BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

By Sarah Tofte Human Rights Watch released a report Tuesday finding that Los Angeles County has at least 12,669 untested rape kits sitting in storage facilities. Sarah Tofte, a researcher for that study, calls it a case of major injustice to rape survivors. Catherine, who lives with her young son in Los Angeles, was awakened at midnight by a stranger who raped her, sodomized her and forced her to orally copulate him -- repeatedly. When it was over, the police brought her to a rape treatment center. As with all rape victims, her body was a crime scene. She consented to the collection of evidence. The lab said it would take at least eight months for it to analyze the evidence gathered from Catherine's body, known as a "rape kit." For the detective, that was too long to wait. He personally drove the kit to the state lab, where it still sat for months. When it was finally processed, it generated a "cold hit" -- the DNA matched someone in the offender database, and C...

by Ruth Eglash There has been a dramatic increase in the size and scope of Israel's feminist organizations over the past 18 years, with 69 different groups, including nine rape crisis centers and 14 battered women's shelters, currently operational. The information was revealed in the initial findings of a national report compiled by Dorit Abramovitz, director of projects and campaigns for the umbrella organization of feminist groups in Israel. The report, which was sponsored by the German-based Heinrich Boll Foundation, compares today's feminist landscape to that prior to 1990, when only 14 such organizations existed here. It also examines the wide range of feminist activism by Jewish and joint Jewish-Arab feminist organizations, and studies their effectiveness at improving the situation in general for women in Israel. Although the report will be published in full only next January, Abramovitz presented partial data on Thursday at the country's 16th National Confere...