My experience reporting military sexual assault was worse
than the actual assault," says Jessica (a pseudonym for her
protection), a former marine officer and Iraq veteran who left
the military because of her command's poor handling of her
assault charges. "The command has so much power over a victim
of sexual assault. They are your judge, jury, executioner and
mayor: they own the law. As I saw in my case, they are able to
crush you for reporting an assault."
Jessica is joining a
civil lawsuit bringing claims against
former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Defense
Secretary Robert Gates, charging that under their watch the
military failed to adequately and effectively investigate
rapes and sexual assaults within the ranks.
The litigation, which was filed in Virginia district court
in February of this year by the law office of Susan Burke,
is set to go to trial in the coming months. The initial suit
named 16 plaintiffs, all former or current military service
members - but in recent months that number has swelled to
more than 30, as more and more veterans come forward as
survivors of sexual assault.
These plaintiffs join the growing crescendo of veterans,
military service members, spouses and their advocates
speaking out against the problem of widespread sexual
assault and rape in the US military.
As the war in Afghanistan passes its ten-year mark, sexual
assault runs rampant within the ranks, with an estimated one in three female service members
raped during their service, according to at least one
peer-reviewed study. This is in a military where women
comprise more 11 per cent of active duty service members
deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and more than 15 per cent
of the total military, with at least 200,000 active duty women currently
serving. This epidemic also affects men: 60 per cent of
women serving in the National Guard and Reserve, along with
27 per cent of men, are estimated to have experienced
Military Sexual Trauma (MST). Perpetrators rely on a chain
of command that appears to offer virtual impunity for sexual
assaults committed against lower-ranking service members.
'Re-traumatising' redress
Military reports and Congress-appointed task forces
acknowledge that sexual assault within the military is
widespread. While the Department of Defense (DoD) has
repeatedly said it is attempting to curb the problem, the
most recent evidence shows that it has failed to adequately
address the spread of this outbreak.
The most significant change made by the military in the past
decade was the creation of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response
Office (SAPRO) in 2005. This office, which encompasses
the entire DoD, is responsible for oversight of sexual
assault policies and the implementation of prevention and
response programs. However, SAPRO is rife with problems. The
primary role of the office is to track rapes and sexual
assaults and release annual reports. According to the US
Government Accountability Office's (GAO) own evaluation, SAPRO has failed to work
with the disciplinary arm of the DoD, giving its reports and
findings little muscle. Furthermore, the Report of the
Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military
December 2009, which was ordered by congress, found
that funding of SAPRO had been "sporadic and inconsistent".
SAPRO introduced a system of restricted reporting, allowing
survivors of sexual assault to make confidential reports, to
avoid outing themselves in a hostile environment.
|
"We are finding that it is the victim
who is punished when they report."
- Greg
Jacob
|
While this step has increased the number of reports and
created avenues for survivors to seek personal care, it does
not launch an investigation into the assault. "Restricted
reporting allows the military to ignore criminal aspects of
sexual assault and to just take care of it," says Greg
Jacob, a former Marine and the current policy director for
the Service Women's Action
Network (SWAN), an organisation dedicated to advocacy
and providing a healing community for military service
women.
Military officials claim that improvements have been made
since the Defense Task Force's 2009 report. "DoD has a zero
tolerance policy on sexual assault," says Cynthia Smith,
SAPRO press spokesperson. "Over the past two years, DoD has
affirmed its commitment to preventing and effectively
responding to sexual assault. The department's focus has
been on reducing the stigma associated with reporting,
providing sufficient training for commanders, and ensuring
adequate training and resources for prosecutors and
investigators."
Yet, the prosecution rates of sexual assault in the military
remains at eight
per cent, a dismal percentage in light of the
staggering number of assaults that are believed to go
unreported. This compares to a 40 per cent prosecution rate
for sexual assault charges in civilian courts, which itself
is considered low. For cases that do make it to trial,
sexual assault conviction rates are astoundingly low.
According to SAPRO's most recent annual report, in 2010, of 3,158
reports of military sexual assaults, only 529 alleged
perpetrators were convicted, while 41 per cent were
acquitted or had charges dismissed. Some six per cent were
discharged or resigned in lieu of courts-martial, which
means that they were allowed to leave their jobs in order to
avoid sexual assault charges.
Some survivors of sexual assault claim that SAPRO's "zero
tolerance" policy has only succeeded in creating an
environment where the command has incentive to deny and
cover up sexual assault. "They have all of these generic
catch phrases that sound great," says Jessica. "But in
reality, 'zero tolerance policy' means that when you make a
complaint, it is hidden. Assault reflects badly on the
command. What results is cover ups."
Furthermore, critics charge that SAPRO's educational
materials are ineffective and often serve to reinforce the
mentality that victims are to blame for their own assault.
According to the Defense Task Force's 2009 report, "the Task
Force's interactions with Service Members suggest training
is only marginally effective".
A sexual assault prevention poster released by SAPRO reportedly urges soldiers to "wait
until she's sober" before propositioning a woman for sex.
"The military believes falsely that if you eliminate alcohol
you can eliminate sexual assault," says Jacob. "There is
perception that it is the result of bad decision making on
the part of the victim."
Critics charge that SAPRO fails to address the rape culture
that permeates all aspects of military life. "Rape culture
separates service members from a group of people that they
can consider others, victims, weaker beings," insists Maggie
Martin, Army veteran and member of Iraq Veterans
Against the War (IVAW), an anti-war group comprising
active duty service members and veterans who have served
since September 11, 2001. "The rape culture in the military
is another way that some service members reduce real life
trauma to a joke that they can pretend is not real. It is a
way for some to try to prove they are 'hardcore' to the
point of inhumanity."
Many insist that the military, which is largely allowed to
investigate itself, is still not telling the full story. A 2010 lawsuit filed by SWAN and the
ACLU against the DoD and Department of Veteran Affairs (VA)
was filed after the military refused requests for government
records concerning rape, sexual assault, and sexual
harassment in the military.
"When I heard about women who had accused someone of rape or
sexual assault it was always framed as some personal
vendetta the women were taking out on those they accused,"
says Martin.
Selena Coppa, a former Army Sergeant of eight years and a
current member of IVAW tells of an Army Specialist who was
molested by another Army Specialist while drunk and passed
out. "The woman who was assaulted found out the next morning
what had happened. She wanted to do something or say
something. Everyone was like, what are you talking about?
That is not sexual assault, only sex counts as sexual
assault."
According to Army policy, sexual assault includes sexual
contact when the victim "does not or cannot consent." Yet,
rules in the books are seemingly meaningless in an
environment where sexual assault appears to go unreported
and unacknowledged.
Impunity of high-ranking males
|
"She tried making official charges,
and they were never prosecuted. They refused
to prosecute them."
-
Sergeant Coppa
|
For those who do seek redress for sexual assault and rape
through the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the
legal code governing military service members, many face an
uphill battle in which they are pressured to drop their
charges at every step along the way.
When Jessica was raped by a senior officer and his friend,
she reported the assault to her command. However, she says
that the ensuing investigation was nothing more than a
retaliatory measure inflicted by a command that was more
interested in covering up assaults and protecting their own
reputations. "My command, and the [military lawyer] ordered
to do it, produced not a thorough, but a voluminous - as
cover ups often are - investigation that proved that I was
routinely called disgusting denunciatory names by junior and
senior Marines alike, but that because I wore make up and
running shorts in the summer, that I therefore welcomed the
harassment and subsequent assault and did not deserve
protection," she says.
Jessica says she requested a deployment to Afghanistan to
get away from the harassment and isolation she faced after
filing her report, but when this was denied, she decided to
leave the Marines, which she was able to do because of her
status as an officer. Jessica joined the lawsuit against
Rumsfeld and Gates because, she says: "No one right now is
holding commanders accountable." Meanwhile, Jessica says
that she is still pursuing charges against her alleged
perpetrator through the UCMJ.
Lower enlisted service members who are raped or sexually
assaulted, however, often do not have the option of leaving,
with many forced to continue serving alongside their
perpetrators, including in war zones. "They are putting
people in a situation where they are totally dependent on
their peers, and when their battle buddies rape them, their
superiors are not doing anything about it, explains Johanna
(Hans) Buwalda, a mental health provider who has worked with
survivors of war for more than twenty years. "There is no
safe place for them to go. They can't even leave the
military. They have to fulfill their contract." Some
researchers say that military sexual trauma compounds
deployment-related traumas by excluding women from military
camaraderie and fraternity.
These military sexual assaults are in addition to the
countless rapes and sexual assaults that have been carried
out against civilians at the 800 US military bases around
the world, including within occupied populations in Iraq and
Afghanistan. While there have been several high-profile
scandals exposing US military rapes and slayings of Iraqi
and Afghan civilians, as well as sexual assault and
humiliation as a tool of torture, there is little
information about overall rates of military sexual assault
of civilian populations overseas. If sexual assault rates
within the military are any indicator, sexual violence would
seem to be endemic to the US' global military presence.
Last April, Jennifer (a pseudonym for protection), who is a
civilian, reported sexual assault by her then-boyfriend
after he returned from a tour in Afghanistan with the Marine
Corps. Her alleged assaulter's sergeant major told her that
she sounded like a "crazy ex-girlfriend" and that her sexual
assault charges were not viable. Jennifer spent the next
year and a half contacting everyone she could think of in
hope that the military would take her charges seriously. She
watched as her assault charges were ignored and dismissed by
SAPRO, the NCIS, and even the Pentagon. After navigating
countless meetings and phone calls with caseworkers, sexual
assault survivor advocates, and even several congressional
representatives, Jennifer feels that she has made little
progress in her effort to get a fair process through
military channels, and, to date, there is no indication that
her charges will bear any consequences for her alleged
assaulter. Within two months of her report, her alleged
assaulter was promoted, and she says that he may be deployed
any day, if he is not already.
Jennifer says that the process of attempting to press
charges has been deeply traumatising. "When you have been
assaulted, talking about it is hard enough," she says. "And
having to wait to hear back from someone for help makes you
want to give up."
"I do not trust the US military at all. Their rules and
regulations are nothing more than words on paper," she says.
"I am a woman and a civilian, and I have been treated like
nothing more than a dog."
The 1996 Federal Lautenberg Amendment, which makes it
illegal for people convicted of domestic violence to carry a
weapon, extends to the armed forces. With many
forms of sexual assault falling under the rubric of domestic
violence, assault convictions could preclude a service
member from carrying a weapon.
Yet, if these assaults go unreported and untried, little
stands in the way of perpetrators serving in combat,
sometimes alongside those they have assaulted.
Furthermore, the military often blatantly ignores this
federal law and sends convicted sex offenders and domestic
abusers into war in a climate where the military is
overextended, from fighting two ongoing wars. Since
September 11, 2001, the DoD has been granting an increasing
amount of "moral waivers" which permit soldiers convicted of
domestic violence and sexual assault to serve in combat.
High rates of sexual assault take a profound toll on the
mental health of service members. Sexual assault is the
number one predictor for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for
women serving in the military, according to a study in the Journal of Rehabilitation
Research and Development. Yet the difficulty and
stigma against reporting sexual assaults creates significant
obstacles for survivors seeking care and disability benefits
through the VA. A study by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of
America shows that approximately 40 per cent of
homeless female veterans report having been sexually
assaulted in the military.
Members of IVAW are drawing attention to the problem of
sexual assault and rape that plagues the military. "IVAW's
campaign Operation Recovery is focused on raising awareness
about sexual assault and gender-based violence," explains
Martin. "We are building a healing community where veterans
and service members can challenge military leadership and
stand up for the right to heal and the right to access the
care survivors of trauma need."
"As an organiser I believe that the best way for us to
combat military sexual trauma is to tell the truth about
it," insists Martin. "We need to tell the truth that all
types of people are sexually assaulted and that no one
deserves it. We need to start looking to the perpetrators of
sexual assault and the military environment for answers, not
look to victims to see how they can be blamed for their own
assault."
