(ATLANTA) — Brianna Grier, a mother of 3-year-old twins who died last month in police custody, was remembered Thursday by her family as a loving, caring person.
Rev. Al Sharpton spoke at Grier’s funeral, which took place at West Hunter Baptist Church in Atlanta.
“The program says that we come to celebrate a life, but we also come to condemn a passing,” Sharpton said.
He continued, “These two young twins … one day we will have to tell them the story of what happened to their mother. But the troubling thing is that they will ask, ‘Why?’ And I’m here today to join others in saying that Georgia is going to have to start answering why.”
Preliminary findings of an independent autopsy ordered by Grier’s family declared her cause of death to be severe blunt force injury to the head. Results of an official autopsy being conducted as part of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s review of Grier’s death are still pending, according to a GBI representative.
The 28-year-old was arrested by Hancock County Sheriff’s Office deputies on July 15 after Grier’s mother called 911 to report that her daughter was experiencing a mental health crisis, according to the family and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Grier fell out of the police car’s rear passenger door after it was not properly closed. Grier had been handcuffed and was not wearing a seat belt, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The Hancock County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Sharpton said $5,000 from the National Action Network will go toward a fund for Grier’s daughters’ education. He then went on to criticize the sheriff’s office and its initial claims that Grier kicked open the door to the police car, causing her to fall out.
“That’s why if the county don’t do something about Brianna, we’re going to the Justice Department,” Sharpton said at the funeral. “Her life mattered and that’s why we’re here.”
Grier’s father, Marvin Grier, said: “The night that this happened, we called the police for help … not death. We are here to seek justice, accountability, transparency. That’s all we’re asking for. We need answers.”
(WASHINGTON) — The FBI executed an unprecedented raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday in search of evidence reportedly tied to his alleged mishandling of government documents.
It’s believed to be the first search by the federal agency of the residence of a current or former U.S. president. Sources told ABC News that the raid was related to the 15 boxes of documents that Trump took to his Palm Beach home when he departed the White House — some of which the National Archives has said were marked classified.
Trump and other Republicans have sharply criticized the raid as a partisan attack and have demanded an explanation.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Aug 12, 7:07 AM EDT
Trump calls for ‘immediate release’ of search warrant
Former President Donald Trump is calling for “the immediate release” of the warrant that allowed FBI agents to search his Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday.
“Not only will I not oppose the release of documents related to the unAmerican, unwarranted, and unnecessary raid and break-in of my home in Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago, I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents, even though they have been drawn up by radical left Democrats and possible future political opponents, who have a strong and powerful vested interest in attacking me much as they have done for the last 6 years,” Trump said late Thursday in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“This unprecedented political weaponization of law enforcement is inappropriate and highly unethical,” he added. “The world is watching as our Country is being brought to a new low, not only on our border, crime, economy, energy, national security, and so much more, but also with respect to our sacred elections!”
(NEW YORK) — A few days after learning about the deadly shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Jim Witt, superintendent of Lake Local Schools in northern Ohio, reached out to a school safety organization he’s worked with for over a decade.
“It’s unfortunate,” Witt said, but “every time we have a Uvalde situation,” he emails the Educator’s School Safety Network to ask what they need to know and what needs to be changed.
“We want to do everything we can to stay current with what is going on in school safety,” he said.
As more has come to light on one of the worst school shootings in U.S history — most notably the shortcomings of the law enforcement response — schools across the country are reexamining their active shooter plans and implementing new measures, from requiring clear backpacks to more controversial steps like arming teachers.
While active shooters in schools remain exceedingly rare, they are on the increase in recent years, federal data shows, and they have an outsized impact on perceptions of safety.
For Witt, the incident at Uvalde — where the gunman entered the school through a door that didn’t latch properly — reinforced what his district already does, including having a planned entrance, maintaining a relationship with local police, checking in with students and the “vigilance of locking doors.”
“When our school bells ring, our custodians — you can set your watch by it — they go and make sure that all of the exit doors are locked,” said Witt. “My administrative staff and I walk around campus every day and included in our walks is checking those doors to make sure that they are locked and they are closed and they’re latched.”
A Texas state legislature investigation into the Uvalde shooting found that while the elementary school had adopted security policies to ensure that exterior doors and internal classroom doors were locked during school hours, those protocols were mostly ignored.
The shooting in Uvalde — in which the 18-year-old alleged gunman killed 19 students and two teachers — and other recent school shootings also demonstrate the importance of measures to reduce student access to guns, including conversations on proper gun storage and “red flag laws,” Rob Wilcox, federal legal director for the gun violence prevention organization Everytown for Gun Safety, told ABC News.
“To keep our schools safe and to keep our students safe, no matter where they are in the community, schools and community members really need to work together,” Wilcox said.
Consistency and communication
Months before the massacre at Robb Elementary School, Kristine Martin, the assistant superintendent of Washington Local Schools in Toledo, Ohio, was spearheading a school safety audit to determine their vulnerabilities.
“I think any time something like that happens, we always reflect on what are we doing and what are our practices and what can we do better or differently,” she said. “We started this work before that, but it just speaks to the urgency of the work.”
One of the areas the school focused on based on the audit was consistency. When students return in the fall, the district’s 10 buildings will have new kiosks — paid for through a state education grant — to sign in visitors and dispense a standard visitor pass across the campus. Every school employee will also be required to wear their staff IDs, which previously wasn’t a uniform practice across buildings.
“Kids in an emergency need to know who is a safe person,” Martin said.
Though schools may turn their focus to active shooter drills, Amy Klinger, founder of the Educator’s School Safety Network, which provides schools with safety training and resources, advises that they take an “all-hazards approach” that takes into account other scenarios that may be more likely to happen, such as violent fights that do not involve firearms, issues with noncustodial parents and severe weather.
“When you have this heavy emphasis on active shooter, lockdown sort of drills, and that’s the only training that people get, then you have situations where people don’t realize the importance of the doors being locked, and the importance of carrying their keys and carrying their radio or their phone and having appropriate communications,” Klinger said.
“What I would hope for schools is that they really begin to look at kind of an all-hazards approach that says, what are we doing about access control? Does our communication plan work? Can people really get notifications? And that we look beyond just, we did a lockdown drill where everybody hid in the corner and now we’re all safe,” she continued. “Because Ulvade demonstrated that that’s not the case.”
The Texas state legislature investigation into the Uvalde shooting found a range of communication failures, from the lack of a command post being established by responding law enforcement to problematic radio reception inside the school building. It also found that Uvalde school district employees did not always reliably receive alerts like an active shooter situation for reasons including poor wi-fi coverage and turned-off phones.
In the wake of the Uvalde shooting, the Texas Education Agency plans to review external entry points of every school in Texas, as well as review each district’s safety protocols, the Texas Tribune reported. ABC News has reached out to the agency for an update on its reviews.
Among the recommendations in an interim report by the Arkansas School Safety Commission drafted in response to the mass shooting in Uvalde were that all exterior school building doors and classroom doors should remain closed and locked during school hours, and that school districts should develop a “layered two-way communication access between staff to ensure information sharing during critical incidents,” such as the use of intercoms, radios and cell phones.
Preventing gun access
The accused gunman in the Uvalde shooting legally purchased the assault rifle used in the shooting when he turned 18, authorities said. That has led Uvalde community leaders to call on the state to hold a special legislative session to consider raising the minimum age to purchase semi-automatic assault-style rifles from 18 to 21.
Nearly 80% of school shooters under the age of 18 acquire guns from the home of family or close friends, according to Everytown — which makes secure storage a key part of preventing gun violence in schools, Wilcox said.
“We’ve seen really encouraging action across the country as schools step up to make sure that everyone in their community knows how important it is to securely store firearms in the home,” Wilcox said.
Last month, the Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education voted to amend its student/parent handbook to include information about the secure storage of firearms. The move came nearly a year after one of the students in the district, 13-year-old Bennie Hargrove, was fatally shot during lunch at school. The accused shooter — a fellow student — allegedly brought his father’s unsecured gun to school.
Much of this work happens at the school board level, Wilcox said. Though last month, the California governor signed a bill that requires schools to include information related to the safe storage of firearms in an annual notice sent to parents or guardians. The bill was drafted in reaction to a 2021 school shooting at a Michigan high school, in which an alleged 15-year-old gunman fatally shot four of his classmates.
Another tool that schools could use to limit students’ access to guns is extreme risk protection orders, often known as “red flag laws,” Wilcox said.
Addressing warning signs
The Texas House of Representatives committee report on the Robb Elementary School shooting revealed the accused school shooter exhibited many warning signs prior to the massacre.
“If a student is showing that they’re in crisis and you’re taking steps to intervene, then you may want to use an extreme risk protection order to ensure that there’s no access to guns by that young person,” Wilcox said.
Wilcox pointed to testimony by a Baltimore sheriff who told state legislators in 2019 that in the first few months of Maryland’s red flag law going into effect, his office seized firearms in five instances that involved schools.
For Witt, part of maintaining a safe school includes having meaningful relationships with students.
“If a student has a broken leg, you know it because he or she is on crutches and there’s a cast on the leg. If a student is suffering from depression or some other type of mental health illness, you can’t see it,” he said. “That’s why the relationship becomes even more imperative, so those kids not only have an outlet to talk to someone about their situation, but also if there’s a possibility of danger, you can address it in a meaningful and helpful way.”
Mental health support is a focus; the Arkansas School Safety Commission advised in its interim report that all students should have access to mental health services, and that all school districts should provide youth mental health first aid training to all staff that interacts with students.
For Wilcox, having a positive school climate is one part of preventing school violence, so that someone in crisis can get help and prevent harming themselves or others.
“But at the same time,” he said, “we need everyone in the community to make sure that there’s no easy access to guns for young people.”
(CHICAGO) — Certain iconic imagery brings to mind traditional American summer activities: the smell of hamburgers cooking on a grill, marching bands with drum lines and kids catching candy thrown from colorful floats. These are all a part of the Bud Billiken Parade in Chicago.
First held in 1929, the Bud Billiken Parade is the largest African American parade in the United States, according to its organizers. It’s also one of the three largest parades in the country overall, along with the Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year’s Day and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Every year on the second Saturday of August, participants of the Bud Billiken Parade march and dance their way through the streets of Chicago.
Robert Sengstacke Abbott, founder of the Chicago Defender newspaper, and his editor, David Kellum, created the fictional character Bud Billiken in 1923 as a mascot for a youth group they had set up in the community. A Billiken is a mythical good-luck figure that was popular in the early part of the 20th century. Kellum then decided to have a day of celebration for Black youth and the Bud Billiken Parade was born.
Like many other public events, the parade was canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19.
“As our community continues to recover from the effects of the pandemic over the past couple of years, it is exciting that we are able to come together this year and celebrate the students of Chicago as they head back to school,” said the Bud Billiken Parade chair, Myiti Sengstacke-Rice, who is also the president and CEO of Chicago Defender Charities.
The 93rd annual Bud Billiken Parade will kick off on Aug. 13.
(LOS ANGELES) — Anne Heche is not expected to survive the brain injury she suffered in a fiery car crash in Los Angeles and is being kept on life support to determine if her organs are viable, according to her family.
The family and friends of the Emmy-winning actress released a statement Thursday evening about her comatose condition which is not expected to improve.
“Unfortunately, due to her accident, Anne Heche suffered a severe anoxic brain injury and remains in a coma, in critical condition. She is not expected to survive,” the statement read.
“It has long been her choice to donate her organs and she is being kept on life support to determine if any are viable.”
Heche’s loved one went on to describe her as having a “huge heart” and “generous spirit.”
“More than her extraordinary talent, she saw spreading kindness and joy as her life’s work — especially moving the needle for acceptance of who you love. She will be remembered for her courageous honesty and dearly missed for her light,” the statement continued.
Heche, 53, is “unconscious” and in “critical condition” after she was involved in the one-car crash, which also damaged a Los Angeles home last week, her representative confirmed to ABC News on Monday.
The Los Angeles Police Department said Thursday that they received results of blood that was drawn shortly after the crash, which showed she had narcotics in her system.
Meredith Deliso, Alex Stone and Josh Margolin contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Multiple sources familiar with the investigation say the Justice Department and the FBI believed former President Donald Trump continued to keep sensitive classified documents that had national security implications and that in recent weeks additional information came in suggesting that Trump was not complying with requests to provide the information the Justice Department believed he had in his possession.
The information was sensitive enough that authorities wanted to take it back into possession immediately.
Additional sources tell ABC News part of the information investigators were looking for included material labeled “special access” which is material accessible only by the highest level security clearances only available to a specific limited number of individuals.
Multiple sources tell ABC News federal investigators have questioned many individuals close to the former president about these materials including some members of his current staff in addition to some former White House officials.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(ATLANTA) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its COVID-19 guidance Thursday to ease recommendations for people who are unvaccinated and have been exposed to COVID-19.
Previously, the CDC advised that people who were unvaccinated or hadn’t received their booster shots should quarantine for five days after exposure. If no symptoms appear, the quarantine can end.
The new guidance no longer recommends that unvaccinated people quarantine after exposure, instead suggesting they mask up for 10 days and get tested five days after they were exposed.
This is the same guidance that was previously given to vaccinated and boosted people who were exposed to COVID and essentially simplifies the CDC’s quarantine recommendation. Americans who are exposed to the virus, regardless of vaccination status, no longer need to stay at home if they’ve had an exposure, per the CDC’s latest guidelines.
“We’re in a stronger place today as a nation, with more tools — like vaccination, boosters, and treatments — to protect ourselves, and our communities, from severe illness from COVID-19,” Dr. Greta Massetti, chief of the field epidemiology and prevention branch at the CDC and one of the authors of the updated guidance, said in a statement.
“This guidance acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives,” she said.
The CDC also included updated guidance on how people can use testing to end their isolation after getting sick with COVID-19, recommending two negative tests 48 hours apart before going out in public again without a mask.
The new guidance recommends people take their first test on day six of isolation if they’re fever-free, with a second rapid test 48 hours later.
If both tests are negative, people can leave their homes and not use a mask around others. Massetti said the CDC decided to recommend two tests, two days apart, because of recent Food and Drug Administration studies showing the serial testing, or testing multiple times, improves efficacy of rapid tests.
“We want to ensure that when people are using an antigen test, that we’re relying on the most accurate information, avoiding potentially making decisions based on false negative results,” Massetti told reporters Thursday.
Waiting 48 hours before taking another test mitigates “some of those performance issues,” she said.
But officials were clear that the CDC still considers testing optional and doesn’t expect all Americans to have access to tests.
“We are still recommending that decisions for ending isolation should be based on symptoms and time,” Massetti said.
The guidance Massetti referred to suggests that anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 should isolate for at least five days.
If the person remains fever-free for 24 hours without the use of medication by day 5, or never had symptoms, they can end isolation but are advised to wear a mask for a full 10 days.
The CDC also said it was no longer recommending schools use test-to-stay, which allowed students who were close contacts of those who test positive for COVID to continue to attend in-person classes as long as they remain asymptomatic and continue to test negative.
Massetti said because unvaccinated and vaccinated people no longer are advised to quarantine, test-to-stay was no longer necessary.
“Because we’re no longer recommending quarantine, we’re no longer including a section on test-to-stay because the practice of handling exposures would involve masking rather than a quarantine, and test-to-stay was an alternative to quarantine,” she said.
The CDC also said it was removing its recommendation of testing asymptomatic people without known exposures in most community settings and deemphasizing six feet of social distancing, which has been recommended since the early days of the pandemic.
“Physical distance is just one component of how to protect yourself and others,” the guidance reads. “It is important to consider the risk in a particular setting, including local COVID-19 Community Levels and the important role of ventilation, when assessing the need to maintain physical distance.”
Kevin C. Downs/The New York Post/Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE
(NEW YORK) — Allen Weisselberg, for decades the chief financial officer of former President Donald Trump’s namesake family business, is due in a New York court Friday for a hearing in his criminal case.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office charged Weisselberg and the Trump Organization last summer with tax fraud after they were accused of compensating employees “off the books” in order to pay less in taxes. Weisselberg pleaded not guilty.
According to the charging documents, Weisselberg avoided taxes on more than $1.7 million in the past 15 years, resulting from the payment of his rent on an apartment in a Trump-owned building and related expenses that prosecutors said included cars and private school tuition for his grandchildren.
The court hearing is a capstone on an extraordinary week for Trump that began with an FBI search of his Florida residence and included a deposition as part of a civil investigation by the New York Attorney general’s office.
Trump has not been charged in the Manhattan DA case but the ongoing criminal investigation, which parallels the New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil case, may have factored into his decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during Wednesday’s deposition.
The hearing for Weisselberg is expected to be largely procedural but could include the setting of a trial date, which is expected sometime in October.
Weisselberg recently switched up his legal team, adding Nick Gravante, who represented two other Trump Org employees that avoided charges in the Manhattan DA’s probe.
“If there was a deal to be reached in this case, there has been plenty of time to do it,” Mr. Gravante said. “My mission now is to lead this trial team and win, and that’s what I intend to do.”
(MANCHESTER, N.H.) — Authorities have determined that Harmony Montgomery, a little girl who disappeared in 2019, was murdered in Manchester, New Hampshire, in early December 2019, officials announced Thursday.
Harmony would be 8 years old if alive today.
Harmony’s remains have not been found but “multiple sources of investigative information, including biological evidence,” led to the conclusion that she’s dead, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said at a news conference.
The missing persons case is now a homicide investigation, he said.
“Our investigators will continue to seek justice and look into the circumstances of Harmony’s murder and search for her remains,” Formella said.
“I’m beyond saddened,” Manchester Police Chief Allen Aldenberg said.
“There have been many discussions, speculations and questions relative to where the system failed Harmony, and I myself continue to share the same concerns and still have many remaining questions,” he said. “However, the homicide of this little girl rests with the person or persons who committed this horrific act. The Manchester Police Department will do everything within the limits of the law to ensure that the responsible person or persons for the murder of Harmony are brought to justice.”
Aldenberg said he believes “there are people out there in the community that have information about this investigation who have yet to come forward.
“If you are that person, I implore you to do so now and come forward,” he said. “Do it for this little girl.”
Aldenberg urged anyone with information to call the tip line at 603-203-6060.
The attorney general and police chief did not take questions from the media at Thursday’s news conference. No suspect was named.
Harmony’s mother, Crystal Sorey, had custody of her until 2018, according to a state report released in February. In 2019, a Massachusetts court ordered Harmony be sent to live with her father, Adam Montgomery, in New Hampshire, state officials said.
Harmony’s last confirmed home was in Manchester with her father, her stepmother Kayla Montgomery, and her two half-siblings, according to state officials.
Sorey said the last time she saw Harmony was via FaceTime in spring 2019, officials said.
In July 2019, an anonymous call was made to New Hampshire’s Division for Children, Youth and Families alleging that in a visit a week earlier, he or she saw Harmony “had a black eye that Adam Montgomery admitted to causing,” the report said. The same day as the anonymous call, a case worker visited and didn’t see a black eye on Harmony, the report said.
One week later, that same case worker noted a red mark and faded bruising under Harmony’s eyelid, and both Harmony and Adam Montgomery told the worker the mark was from being hit by a toy while playing, the report said.
In subsequent visits to the home, “the children appeared happy and healthy,” the report said. In the last visit, in October 2019, case workers found the abuse allegations unfounded, but added, “the situation was scored high risk for future child welfare involvement pursuant to the Risk Assessment tool citing the history of substance use, prior family history with child protection, and economic challenges,” according to the report.
In January 2020, Adam Montgomery told the child protective services worker that Harmony had been living in Massachusetts with her mother since Thanksgiving 2019, the report said. The worker left a voicemail with Sorey to confirm Harmony lived there, but never heard back, the report said.
In September 2021, someone close to Harmony’s mother contacted the Division for Children, Youth and Families with concerns, and the agency determined Harmony had never been registered for school in Manchester, the report said.
The Division for Children, Youth and Families then searched for Adam and Kayla Montgomery.
When police found Adam Montgomery in December 2021, he gave the authorities “contradictory and unconvincing explanations of Harmony’s whereabouts,” the report said. Adam Montgomery allegedly told police Harmony’s mother had picked her up, even though Kayla Montgomery told police that Adam Montgomery told her he drove Harmony back to her mother on the day after Thanksgiving 2019, according to the report.
At that point, the investigation became a missing child case, the report said.
(CAIRO, Egypt) — The latest murder of a young woman in Egypt who had allegedly rejected the advances of a fellow student has sparked outrage and renewed calls for Egyptian lawmakers to take action.
Islam Mohamed, a 22-year-old student at Al-Shorouk Academy in the Greater Cairo area, was detained early Wednesday on suspicion of killing his 20-year-old classmate, Salma Bahgat. He is accused of “repeatedly stabbing her with a knife” on Tuesday as she was leaving a building in Zagazig, northeast of Cairo, according to a statement from Egyptian prosecutors.
Prosecutors, citing accounts from witnesses and relatives, said Bahgat had had twice declined marriage proposals from Mohamed, who in turn made death threats against her. Bahgat’s parents told authorities that Mohamed’s proposals were rejected because of his “misbehavior and drug abuse,” according to prosecutors.
In a statement released Tuesday evening, Al-Shorouk Academy mourned the death of Bahgat, who was studying media, saying: “She was an example of a diligent and distinguished student, on the moral and scientific levels, throughout her four years at the academy.”
Bahgat’s killing marked the second such campus femicide to occur in Egypt within the past two months, prompting outcry on social media.
“Another woman killed for saying ‘No,'” one Twitter user wrote.
“I cant believe in this amount of time another incident like Nayera happened again,” another user said.
In June, 21-year-old Nayera Ashraf was stabbed to death in front of her university in Mansoura, north of Cairo, by a fellow student whose marriage proposal she had turned down. The gruesome incident, which was videotaped by bystanders, sent shockwaves across the North African nation.
Ashraf’s killer, 21-year-old Mohamed Adel, gained sympathy during his trial from some commentators on social media who called the murder a “crime of passion,” because they said he was left heartbroken.
“Misogyny is deep-rooted in Egyptian culture. A kid is raised watching his father beat his mother, for instance,” Said Sadek, a professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo, told ABC News on Thursday.
“The media that frown upon any actress who wears revealing dresses and religious scholars who demand that women cover up from head to toe are also to blame for fueling such sentiments,” he added. “We turn the victim into a criminal and the harassers into heroes.”
Adel was ultimately convicted and sentenced to death last month. The court also took the unusual step of calling for changes to Egyptian law to allow executions to be broadcast live as a deterrent to others. Capital punishment in Egypt is rarely broadcast or carried out in public.
In Egypt, murder is punishable by death. More people were sentenced to death there last year than in any other country. In terms of the number of executions carried out, Egypt had the third highest, according to human rights group Amnesty International.
Nevertheless, critics argue that Egyptian law must be strengthened against gender-based violence, threats or blackmailing, which have been on the rise in recent years.
Sadek cited one example of a man who spent just a few weeks in prison after sexually harassing and beating up a woman in a Cairo shopping mall in 2015. Two years later, he attacked her with a knife, leaving a deep cut in her face, Sadek said.
According to a 2015 survey conducted by the United Nations Population Fund and the Egyptian government, about 7.8 million women in Egypt suffer from all forms of violence every year, “whether perpetrated by a spouse/fiancé or individuals in her close circles or from strangers in public places.”
Sexual violence is also rampant, with over 99.3% of Egyptian girls and women experiencing some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime, according to a U.N. report released in 2013.
Last year, the Parliament of Egypt approved tougher penalties for sexual harassment, making the crime punishable by a minimum of five years in prison. But women rights groups insist more should be done, calling on Egyptian Parliament to fast-track a draft unified law for combating violence against women. The proposed legislation has been in the works for several months.
In the wake of Bahgat’s killing, almost two dozen groups, including the Giza-based Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, issued a statement Wednesday calling on Egyptian authorities “to take all the measures to protect women and girls, who have the right to live safely in their homeland.”
“Violence has become a culture nurtured by a societal complicity that justifies it, condemns the victim and sympathizes with the perpetrator,” they said. “We encourage women and girls to urgently report any threats they receive to authorities.”
