Sexual Violence

With Patrick Carroll, Rob Devaney, Izzy Diaz, Mike Figueroa and Ty Jones. Distributed by Magnolia Pictures. 1 hour, 31 mins. R (violence, sexual violence, profanity, adult themes). Playing at Ritz at the Bourse. For anyone who saw The War Tapes - and there weren't many because that's the problem dogging almost every film about the Iraq conflict - Redacted is going to seem even more of a cheat than it is. In reality, Redacted, the work of director Brian DePalma, offers footage - ostensibly from a Pfc.'s minicam, a French documentary crew, Arab TV, radical Islamic Web sites and closed-circuit security cameras - assembled and intercut to tell the story of the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Iraqi, the killing of her family, and subsequent cover-up by U.S. soldiers.

TO THE Honorable Teresa Carr Deni: I read with incredulity your ruling that the assault of a rape victim should be charged as "theft of services. " It minimizes the brutality of rape and demeans women of all classes. It reinforces the outdated and dangerous notion that some women can't be raped. As a judge, you should be mindful of the way your comments can reinforce certain myths about rape. Clearly, the law is designed to protect all people equally from violence, and while the system isn't perfect, the judiciary has a responsibility to honor the core principles of equal protection, especially when speaking publicly about a crime.

Directed by Marco Kreuzpaintner, with Kevin Kline, Paulina Gaitan, Cesar Ramos and Alicja Bachleda-Curus. 1 hour, 59 mins. R (violence, sexual violence, profanity, drugs, adult themes). Distributed by Roadside Attractions. Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse. Other times, however, Trade comes off like TV-movie sensationalism, sidetracked by distracting backstories and hard-to-swallow plot twists. Although Kevin Kline, playing a cop on a personal quest for a missing girl, gets top billing, the strongest acting here comes from a pair of teens: Paulina Gaitan, as Adriana, a Mexico City kid kidnapped by Russian sex-traders as she's riding the new bike she received for her 13th birthday, and Cesar Ramos, as Jorge, her older brother, a street hustler who follows his sister's abductors across the border and all the way to a house in New Jersey.

Next to Stone Cold Steve Austin, your average bull has a pencil neck. Austin, the World Wrestling Entertainment personality, has a neck so overdeveloped that it makes what's above look positively pinhead. Imagine a Schwarzenegger sundae with a cherry on top. On the page, The Condemned undoubtedly reads like Survivor on steroids. On the screen, this vehicle customized to Austin's unexcitable persona is survivalist dreck, equal parts The Most Dangerous Game and Battle Royale.

JUST AS not all the news is fit to print, not all reports about the news are fit to print. Such is clearly the case with Dana DiFilippo's article "A Genital Reminder" (May 18). Ms. DiFilippo has treated a hideous act of sexual violence, allegedly committed by a Philadelphia woman against her sleeping husband, as an occasion for unrestrained pun-making and joviality. It beggars belief that the Daily News, or any mainstream newspaper, would print an article that so trivializes domestic violence, much less a felonious assault involving sexual mutilation.

EVERY MORNING, Americans wake up finding it harder to see straight, to make sense of it all. Our lens is clouded, overpowered by violence, as well as contradictory explanations about the state of the world, the state of our nation - and what to do about it. We feel numbed on three fronts. There is the terror of ruthless enemies with no respect for the sanctity of life and free thought. There is the growing lack of trust and confidence in our leadership. And there is madness, cruelty and selfish obliviousness, often chillingly close to our doorsteps.

Louise Arbour is the U.N. high commissioner for human rights A veil of silence covers violence against children, yet abuses are so pervasive that no country can ignore them, and no society can claim to be immune from them. Despite almost universal acceptance of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, governments' concrete initiatives to counter such violence have been inadequate. However, turning a blind eye to this phenomenon or claiming ignorance of its incidence and implications will now be very difficult.

Critics of American movie ratings long have puzzled over the system that gives an R (under age 17 not admitted without parent or guardian) to a movie in which a woman is carved up by a chain saw and an NC-17 to one that shows a woman being sexually pleasured. From such ratings by the Motion Picture Association of America, one might conclude that sexual violence against women is OK for American teenagers to see, but that they must be 18 to see consensual sex. What message does this send to the kids the system presumably means to protect?

The Guttmacher Institute, the nation's premier research agency on reproductive and sexual health, just released its report, "Abortion in Women's Lives," a detailed account of the circumstances and decisions leading to abortion. What the report lacks, however, is something commonly overlooked in the debate about abortion: an understanding of the emotional needs and coping strategies of women after they undergo an abortion. Since 2002, my organization, Exhale, has operated a talk line for women and men to call after an abortion.

ITO WASN'T until my 30s that I saw that evil does exist. Yes, there really are people, often charming and intelligent, who thrive on destroying the hopes and lives of others. It's their mother's milk, their oxygen. More and more today we see horrific acts where the young are the perpetrators - the evidence has been right before our eyes, in our own community. So where does a propensity for evil come from? Are there actually bad seeds among us? Of course not. Hell could freeze over, and no one will ever find an ethics, compassion, sensitivity or sincerity gene.