Women in the Military More Likely to Be Traumatized by Sexual Assault Than Combat

[Shell B]

Those that are reported will end terribly for the accused (and accuser- it;s often a career ender for both parties) whether innocent or guilty.

Sorry. You are wrong. It will end terribly for the accuser, for sure. For the accused, well, that's a different story.



Notice the small number of reported rapes that actually go to court martial and the few of those that actually end in a punishment worthy of the crime? Because of this, they changed the policy this year. The commanders are no longer allowed to make the decision as to what happens when a rape is reported in the military. The Secretary of Defense changed the rule after watching the same documentary that led me to that article.

[The Grand Nudger]

A court martial would be nice, but isn't required for things to end terribly for the accused. Units are tight knit, stigma sticks, promotions and assignments are affected. People have "accidents" in stairwells. I'm not throwing my hat in with how this is handled (no more in the case of the service than I do in the case of civilian life), just offering my anecdotal experience.

(all of the problems associated with rape, reporting, prosecution, standards of evidence etc that are present in the civilian world are equally present in the military world, perhaps agitated by several factors...and then further exacerbated by a system of justice that is markedly inferior to the civilian one in this regard..add to that a penchant for punishing people "in-house", it's practically a trade paper in how not to handle shit correctly - I think that on this point we both agree, yeah?)

[Shell B]

Unfortunately, that kind of thing isn't really that common. In most cases, they are still in and still getting promotions while their victims are discharged for adultery. No shit. Even if they are not married and their rapist is, they can be charged with adultery. Another one they love is conduct unbecoming. It's not so frowned upon that the Navy ball that go busted years ago wasn't the scene of assaults perpetrated in front of hundreds of other servicemen. Seven men were assaulted too. Fucked if it isn't weird as hell, but that's how it is. I wish your experience was the more common.

Edit: Sorry. It was not a ball. It was a convention.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's more than possible that my experience was off the norm. I saw a system that was equally incapable of serving justice to victims or exonerating those wrongfully accused but as you said, that's just my experience. What isn't limited to my experience is my doubt that their system is capable of handling this particular crime even at a conceptual level.

[Shell B]

Oh, definitely not, which is why it needs changing. I think it will happen soon enough. Things like this are only tolerated for so long before some politician makes it their pet cause and succeeds. That's what these victims need. Unfortunately, the first attempt failed because the courts deemed rape an occupational hazard of military service. The worst part about that is that the deem a non-occupational hazard, but also consider not service-related when it occurs. Furthermore, if you are discharged because of some bunk crime they try to make the victim out to have committed or because of injuries sustained during the assault and that discharge puts you even a day shy of two years, the VA isn't going to pay for your injuries.

[Cato]

It's more than possible that my experience was off the norm. I saw a system that was equally incapable of serving justice to victims or exonerating those wrongfully accused but as you said, that's just my experience. What isn't limited to my experience is my doubt that their system is capable of handling this particular crime even at a conceptual level.

People that actually have experience pulling a trigger resulting in death don't share consequent feelings using the words system, crime, nor conceptual level.

[The Grand Nudger]

Most of the folks involved in this aren't the trigger pulling type Cato. Courts- Martial aren't handled by combat arms (no sense blaming the victim or the offender for a failure of justice). Commanding officers who previously had control aren't likely to be so much different from anyone else you might meet. Rape a Majors daughter and see whether or not you're shown any leniency (then wonder why someone was if they may have raped another's daughter). Standard human indifference and strangeness. I suppose it's a fair bit worse in the service, having been (and continuing to be) a boys club, for the most part.

---

Furthermore, if you are discharged because of some bunk crime they try to make the victim out to have committed or because of injuries sustained during the assault and that discharge puts you even a day shy of two years, the VA isn't going to pay for your injuries.

Complete and utter betrayal right there. The wrong people are getting discharged when shit like that happens.

[Creed of Heresy]

Touchy subject. My oldest brother is a Captain in the 75th Ranger Regiment. One of the men under him, an officer, I think an LT2, attacked, forced submission upon and then hog-tied a girl in the Marines and brutally raped her. Another Marine found her...and proceeded to rape her himself.

My brother had the lieutenant court-martialed. The Marine who raped her was never identified, nor did they even try. Neither, apparently, did she.

[Anomalocaris]

The military exploits macho strains in society. Is built on teenagers, and provides an outlet for instincts not well received in civilian society. Why would one expect sexual assault not to be common?

Because it is illegal and it is assault? It should be handled, discouraged and interactions monitored enough that it doesn't occur? When they know rapes are occurring when women try to use the bathroom in the desert, commanding officers monitor those moves and make it explicitly clear that people who assault other soldiers will be court martialed?

Why the tone of acceptance in this thread? I'm a little sketched out by it. So far, I get the sense that people expect it and don't see a lot of women in combat, so it's acceptable?

You are telling me what you want, I am telling what is reasonable to expect. I don't disagree with you about the desirability of what you want or that efforts should me be made to attain it. But efforts take time, and must be balanced with a host of other equally important priorities, like not abruptly tempering with the system in place before sexual desegregation to promote combat aggressiveness and cohesion and eprit de corp of what remains a primarily male, and fundamentally risk seeking world.

The truth is progress on equality that also protects desirable virtues of exiating system take sacrifice, it takes more effort than what might be expected along a linear path to the goal, including putting up with injustices along the way, to achieve.

[cratehorus]

Are you fucking serious? I linked this article because of a documentary that discusses rape in the military going back much farther than the Afghan war. Furthermore, you might want to ask me my opinion on the wars in the Middle East before making those assertions, ya fucking twatwaffle.

then you didn't read the fucking article

I do not believe that major reforms are being implemented in the military, to protect female veterans in substantive ways from sex crimes. I hope I am wrong. Instead, I find telling the superficial level of concern directed at this issue raised by The Invisible War.

The reaction to the film is an interesting Rorschach test for the country – revealing its attitudes to women, violence, sex and sexual violence. On the one hand, women in the military face rape and coverup, as related by The Invisible War, because of an aggressive patriarchal culture. That military culture is a traditional one. In this time-honored, empire-honed culture, war is a manly space; women are interlopers and thus "fair game", or else they are controlled and exploited as camp followers and sex workers.