I attended The Daily Beast’s Women in the World summit this past weekend, which was an interesting conference organized by Tina Brown.  I cried when women spoke about having been enslaved, raped, beaten, had their genitals mutilated, harassed, threatened, victimized by their own families, isolated, and injured in other ways.  I knew that the goal of the conference was not just to hear powerful testimony, but to try to do something about it afterwards.  All I can do at this stage is spread the word: women and children all over the globe are in a state of crisis and we must end their suffering.

When are powerful governments going to take violence against women seriously, when are they going to say: this is an emergency, it must stop now?

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As a brief note of introduction, I am an attorney in New York City and a novelist on weekends and nights, in Connecticut, where I live. I was born in Honduras and raised in the Bronx. I wrote a novel, “The Wedding Gift,” set in 19th Century Alabama, before the Civil War. I will discuss my book on later posts, but you can read a bit about it on the other pages of my website: www.marlenbodden.com

Before we begin today’s topics, I send my congratulations to Justice Sonia Sotomayor on her appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. On a personal note, I appeared before Justice Sotomayor when she was a United States District Court Judge in the Southern District of New York. I was impressed by how well she treated my client, a poor woman. I think that all appellants in the Supreme Court will get a fair shake from her.

Today I want to discuss an item in my local newspaper in Stamford, CT, The Advocate. A woman who was raped at gunpoint in a hotel’s parking garage, while her children looked on, sued Marriott for damages. According to the paper, Marriott’s defenses are that the woman was “careless, negligent, and failed to exercise due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities.” I cannot believe that Marriott has not settled this case. I thought that people were done with blaming women for being raped.

As to tomorrow’s topic, cocoa, believe it or not, this issue is complicated, so I will break it up into pieces. I will feature two candy giants tomorrow: Cadbury (U.K.) and See’s Chocolate (U.S.).

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