Monday, June 24, 2013

Rapes in the military


Pentagon: Most military sex assaults affect men

Sexual assault has emerged as one of the defining issues for the military this year. Reports of assaults are up, as are questions about whether commanders have taken the problem seriously. Bills to toughen penalties and prosecution have been introduced in Congress.
But in a debate that has focused largely on women, this fact is often overlooked: The majority of service members who are sexually assaulted each year are men.
In its latest report on sexual assault, the Pentagon estimated that 26,000 service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2012, up from 19,000 in 2010. Of those cases, the Pentagon says 53 percent involved attacks on men, mostly by other men.
"It's easy for some people to single out women and say: 'There's a small percentage of the force having this problem,'" said 1st Lt. Adam Cohen, who says he was raped by a superior officer. "No one wants to admit this problem affects everyone. Both genders, of all ranks. It's a cultural problem."
MEN HUSH IT UP
Though women, who represent about 15 percent of the force, are significantly more likely to be sexually assaulted in the military than men, experts say assaults against men have been vastly underreported. For that reason, the majority of formal complaints of military sexual assault have been filed by women, even though the majority of victims are thought to be men.
"Men don't acknowledge being victims of sexual assault," said Dr. Carol O'Brien, chief of post-traumatic stress disorder programs at the Bay Pines Veterans Affairs Health Care System in Florida, which has a residential treatment program for sexually abused veterans. "Men tend to feel a great deal of shame, embarrassment and fear that others will respond negatively."
But in recent months, intense efforts on Capitol Hill to curb military sexual assault, and the release of a new documentary about male sexual assault victims in the military, "Justice Denied," have brought new attention to male victims. Advocates say their plight shows that sexual assault has risen not because there are more women in the ranks but because sexual violence is often tolerated.
"I think telling the story about male victims is the key to changing the culture of the military," said Anuradha K. Bhagwati, executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, an advocacy group that has sharply criticized the Pentagon's handling of sexual assault. "I think it places the onus on the institution when people realize it's also men who are victims."
URGED TO REPORT
The Defense Department says it is developing plans to encourage more men to report the crime. "A focus of our prevention efforts over the next several months is specifically geared toward male survivors and will include why male survivors report at much lower rates than female survivors, and determining the unique support and assistance male survivors need," Cynthia O. Smith, a department spokeswoman, said in a statement.
In interviews, nearly a dozen current and former service members who said they were sexually assaulted in the military described fearing that they would be punished, ignored or ridiculed if they reported the attacks. Most said that before 2011, when the ban on openly gay service members was repealed, they believed they would have been discharged if they admitted having sexual contact -- even unwanted contact -- with other men.
"Back in 1969, you didn't dare say a word," said Gregory Helle, an author who says he was raped in his barracks by another soldier in Vietnam. "They wouldn't have believed me. Homophobia was big back then."
RAMPANT HOMOPHOBIA
Thomas F. Drapac says he was raped on three occasions by higher-ranking enlisted sailors in Norfolk, Va., in 1966. He said he had been drinking each time and feared that if he told prosecutors they would assume it was consensual sex. Parts of his story are corroborated in Department of Veterans Affairs records.
"If you made a complaint, then you are gay and you're out and that's it," he said.
Drapac, 66, said that over the coming decades he kept the rapes to himself, combating recurring nightmares and doubts about his sexuality with alcohol and drugs. But he began seeing a VA therapist several years ago, and decided to tell his story recently after seeing accounts of female sexual assault victims.
"The best thing going on right now is that the women's issue is coming to the fore and you see some mention about male rapes," he said.
SEXUAL BULLIES
Many sexual assaults on men in the military seem to be a form of violent hazing or bullying, said Roger Canaff, a former New York state prosecutor who helped train prosecutors on the subject of military sexual assault for the Pentagon. "The acts seemed less sexually motivated than humiliation or torture-motivated," he said.
Rick Lawson said that while he was in the Army National Guard in Washington in 2003 and 2004, he was repeatedly sexually bullied by a group of soldiers, including a sergeant who rubbed his groin into Lawson's buttocks and jumped into his bunk and pretended to cuddle with him. Later, during preparations for deployment to Iraq, one sergeant handcuffed him and put him in a headlock while another pretended to sodomize him, Lawson said.
Several months after his unit arrived in Iraq in 2004, Lawson decided to report the bullying. His assailants were punished with reduced rank, Army records show, but he had to finish his deployment while living near them on the same base.
After he returned to Washington, he received a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and was discharged from the Army in 2006. He struggled with depression and lost a job, then decided to start an advocacy group for veterans.
"A lot of people say this problem exists because we are allowing women into the military or because of the repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell,' " he said, referring to the ban on openly gay service members. "But that is absurd. The people who perpetrated these crimes on me identify as heterosexual males."
FEMALE RAPISTS
Although the vast majority of military sexual assaults are by men, a small number of men have reported being raped by women.
Richard H. Ruffert, 50, said his boss in an Army reserve unit in Texas forced him to have sex with her by threatening to give him poor reviews. He said the sex continued for about two months in the late 1990s, until he attempted suicide. He then told a commander and, after a lengthy investigation, his boss was transferred. But he believes she was never punished.
He retired from the military in 2004 and spent several years struggling with nightmares, drug addiction and homelessness, which he blames on the sexual assault. Therapy and working with veterans have helped him, he said.
But he does not feel comfortable dating women anymore. "This has completely changed my life," said Ruffert, who appears in the film "Justice Denied."
Many experts believe that the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" will cause many more men to report sexual assault. That was the case with Cohen, who says he was raped in 2007 by an Army officer he had met in graduate school. At the time, Cohen was preparing to join the Air Force.
After initially remaining silent about the episode, he filed a complaint with Air Force investigators in late 2011, after the ban was rescinded. But the investigation took a surprising turn: After Cohen returned from a five-month tour in Afghanistan, he learned he had become the subject of the investigation and was no longer viewed as a victim.
The lieutenant, 29, now faces a court-martial trial on multiple charges, including conduct unbecoming an officer. Cohen's special victims counsel, Maj. John Bellflower, said the Air Force investigators apparently used information provided voluntarily by the lieutenant in bringing the charges against him, a possible violation of his rights.
The military recently told Cohen that it was reopening the sexual assault case. In the meantime, he faces a trial in July that he views as punishment for filing a criminal complaint against a superior officer. The Air Force denies that.
"I think the attention to this issue is absolutely needed," Cohen said. "But it's a little bit late. We still have attacks, and we still have retaliation."
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  • richardscommonsense
    Who didn't see the coming. When Obama allowed open sexual perversion in the military by allowing openly gay people to serve, he gave the green light to all sexual activity in the military.
  • charlesm
    Did you read the article? Obama wasn't President in 1966, dude. Or 1969, Or the late 1990s. Or 2004.
  • Kapers
    The commanders who have not taken it seriously should be relieved of command and their commission recended. They are being laid to be responsible, yet they have not. And I mean the command at the top of the chain as well as the bottom. No more paychecks for slackers. No more retirements as " punishment". The problem was noted many decades ago, there should be no more starting points. The time to decommission is now
  • anganaran
    Gender shouldn't matter where sexual assaults are concerned...they're still assaults and the military should STILL do some serious cleaning up. Shoving dirt under the rug doesn't make the floor clean....
  • Mass1___Effect
    How, again, is the military "shoving dirt under the rug?" Every conviction of rape and sexual assault gets- at minimum- fines, penalties, a dishonorable discharge, and lifetime membership on the sex offender list, and at most hard time. Commands that know about an alleged offender and do nothing are scarce- so what's driving your comment that they're covering all this up at a DoD level?
  • MarlinSpike
    Ummm...cuz they are. Your blind faith of the military is well known here. Maybe you ought to join up again and see today's military force. The days of Sargeant Bilko are over.
  • Skeptic
    ""The acts seemed less sexually motivated than humiliation or torture-motivated," he said."
    Psychologists have known this about rape for DECADES!  Why is the military stuck in the Dark Ages when it comes to understanding that rape is about power, not "love"?  Only an ignorant idiot blames the victim ("he was raped therefore he is gay," "she was wearing a tank top so she was asking for it").
    It's way past time for military leadership to take responsibility for crimes committed on their watch.  Hopefully they'll do a better job with this than the RC Church, but I'm not optimistic.
  • Mass1___Effect
    "Why is the military stuck in the Dark Ages when it comes to understanding that rape is about power, not "love"?"
    Um- what? Most of these acts are by powerful, testosterone-fueled machines of war- if anything, the DoD WISHES it was "about love-" what makes you think they don't understand an element of rape and sexual assault? "Take responsibility for crimes committed on their watch?" What are you talking about? So a Commanding Officer should be relieved because one of his Marines gets drunk at a bar, grabs a girls' butt, and then gets taken to court marshal for sexual assault as defined by the new UCMJ? How fair is that? Your attitude is the reason why we need to trust the military- NOT civilians- to lead and to do their jobs.
  • Viking47 , Si vis Pacem, Para Bellum
    More false reporting, bad math, and flat-out diversion by Leftist NYT.
    First, let us be clear and forthright: sexual assault and rape are serious crimes. Any credibleaccusation, in or out of the military, needs to be taken seriously. But no real solution to any problem can be built around flawed data or by making into a political circus— two issues which are happening here- and it is not "a defining issue" for our military, and merely because the media states as much does not make it so.  The MSM has certainly been abuzz about it since the DoD's 7 May release of its 2012 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military; of all the scandals involving the Obama administration, the most misunderstood is the one involving supposedly skyrocketing sexual assaults in our armed forces- and this NYT article would have us stay uninformed.
    End of the day: the 26,000 number is bogus.  It's an estimate based on the 2012 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Military- which had an abysmal return rate: of a possible 108,478 respondents, only 22,792 responded, meaning only one in five- or roughly 2.2 percent of a military 1 million+ strong of active-duty military personnel- responded.  Anecdotal evidence shows a grossly-disproportionate amount of females over males received the survey; we have no way of knowing how many of each sex received the survey, because that information was not released.
    The survey also does not use the term "sexual assault," it uses "unwanted sexual contact." which includes touching someone's backside and attempts at touching.  That behavior might be wrong, but it doesn't comport with the conventional definition of sexual assault- and it certainly doesn't jive with the legal definition of sexual assault in the UCMJ. Of actual, real cases of sexual assault- only 12-14 percent were reported by men: the majority of victims are female, contrary to what this article would have us believe.
    We also don't know how actual sexual-assault rates in the military compare with non-military communities.  Reports have it on par with college campuses; but until actual figures come out later next year (the DoD is studying starting this summer), it should be considered noteworthy, not an "epidemic," that the military is on par with college communities, given that no other organization made for war on earth receives more training and prevention awareness, and advocacy than the Armed Forces.
    These reports have led to political aggrandizement, and has unleashed a flood of unwarranted criticism of our military’s way of handling sex crimes, including from its service chiefs, and its leaders.  If civilians get to decide when the military should prosecute a Soldier or Sailor for attempted rape, then why not for mistreatment of detainees and POW's? Why even let the military decide what constitutes insubordination or even cowardice in the face of the enemy? Congress thinks they're entitled to parade around men and women of distinction because it makes them look useful.  The approval rating of Congress now hovers slightly above 17 percent- so one should not be overly concerned of politicians think they're entitled to when it comes to honest leadership from our military.
    Bottom Line: I trust my military's leaders and chains of command, and I believe in their ability to properly address and deter those who would commit sexual assault.  To find the roots of this problem deserves solid data, transparent reporting, and honest efforts.  That has not and will not come from the mainstream media or Congress- it will come from our military.
  • MarlinSpike
    Your trust is blind.
  • 3rdjerseyman
    Sen. Clair McCaskill is destroying the career of Lt. Gen Susan Helms in pursuit of this new military sexual hysteria.
    This is an absolute travesty. McCaskill is neither intellectually nor ethically resident in the same universe as the fabulously accomplished Gen. Helms, yet she is sacrificing the career and reputation of the Air Force Academy graduate, four-time space shuttle crewman ( holder of the shared record for longest space walk in history) on the altar of political ambition, Democrat  talking points and a blithe ignorance of both the particulars of the case in question and the importance of military authority.
    Gen. Helms is an example of the highest aspirations and achievements possible for women in the military. A devious and thoroughly mediocre politician is destroying this distinguished American's career. Nothing is being done to right this grievous wrong.
  • MarlinSpike
    The most odious of all crimes. If the punishment would fit the crime, we'd have a fine National Choir!  Truthfully.

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Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2013/06/23/2950917/pentagon-most-military-sex-assaults.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2013/06/23/2950917/pentagon-most-military-sex-assaults.html#storylink=cpy

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