop him. "Were these attempts by people in well-known, international aid agencies?" I ask.

"Yes," he replies. "There's a fear among them that this is a zero-sum game; that there's a pre-defined cake and if you start talking about men, you're going to somehow eat a chunk of this cake that's taken them a long time to bake." Dolan points to a November 2006 UN report that followed an international conference on sexual violence in this area of East Africa.

"I know for a fact that the people behind the report insisted the definition of rape be restricted to women," he says, adding that one of the RLP's donors, Dutch Oxfam, refused to provide any more funding unless he'd promise that 70% of his client base was female. He also recalls a man whose case was "particularly bad" and was referred to the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR. "They told him: 'We have a programme for vulnerable women, but not men.'"

It reminds me of a scene described by Eunice Owiny: "There is a married couple," she said. "The man has been raped, the woman has been raped. Disclosure is easy for the woman. She gets the medical treatment, she gets the attention, she's supported by so many organisations. But the man is inside, dying."

"In a nutshell, that's exactly what happens," Dolan agrees. "Part of the activism around women's rights is: 'Let's prove that women are as good as men.' But the other side is you should look at the fact that men can be weak and vulnerable."

Margot Wallström, the UN special representative of the secretary-general for sexual violence in conflict, insists in a statement that the UNHCR extends its services to refugees of both genders. But she concedes that the "great stigma" men face suggests that the real number of survivors is higher than that reported. Wallström says the focus remains on women because they are "overwhelmingly" the victims. Nevertheless, she adds, "we do know of many cases of men and boys being raped."

But when I contact Stemple by email, she describes a "constant drum beat that women are the rape victims" and a milieu in which men are treated as a "monolithic perpetrator class".

"International human rights law leaves out men in nearly all instruments designed to address sexual violence," she continues. "The UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 treats wartime sexual violence as something that only impacts on women and girls… Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced $44m to implement this resolution. Because of its entirely exclusive focus on female victims, it seems unlikely that any of these new funds will reach the thousands of men and boys who suffer from this kind of abuse. Ignoring male rape not only neglects men, it also harms women by reinforcing a viewpoint that equates 'female' with 'victim', thus hampering our ability to see women as strong and empowered. In the same way, silence about male victims reinforces unhealthy expectations about men and their supposed invulnerability."

Considering Dolan's finding that "female rape is significantly underreported and male rape almost never", I ask Stemple if, following her research, she believes it might be a hitherto unimagined part of all wars. "No one knows, but I do think it's safe to say that it's likely that it's been a part of many wars throughout history and that taboo has played a part in the silence."

As I leave Uganda, there's a detail of a story that I can't forget. Before receiving help from the RLP, one man went to see his local doctor. He told him he had been raped four times, that he was injured and depressed and his wife had threatened to leave him. The doctor gave him a Panadol.

Survivors' names have been changed and identities hidden for their protection. The Refugee Law Project is a partner organisation of Christian Aid (christianaid.org.uk)

Will Storr
The Guardian...

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