Teen dies after horror gang rape

A UKRAINIAN teenager has died three weeks after being set on fire in a gang rape attack by youths that shocked the nation and raised doubts about the competence of police.
Oksana Makar, 18, was raped by three men in their early 20s, strangled with a cord, burned and left for dead in an attack in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv, investigators said.

She was found by a passer-by after she was dumped by her attackers at an abandoned construction site. She was taken to hospital in a critical condition with burns over 55 per cent of her body, requiring the amputation of one of her arms.

She died overnight of her injuries in a specialist hospital in the eastern city of Donetsk where she had been taken after her rescue, the clinic said.

Her heart stopped beating after she suffered a pulmonary haemorrhage and she died despite three attempts to resuscitate her, the chief doctor of the Donetsk Burns centre, Emil Fistal, said.

He said the fact she was able to survive for three weeks since the attack, which occurred on March 9 or 10 according to various sources, had only been possible due to intense treatment and therapy.

"Imagine. She was strangled and they (the attackers) thought she had died. So they burned her. She was lying there 10 hours in the freezing cold and inhaled the by-products of the burning," Dr Fistal said.

President Viktor Yanukovych sent condolences to her relatives while Prime Minister Mykola Azarov vowed that the attackers would be punished "without compromise".

"Millions of Ukrainians believed that Oksana would survive and prayed for her, offering blood, buying medicine," Mr Azarov said.

The case has caused a public outcry in Ukraine, exposing incompetence by the law-enforcement authorities and the extent of social problems in industrial cities such as Mykolayiv, which are riddled with drugs and AIDS.

Ukrainian media had alleged that the suspected attackers - two of whom were initially allowed to go free - are the sons of parents with strong connections to leading local officials.

The mother of one suspect used to be the head of a district in the Mykolayiv region, the regional interior ministry confirmed, prompting allegations the authorities had been trying to keep a lid on the whole affair.

Meanwhile, Makar's mother controversially posted a harrowing video of Oksana in hospital on YouTube where she raises up the bloodied stump of her arm and, apparently barely able to speak, says she feels "awful".

In another disturbing video that was leaked to Ukrainian media, one of the suspects is allegedly shown calmly relating to investigators how the three successively raped Oksana and then killed her when she started threatening to call police.

All three men have now been charged with premeditated rape and murder.

Authorities say several officials from the police and local prosecutors were fired and reprimanded for initially letting the suspects go free.

Why You Should Be Using The Female Condom

A program that gave away 200,000 female condoms to women in Washington, DC prevented 23 HIV infections, according to a study published in the journal AIDS and Behavior. Why female condoms rather than the more common male variety? The study authors wrote, "It is critical that there are HIV prevention interventions entirely under the control of women, and female condoms are the only such woman initiated intervention currently on the open market." But will women actually use them?

Women I talked to were skeptical. Said one, "I wouldn't use a female condom unless I had to. I prefer contraception to be relatively discreet, aesthetically speaking — whether as unseen as an IUD or the Pill, as removed from the moment as a diaphragm, and/or as clingy and sort-of camouflaged as a male condom — and my perception of the FC is that it's far from aesthetically pleasing or discreet, due to the ring hanging out. " Another said that she thought they were less effective than male condoms (true, at least for preventing pregnancy), more expensive (also true), and difficult to find (true, although it may be getting easier). A third said, "I guess I wouldn't be opposed, but I have to admit I don't think I've ever spoken to someone who has" used one. She added that if someone she knew had used one and liked it, she might be more inclined to try.
Planned Parenthood is hoping to make that more likely. Leola Reis of Planned Parenthood Southeast told me some pluses of the method. First of all, she says the new Female Condom 2 is way better than the old version — it's made of nitrile rather than polyurethane, so it's pliable and warms with the body. And it has some advantages over the male condom. It covers more of the outside skin of the vulva, reducing skin-to-skin STD transmission risk. And Reis says it can even increase a woman's pleasure, because the outer ring can rub up against the clitoris during sex.
The biggest drawback, according to Reis: women don't know how to use it. But in a project in Atlanta, Planned Parenthood held trainings to teach 600 women how to use the method, and gave them goodie bags with three female condoms to take home. Then they surveyed those 600 women, plus 350 who hadn't done the training. 85.5 percent of the women who did the training said they'd consider using a female condom, compared with 57.3 percent of women who hadn't. And 51.3 percent of training participants said they'd rather use a female condom than a male one (just 18.1 percent of non-participants said the same).
So a little information can make a big difference. For instructions on how to use a female condom, plus an animated video, check out Planned Parenthood's site.