Ask Rape Survivors Advocacy Group to Withdraw Invitation to Speaker Bill O'Reilly

Ask Rape Survivors Advocacy Group to Withdraw Invitation to Speaker Bill O'Reilly

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Bill O'Reilly is scheduled to speak at a fund raising luncheon for the rape survivors advocacy group<b> </b><a href="http://www.ithappenedtoalexa.org/Welcome.html">It Happened To Alexa Foundation</a> at the Ritz Carlton in Manalapan, Florida, on March 19th, 2009. This is, simply, inappropriate. <br /><br /> According to its website, the purpose of the It Happened to Alexa Foundation is to "help support rape survivors through the trauma of the criminal trial, in the hopes that more survivors will go through with the prosecution in order to put these perpetrators behind bars...[and to] assist rape victims families with travel expenses during the litigation process." <br /><br />A laudable mission, indeed. But not only has O'Reilly been accused of sexual harassment at work (settling out of court&nbsp;and paying his accuser a &nbsp;multi-million dollar sum); he also has a history of making blame-the-victim comments about sexual assault, including the following:<br /><br /> "These two girls come in from the suburbs and they get bombed, and their car is towed because they're moronic girls and, you know, they don't have a car. So they're standing there in the middle of the night with no car. And then they separate because they're drunk...<br /><br />"Now Moore, Jennifer Moore...She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff... So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She's walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug...<br />And the thug takes her over to New Jersey in the cab and kills her and rapes her and does all these terrible things to her..." (Bill O'Reilly, <em><a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200608040004">The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly</a></em>, 8/2/06) <br /><br /><em>"</em>And the question is, why didn't [11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck, kidnapped, held and raped for 2 years] escape when he could have?...The Stockholm syndrome thing, I don't buy it...The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted...I think when it all comes down, what's going to happen is, there was an element here that this kid liked about his circumstances." (Bill O'Reilly, Fox News' <em><a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200701170009">The O'Reilly Factor</a></em>, 1/15/07)<br /><br />Please join us in asking the It Happened to Alexa Foundation to withdraw their invitation to Bill O'Reilly and replace him with another, more appropriate, speaker.<br /><br />PLEASE call/e-mail/write to the It Happened to Alexa Foundation and let them know that this is unacceptable.<br /><br />info@ithappenedtoalexa.org<br /><br />Contact Information<br />It Happened to Alexa Foundation<br />125 South First Street<br />Lewiston, New York 14092<br />Phone: (716) 754-9105; 877-77-ALEXA (25392)<br />Fax: (716) 754-4676<br /><br />Sign this online petition:<br /><br />http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-oreilly-speech-to-rape-victim-support-group<br /><br /><br />

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