Women in the World: A Rapist’s Worst Nightmare

Today: Supermodel Alek Wek’s Bittersweet Return Home—to a Free South Sudan , ‘Personhood’ Movement Hits Snag in Colorado Ballot Initiative Week of August 30, 2012 CRACKDOWN 1. A Rapist’s Worst Nightmare Twenty-one serial rapists have been identified in the early days of a massive investigation led by Detroit prosecutor Kym Worthy—and her manhunt has just begun. Worthy is leading a charge to investigate more than 11,000 police “rape kits”—which contain swabs of semen, saliva, and other evidence of rape—so the rapists can be brought to justice. The thousands of rape kits had piled up in a dusty police warehouse in Detroit for years, ignored, until one of Worthy’s colleagues stumbled upon them in 2009. Since then, Worthy has been fighting to get the kits logged, tested for DNA, and then entered into the national DNA database. The 21 serial rapists were identified in testing the first batch of kits this summer. Worthy, once a victim of rape herself, says she has funds right now to cover tests for about 1,600 rape kits—a small chunk of the 11,303 kits in all. “It’s very troubling,” she tells The Daily Beast’s Abigail Pesta. “I’m calling it a pandemic.” Read it at The Daily Beast MODEL CITIZEN 2. Alek Wek’s Personal Journey Supermodel Alek Wek fled her homeland as a child amid the bomb blasts of civil war. Recently she returned as a globe-trotting model to an independent nation—South Sudan, the newest country in the world. But the scars of war remain. “The world’s newest country needs the attention of the world,” she writes on The Daily Beast. “The people of South Sudan are rich like the soil, but they need the tools to grow.” Wek describes a nation “thwarted by decades of violence,” where only 15 percent of the population is educated. She herself escaped war at age 10, leaving her mother and most of her family behind for years. A modeling scout later “discovered” her at a London street fair, launching a modeling career that has spanned two decades. Describing her recent trip to her homeland with the United Nations’ refugee agency, she says, “The young nation is full of hope, but it is nearly impossible to keep up with the need.” Read it at The Daily Beast ABORTION 3. ‘Personhood’ Stumbles in Colorado The “personhood” movement—which seeks to ban abortion by defining human embryos as full-fledged people with legal rights—has hit a snag, with the Colorado secretary of state saying the group has not submitted enough valid signatures to qualify for an amendment on the state ballot this fall. Keith Mason, the president of the Denver-based nonprofit group Personhood USA, told The Daily Beast’s Abigail Pesta that he plans to fight the finding in court, and has hired a law firm to do so. Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which has been fighting personhood efforts around the country, said in a statement, “The defeat of personhood state constitutional amendments all across the country—from Colorado and Ohio, to Mississippi and Oklahoma—sends a clear warning to Mitt Romney: health care decisions should be left to a woman, her family, her doctor, and her faith—not politicians.” Read it at The Daily Beast GET The Cheat Sheet A speedy, smart summary of news and must-reads from across the Web. You'll love the featured original stories on politics, entertainment, and more from The Daily Beast's diverse group of contributors. GET Culture Beast Weekly cultural recommendations from The Daily Beast.

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