“It’s an Uncomfortable Reality.” An Expert on How Jeffrey Epstein’s Case Isn’t All That Unique.
United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman speaks during a news conference, in New York, Monday, July 8, 2019. Richard Drew/AP Photo On Monday, federal prosecutors charged billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein with sex trafficking involving girls as young as 14-years-old. Epstein, a well known political donor and philanthropist, was a…
As US Women’s Soccer Team Clinches World Cup, Fans Demand “Pay Them”
AP Photo/Francisco Seco The US women’s soccer team just dominated its World Cup final with a 2-0 victory over the Netherlands. And yet its players still aren’t paid as much as America’s male players—who have yet to win a World Cup, much less four. And the pay gap persists at the international level: The 2019…
How Decriminalizing Sex Work Became a 2020 Campaign Issue
Erik Mcgregor/Zuma When Julia Salazar, the 28-year-old Democratic Socialist state senator for New York’s 18th district, was campaigning last year, one of her most reliable set of volunteers was a group that has been largely cast out of mainstream political coalitions. Hundreds of sex workers and sex work advocates signed up to canvass for Salazar…
The Supreme Court Just Stuck up for Abortion Rights in Alabama
Patrick Semansky/AP Photo The US Supreme Court has decided not to review an Alabama law from 2016 that would have banned the most common method of second-trimester abortion. By not taking up the case, a ruling from a lower court blocking the law will stand, a big victory for abortion providers in Alabama. Alabama proposed criminalizing…
A Minnesota Killer and Serial Rapist Will Serve Less Than Six Years for the Murder of Lorri Mesedahl
A Star Tribune article on Lorri Mesedahl’s murder in 1983.Newspapers.com A Minneapolis murderer and serial rapist, Darrell Rea, slipped through the fingers of local law enforcement for decades after killing 17-year-old Lorri Mesedahl in 1983—sexually abusing his stepdaughters and raping two more women in the years that followed. On Tuesday, in Hennepin County District Court,…
The Chilling Story of Three Women Haunted by the Same Rapist—And How the Law Failed Them
Mother Jones illustrationSomething about the sound of the knock at the front door made Mary-Scott Hunter think a neighbor was in trouble. She had just arrived home from her job at a corporate training company, and she was mulling over an earlier fight with her girlfriend, but the knock jolted her out of it: five…