A new report says women living on Native American reservations face major obstacles to accessing Plan B emergency contraception. The report also criticizes the Indian Health Service for not implementing standard policies and protocols dealing with sexual assault and rape. Joining us is the co-author of the report, Charon Asetoyer, executive director of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center.  

When a violent crime is committed and reported, it's expected that investigators will collect evidence, process it, and use that evidence to track down the perpetrator. But in tens of thousands of rape cases, that is not what happens. Instead, the evidence collected is shelved and left unprocessed for years. In many cases, the rape kits are stored incorrectly so that contamination is likely to occur. In other cases, the kits have even been deliberately destroyed by the police.

In places like Los Angeles and New York, efforts have been made to change this. And now Detroit and Houston are taking steps to do the same.

Last year, according to The New York Times, the city of Chicago recorded nearly 1,400 rapes. But none of these appeared in the FBI's annual federal crime report. That’s because the FBI doesn’t accept Chicago’s definition of what constitutes "rape." And it’s not just Chicago. The annual figures from cities and municipalities across the country are understated every year in the FBI's yearly Uniform Crime Report due to how the Bureau defines the crime.

Over the weekend, the AP gained access to a six-page essay handwritten by Rosa Parks, recounting details of a white man attacking and attempting to rape his black housekeeper. It’s unclear whether the story is autobiographical or fictional, but it provides a window into the life of Rosa Parks, a legendary human rights activist who spent years bringing the cases of rape and violence against black women to national attention.

The International Criminal Court says there is evidence that Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddhafi may have distributed a Viagra-like drug to Libyan troops as part of an official policy of rape. This comes after a UN panel said its investigators found evidence that hundreds of women have been raped by pro-Gaddhafi forces. This isn’t the first time we’re hearing accusations of rape—back in March, Iman al-Obeidi made global headlines after she stormed a hotel in Tripoli, telling international reporters she had been sexually assaulted by Gaddhafi forces.

We talk with Lara Setrakian, correspondent for ABC News and Bloomberg Television, who's reporting on this story from Libya and speaking with some of the alleged rape victims.

The embattled managing director for the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was denied bail yesterday, after being arrested and charged over the weekend with raping a Manhattan hotel maid. His arrest has shocked and angered many in France, where he was considered by many a strong candidate for the presidency. Some of those reacting from Strauss-Kahn's country believe he has been unfairly treated, and find it impossible to believe that he committed such a crime.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his predecessor Donald Rumsefld are being accused of turning a blind eye to sexual harassment charges against women in the military, and they are now being sued. Seventeen current and former members of the military claim that this behavior by the Pentagon led to violence against women being tolerated. This meant that their Constitutional rights were violated. Jesse Ellison, writer and editor for Newsweek, and the author of blog Equality Myth, has the details of this lawsuit.

A year ago, when the monumental earthquake of January 2010 hit Haiti, 250,000 people died, even more were injured, and roughly one million were left homeless. But the tragedy didn’t end there. At the same time that millions of civilians mourned, over 4,000 prisoners escaped from the national penitentiary and began a reign of terror over the nation’s tent cities that continues today; raping women and children, brutalizing citizens, and controlling access to drinking water and electricity.

Yesterday a jury handed down a death penalty sentence for Steven Hayes, who was convicted in a brutal triple murder case and a violent home invasion at the home of Dr. William Petit and his wife, Jennifer, in 2007. All of the victims were tied up, Dr. Petit was severely beaten and his wife Jennifer, along with their two daughters Hayley and Michaela were murdered. Two of the three were sexually assaulted. The assailants then attempted to burn the Petit house down as they fled. These murders were so violent that even some ardent anti-death penalty advocates have been asking whether there are times when the death penalty is appropriate 

Consider the history of the civil rights movement, but set aside for a moment the well-known stories from men: those of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Emmett Till, Medgar Evers and Andrew Goodman. If we examine the movement through the eyes of the women there at the time, what would the story sound like? 

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a new law mandating police departments across the state to send rape kits to the Illinois State Police laboratory or an approved lab within 10 business days of acquiring the evidence. Illinois is the first state to pass such a law, which will go in to effect on October 1st. State officials hope that more and faster scrutiny of evidence will increase the number of arrests for such cases, which now stand at only 11 percent: The national average is 22 percent. Similar laws have increased arrests in other cities, including New York and Los Angeles. 

Since Haiti's earthquake earlier this year, thousands of Haitians continue to live in tent cities, which tend to be small, crowded and offer little privacy. As a result, many women have reported being victims of sexual assault or rape. Rape has always been a problem in Haiti, a country where the act was only truly criminalized in 2005, but the breakdown of social structures since the earthquake has worsened the problem.

Hundreds of sexual abuse cases against Catholic priests have been surfacing in Ireland over the past weeks and the Pope said he will address the crisis in a repentance letter tomorrow.

But his efforts could be undermined by a scandal of his own. Last week, a senior church official said when the Pope was Archdiocese of Munich, he made “serious mistakes” in handling one specific priest accused of molesting boys back in the early 1980s.

More women serve in America's armed services than in most other nations. Yet 30 percent of female veterans report being sexually assaulted or raped while serving, according to a 2003 survey funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. This month, Congress is hearing testimony from service members who say they were sexually attacked.

Kristen Lombardi, investigative reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, just completed an in-depth investigation on how college campuses have created judiciary systems to handle rape cases, and how those systems sometimes fail. She talks with us about what she learned while investigating her piece, and shares a first-person account from one woman who feels her rape case was mishandled by her college: former University of Virginia student Kathryn Russell.

We also hear a response from the University of Virginia about what's happened in the aftermath of Russell's case.

To read Lombardi's entire 3-part series on collegiate rape judiciary systems, visit the Center for Public Integrity.