Rape during the Armenian Genocide  During the Armenian Genocide which occurred in the Ottoman Empire, led at the time by the Young Turks, the Turkish armed forces, militias, and members of the public engaged in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape against female Armenians and children of both sexes. Before the genocide had begun one method used to intimidate the Armenian population was sexual humiliation. Women and young girls were not only subjected to rape, but also forced marriage, torture, forced prostitution, being sold into slavery and sexual mutilation. Heinrich Bergfeld, the German Consul to Trabzon reported "the numerous rapes of women and girls," which crime he regarded as being part of a plan for "the virtually complete extermination of the Armenians." The systematic use of rape during the genocide was testified to by Turkish, American, Austrian, and German witnesses and officials. In the years between 1850 and 1870 the Patriarch of Armenia submitted 537 letters to the Sublime Porte asking for help to protect the Armenians from the violent abuse and social and political injustice they were subjected to. He requested the people be protected from "brigandage, murder, abduction and rape of women and children, confiscatory taxes, and fraud and extortion by local officials." Within the legal system the Armenian communities had their own prisons and court systems, and were able to hold civil cases for issues between Christians and Muslims. Within the Islamic judicial system the Armenians had no recourse, a Muslim was allowed to request a hearing before a religious court, in which testimony from non-Muslims would be disallowed or given little value. All a Muslim needed to do to get a case settled was swear on the Koran. Because of this the Armenians, as well as other dhimmi, had little hope within the judicial system. According to Peter Balakian, "a well-armed Kurd or Turk could not only steal his [Armenian] host's possessions but could rape or kidnap the women and girls of the household with impunity." "The amount of theft and extortion, as well as rape and abduction of Armenian women, that was allowed under this Ottoman legal system placed the Armenians in perpetual jeopardy." In 1895, Frederick Davis Greene, published "The Armenian Crisis in Turkey: The Massacre of 1894, Its Antecedents and Significance". The book made note of the fact that men were murdered out of hand, while the women and children suffered appalling sexual attacks. In one incident he described,  A lot of women, variously estimated from 60 to 160 in number, were shut up in a church, and the soldiers were "let loose" among them.