Lara Whyte on Muck Rack

Lara Whyte

  • Freelance Producer, Writer and Reporter, Freelance
Belfast, London
As seen in: Medium, BBC, Daily Mail, The Guardian, Broadly, The Sunday Times, The Times, VICE, VICE UK, Channel 4 News and
Journalist. Lecturing @CityJournalism. Fan of legally complex stories.
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Freedom Fighter

Freedom Fighter

amazon.co.uk — My book with Joanna Palani, a young fighter with the Kurdish militia group, the YPG. Buy Freedom Fighter Export/Airside by Whyte, Lara (ISBN: 9781786494368) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.
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Teenage Girls Serving in British Army Report Record Levels of Sexual Assault

Teenage Girls Serving in British Army Report Record Levels of Sexual Assault

VICE — VICE World News can reveal that a record number of teenagers have reported harassment - which are dismissed as "just banter" - even as the military tries to recruit more women. Those charged with assaulting them include their teachers at Harrogate, a number of whom remain employed there.
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'Young men should be furious': Inside the world's largest gathering of men's rights activists

'Young men should be furious': Inside the world's largest gathering of men's rights activists

openDemocracy — Men's rights activists (MRAs) from Europe, North America, Australia and Asia gathered in London last weekend for the fourth International Conference on Men's Issues, organised by Mike Buchanan, the founder of an anti-feminist, fringe political party in the UK called Justice for Men and Boys.
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How Charlie Gard became a cause célèbre for the US Christian right

How Charlie Gard became a cause célèbre for the US Christian right

openDemocracy — Parents of Charlie Gard speak to the media in London, before delivering the petition to Great Ormond Street Hospital. Photo: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire/PA Images. All rights reserved. The private tragedy endured by the family of terminally-ill British child Charlie Gard has become a cause célèbre for conservative campaigners across Europe and especially the US.
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'I was sexually assaulted in uniform. I can't get over it'

'I was sexually assaulted in uniform. I can't get over it'

The Times — Joanna was still at school when she was accepted by the Royal Navy. She "aced" the application, was offered a bursary and chose her A-levels based on what she wanted to specialise in. She began at officer level alongside her male peers, who were mostly graduates.
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Tenfold rise in rapes and sexual assaults on girls in military

Tenfold rise in rapes and sexual assaults on girls in military

The Times — Complaints of rape and sexual assault made by girls under 18 in the military have risen tenfold since 2015, Ministry of Defence figures reveal. Freedom of information requests show that girls under 18 in the armed forces have made 41 complaints of rape and sexual assault to the military police since 2015.
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The women flying the flag for Generation Identity and far-right politics

The women flying the flag for Generation Identity and far-right politics

The Sunday Times — Lucy Brown is 28, with blond hair that she occasionally streaks neon. She is witty and articulate and lives with her parents in a charming period house in a village outside Cambridge. Which makes her swastika-emblazoned necklaces and bracelet all the more incongruous. She is a post-production editor with a background in fashion photography.
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BBC Radio 4 - In the Right

BBC Radio 4 - In the Right

BBC — Lara Whyte investigates the new wave of female hardline right-wing activists.
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How the World's Safest Country Produced So Many ISIS Fighters

How the World's Safest Country Produced So Many ISIS Fighters

VICE UK — Finland, which last week had its first terror attack, produces the most fighters per capita of Muslims.
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"They are coming for your children" - the rise of CitizenGo

"They are coming for your children" - the rise of CitizenGo

openDemocracy — This month, tourists and beachgoers in Spain will be treated to the sight of a bright orange plane, flying overhead, declaring its opposition to a proposed law against discrimination based on sexual orientation.
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Danish student Joanna Palani reveals she was 'sniper' in Syria

Danish student Joanna Palani reveals she was 'sniper' in Syria

Daily Mail — Joanna Palani fled Denmark to fight with Kurdish Peshmerga/YPG against Isis But when she returned to Copenhagen was banned from travel under terror law Now 23-year-old is facing jail for flouting ban introduced to stop Isis fighters Joanna admits to MailOnline she went to fight in Manbijj, Syria AGAIN last
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Ebola has forced thousands of girls to have sex in return for food, money and school fees

Ebola has forced thousands of girls to have sex in return for food, money and school fees

International Business Times (U.K.) — Ebola has forced thousands of girls in Sierra Leone to have sex in return for money, water and school fees. The country experienced a spike in teenage pregnancies by as much as 47%, according to new research by charity Save the Children and shared exclusively with IBTimesUK. The research follows a UNDP study in the eastern parts of the country last year found that teenage pregnancy went up by 65% while a study by Save The Children revealed a 47% rise across the country. The charity suggests that one reason for the increase was a rise in teenage girls exchanging sexual favours with older boys and men to survive.
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The Girl Who Ran Away to Fight ISIS | Broadly

The Girl Who Ran Away to Fight ISIS | Broadly

Broadly — Joanna Palani was 22 when she dropped out of college to join up as a YPG and Peshmerga fighter on the frontlines of war. She tells us how ISIS soldiers are "easy to kill."
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'Every Part of Me Changed in Their Hands': A Former ISIS Sex Slave Speaks Out | Broadly

'Every Part of Me Changed in Their Hands': A Former ISIS Sex Slave Speaks Out | Broadly

Vice — When ISIS forces swept into Nadia Murad's village in Sinjar, it marked the beginning of several torturous months of rape, abuse, and captivity. Now the freed Yazidi campaigner is furiously lobbying for the survival of her people.
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"The world forgot us": inside the scheme to rehabilitate Yazidi sex slaves who have escaped Isis

"The world forgot us": inside the scheme to rehabilitate Yazidi sex slaves who have escaped Isis

New Statesman — Jalia Nawaf held her youngest child against the back window of our minibus with one hand and cried loudly as we pulled out of the northern Iraqi IDP (internally displaced person) camp that had been her home for the past five months. In her other hand she pressed her phone against the glass and filmed her sister who stood sobbing and waving. It was before 8am on a freezing December morning, but despite the early hour a large crowd had assembled to bid agonising farewells. Teenage boys in tears ran after the bus, briefly, recording the final few seconds of the faces pressed against the glass on phones of their own.
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Caliphate cubs of Isis: 'The children with armpit hair were killed. I became a boy soldier'

Caliphate cubs of Isis: 'The children with armpit hair were killed. I became a boy soldier'

ibtimes.co.uk — Ahmed Aslef was just 10 years old when he was lined up with hundreds of other Yazidi children outside the Iraqi village of Kocho in front of the heavily armed jihadi fighters of Islamic State (Isis). The IS (Daesh) militants ordered the children to raise their arms and then killed those with armpit hair. Ahmed's two young sisters were sold as slaves along with other family members in the cities of Mosul and Raqqa as IS spread across northern Iraq at the end of 2014. Since the Kocho massacre, survivors have claimed as many as 800 people were killed with boys as young as 12 among the dead.
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Yazidi survivors of Isis torture and rape need the support the UK promised | Lara Whyte

Yazidi survivors of Isis torture and rape need the support the UK promised | Lara Whyte

The Guardian — It is now more than a year since Islamic State attacked the towns around Mount Sinjar, leaving thousands of families in the hands of Isis. Just as the fight to end sexual violence in conflict was gaining worldwide attention thanks to a star-studded global summit in London, Isis embarked on a campaign of mass rape across northern Iraq and Syria. Estimates vary, but thousands of people are thought to have been kidnapped and taken hostage by the militant group. The vast majority were women and girls, many of whom were raped, sold and dispersed among fighters.
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Belfast Burning | VICE News

Belfast Burning | VICE News

Vice — VICE News went to the biggest bonfire in Northern Ireland for a closer look at the region's contentious sectarian history.
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UKIP Makes a Play for the Working Class

UKIP Makes a Play for the Working Class

Foreign Policy Magazine — STOCKPORT, Britain - In 2006, David Cameron - not yet the prime minister but an influential Conservative member of Parliament - dismissed the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) as composed of "fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists." Nine years later, polling has the "fruitcakes" on course to become Britain's third-largest party in Parliament after the May 7 general election - and possibly even a coalition partner with Cameron's Conservative Party. On a recent afternoon in Stockport, a town of 280,000 in northwest England, it was easy to see how the striking transformation took place.
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The Republic's Dissident Youth: Ireland's Young Warriors | VICE News

The Republic's Dissident Youth: Ireland's Young Warriors | VICE News

Vice — VICE News followed Na Fianna members to get an idea of what the young face of dissident republicanism looks like, in an age where support for political violence in Ireland has all but ended.
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"He treated me like an animal": surviving life as a sex slave of Islamic State

"He treated me like an animal": surviving life as a sex slave of Islamic State

New Statesman — Munira explains to me matter-of-factly that the younger girls are more expensive or saved for the Emirs. "They took me and my 13-year-old sister together to a big room in the Al-Baaj district. I was in a room with another 50 girls. We arrived at night, and then the next day, we were selected by the fighters," says the 16-year-old Yazidi girl. She was fleeing with her older brother, 22, and younger brothers, eight and ten, when they were captured. She was taken in a separate truck with her younger sister. Their mother had fled to Sinjar Mountain with her younger siblings.
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'Soon It Will Be Too Late': The Children Lost Inside the Islamic State | VICE News

'Soon It Will Be Too Late': The Children Lost Inside the Islamic State | VICE News

Vice — Since northern Iraq fell to the Islamic State (IS) last summer, millions of people have been forced to flee their homes. Lost in a bureaucratic quagmire, many are undocumented and live in squalid refugee camps or unfinished buildings across Kurdistan. But thousands of people remain unaccounted for. Looted like cargo by IS foot soldiers, they remain captive inside Iraq and Syria. Yazidi activist and journalist Nareen Shammo has painstakingly documented 4,601 people missing from the ranks of Iraq's Yazidi religious community. She estimates that 1,500 of those missing are children.
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Brits abroad: UK citizens joining the Islamic State group

Brits abroad: UK citizens joining the Islamic State group

Channel 4 News — Between late 2011 to December 2013, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) estimate that up to 11,000 individuals from 74 countries joined the opposition fighters in Syria against the Assad regime. Though the vast majority are from Arab nations, there was a steep rise in the number of western fighters recorded by the ICSR, based in Kings College London, between April and December 2013 - tripling from 600 to 1,900. The total number of foreign fighters inside Syria and Iraq has now exceeded 20,000, according to ICSR.
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'We Need People to Stand for Us' - The Yazidis Escaping Sexual Slavery in the Islamic State | VIC...

'We Need People to Stand for Us' - The Yazidis Escaping Sexual Slavery in the Islamic State | VIC...

Vice — At 17 years old, 'Adira' has already tried to take her own life. A Yazidi teenager kidnapped by the Islamic State as it swept through northern Iraq last summer, herding thousands of members of the minority group into a brutal enslavement, she spent the first few days of her captivity locked in a room with several other girls, sobbing with fear and desperately trying to evade their fate. "We just cried for six days. We tried a couple of times to commit suicide. We had a scarf, so we tried to use it. We tried several times, but we were very weak.
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