Military Rape
Apr 2nd, 2008 at 9:54 am by Susie
Yep:
Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.
The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Healthcare Center, where I met with female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41% of female veterans seen at the clinic say they were victims of sexual assault while in the military, and 29% report being raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and the downward spirals many of their lives have since taken.
Numbers reported by the Department of Defense show a sickening pattern. In 2006, 2,947 sexual assaults were reported — 73% more than in 2004. The DOD’s newest report, released this month, indicates that 2,688 reports were made in 2007, but a recent shift from calendar-year reporting to fiscal-year reporting makes comparisons with data from previous years much more difficult.
The Defense Department has made some efforts to manage this epidemic — most notably in 2005, after the media received anonymous e-mail messages about sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy. The media scrutiny and congressional attention that followed led the DOD to create the Sexual Assault and Response Office. Since its inception, the office has initiated education and training programs, which have improved the reporting of cases of rapes and other sexual assaults. But more must be done to prevent attacks and to increase accountability.
At the heart of this crisis is an apparent inability or unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks. According to DOD statistics, only 181 out of 2,212 subjects investigated for sexual assault in 2007, including 1,259 reports of rape, were referred to courts-martial, the equivalent of a criminal prosecution in the military. Another 218 were handled via nonpunitive administrative action or discharge, and 201 subjects were disciplined through “nonjudicial punishment,” which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist. In nearly half of the cases investigated, the chain of command took no action; more than a third of the time, that was because of “insufficient evidence.”
This is in stark contrast to the civilian trend of prosecuting sexual assault. In California, for example, 44% of reported rapes result in arrests, and 64% of those who are arrested are prosecuted, according to the California Department of Justice.
Rape in the military has been around for forever but usually directed at civilians, partially because there weren’t any female soldiers As the number of women in the force has increased so has rape. Part of the problem with weeding it out is that the military brass is all men… and you haven’t met misogyny until you’ve met military brass.
Another, and major, part of the problem is that many rapes are of female enlisted or junior officers by superiors in rank. The idea of punishing a ranking superior for what many brass still see as a questionable or trivial offense against a subordinate upsets everything the rank conscious military thinks is important.
Finally, just imagine these poor women. Talk about PTSD! Both combat stress and personal betrayal by unit comrades. There aren’t enough therapists to handle the psychiatric issues raised by combat, let alone rape, and the last I knew there were vanishingly few female therapists available to treat women veterans. While some female therapists are military, current or veteran, I don’t know of a female therapist who is also a combat veteran although I haven’t worked on military base for a while so perhaps that has changed. There can’t be many, even so.
And if the women have it bad, and they do, the men subjected to homosexual rape and/or coercion are truly SOL.
This doesn’t fit with my pre-conceived world view developed after the Air Force Academy scandal. At the time I thought the facts alleged were similar to what probably goes on at college campuses across the country, yet it was the (stereotypically right wing) military that brought it to light and tried to deal with it. I thought of that when Wes Clark said something to the effect that the military is the most socialist organization in America.
So I sure hope that there will be pressures that force the military to deal with this. How dispiriting.
I was a victim of a rape, in Germany, 8 years ago . I had been drinking at the time and I never reported it because I figured they would blame me or not believe me at all. I still have nightmares….. I wish I had done something about it…. I wish I could have felt confident that they would punish him and not me.