Le viol, épidémie étouffée 01

Index d'articles mis à jour le 29 Septembre 2013
Le viol, épidémie étouffée 01
➫ 01. Viols dans l'US Army, une épidémie silencieuse - Le Monde, 31.05.2013
➫ 02. Rape Was Rampant During the Vietnam War. Why Doesn't US History
Remember This? - Mother Jones, 19.03.2013
➫ 03. Rape Victim : Retaliation Prevalent In Military - NPR, 31.05. 2013
➫ 04. Military's Sexual-Assault Problem Has Deep Roots - NPR, 02.06.2013
➫ 05. Armed Forces Sexual Assault Crisis Reaches New Heights - Think Progress,
15.05.2013
➫ 06. Pentagon: Estimated 26,000 Sexual Assaults In Military Last Year - Think
Progress, 07.05.2013
➫ 07. Dem. Senator Pushes For Change In Military Response To Sexual Assault Think Progress, 14.03.2013
➫ 08. How One Man Can Let His Fellow Service member Get Away With Rape Think Progress, 06.03.2013
➫ 09. IG to return to duty after conviction tossed - Air Force Times, 04.04.2013
➫ 10. United Nations researchers just published a sweeping study on the roots of
sexual violence, spanning six countries and two years. - Think Progress, 10.09.2013
➫ 11. Shocking UN Report Reveals 1 in 4 Men Admit to Raping Women for 'Fun' and
Because of 'Sexual Entitlement' - Alter Net, 11.09.2013
➫ 12. This Indian Sketch Comedy Group Is Taking on Rape Culture - Mother Jones,
25.09.2013
➫ 13. Saudi Arabia finally says no to domestic violence - The Australian Women's
Weekly, 26.04.2013
➫ 14.
➫ 15.
1
M le magazine du Monde
31.05.2013 à 07h44 • Mis à jour le 03.06.2013 à 14h24
Par Alexandra Geneste
01. Viols dans l'US Army, une
épidémie silencieuse
ELLE A DU MAL À CONTENIR SON ÉMOTION, RUTH.
Le trémolo dans sa voix en dit long. Ce n'est pas tous les
jours qu'elle monte sur scène pour s'adresser à une telle
audience. Plus d'une centaine de femmes, ex-militaires,
l'attendent dans la salle de conférence d'un grand hôtel de
Washington DC, à deux pas du Capitole. Tailleur bleu à col
rond boutonné jusqu'en haut, longs cheveux noir d'encre
soigneusement coiffés, l'ancienne recrue de la Navy a un
message pour ses soeurs d'armes : "Quand je vous
regarde, je vois la bravoure, le courage, la douleur, la
colère et la conviction que je porte en moi chaque jour." A
44 ans, Ruth Moore est devenue malgré elle l'héroïne d'un demi-million d'anciennes combattantes
américaines, agressées sexuellement alors qu'elles servaient leur pays ces vingt dernières années.
Héroïne, parce qu'elle porte en elle cette même blessure que chacune tente de panser depuis trop
longtemps, et qu'elle compte bien faire entendre ce qu'elle nomme leur "cri de guerre" jusqu'aux
portes du Congrès. Et de la Maison Blanche, "s'il le faut".
Violée en 1987 par un officier alors qu'elle venait d'intégrer
la marine, Ruth a attendu vingt-trois ans avant que le
département des anciens combattants reconnaisse les faits
et lui accorde les allocations d'invalidité auxquelles le
syndrome de stress post-traumatique dont elle souffre
depuis lui donne droit. Un projet de loi qui porte son nom, et
qui faciliterait l'obtention de cette prise en charge, a été
soumis au Congrès en février. Le Ruth Moore Act 2013 est
devenu son "autre" combat. "C'est ma nouvelle façon de
servir mon pays, sans uniforme", lâche-t-elle d'un sourire
taquin. Près de la tribune, Anu Bhagwati, victime de
discrimination et de harcèlement sexuel pendant ses cinq
années dans les Marine Corps, veille sur ses "protégées". L'ancienne capitaine a quitté le corps
d'élite pour créer en 2005 l'association Service Women's Action Network (SWAN), afin de se donner
les moyens d'aider toutes celles que la culture sexiste de l'armée l'empêchait de secourir de
l'intérieur. C'est à elle que la centaine d'anciennes militaires doivent ce rendez-vous d'avril, un
sommet "Vérité et Justice" réunissant victimes, militants et parlementaires mobilisés pour dénoncer
l'inénarrable et obtenir "réparation".
En 2012, 26 000 militaires - hommes et femmes - ont déclaré avoir subi un "contact sexuel non
sollicité", allant de l'attouchement au viol. Soit 70 agressions par jour ; un tiers de plus qu'en 2010.
Mais tous les abus ne sont pas rapportés, souligne le Pentagone. Selon ses estimations, jusqu'à 30
% des quelque 204 700 femmes que compte l'armée américaine (14,5 % des effectifs) seraient
victimes d'agressions sexuelles. Les hommes ne sont pas épargnés : ils représentent près de 50 %
2
des vétérans souffrant de traumatismes sexuels. Les
femmes les plus exposées à ce fléau sont celles déployées
en Irak et en Afghanistan. Selon le département des anciens
combattants, 50 % d'entre elles sont victimes de
harcèlement sexuel et un quart de viol. En servant dans l'un
de ces pays, une femme risque davantage d'être violée par
un frère d'armes que blessée ou tuée par l'ennemi.
"Le vrai sujet, c'est le silence qui entoure cette réalité depuis
des décennies, ou plutôt le camouflage construit autour de
ce silence", relève Aaron Belkin, professeur de sciences
politiques à l'université d'Etat de San Francisco. Pour ce spécialiste de la masculinité et de la
sexualité militaires, la société américaine est trop militarisée pour vouloir ébruiter la découverte de ce
fléau, "qui vient heurter l'image héroïque des soldats". Le président Obama lui-même, insiste-t-il,
entretient dans ses discours cette idée de "sacralisation" du soldat, protecteur des valeurs
américaines. L'omerta a pourtant été brisée ces dernières semaines, après la série de scandales
retentissants visant l'armée américaine, dont la mise en cause début mai, à quelques jours
d'intervalle, de deux gradés pour agressions sexuelles, alors qu'ils étaient responsables de la
prévention contre ces mêmes violences. L'un a été arrêté, l'autre suspendu. Barack Obama est allé
jusqu'à qualifier ces crimes de "dangereux pour la sécurité nationale".
L'armée américaine a un train de retard en matière de
féminisation, soulignent les activistes. Le professeur Aaron
Belkin confirme : "En théorie, plus les femmes auront accès
à des postes prestigieux au sein de l'armée, plus l'égalité
des sexes devrait être respectée." Mais en 2012, elles ne
représentaient que 14,2 % des officiers. La levée en janvier
dernier de l'interdiction faite aux femmes de s'engager dans
les unités de combat est présentée par le chef d'état-major
interarmées, Martin Dempsey, comme une mesure à même
de réduire le nombre d'abus sexuels à leur encontre. "Plus
les militaires seront traités de manière équitable, assure-t-il,
plus ils se traiteront de manière équitable entre eux." Shatiima Davis ne croit pas un instant à cette
équité : "C'est un leurre. La guerre n'est pas faite pour nous, mon viol en est la preuve. Aux yeux de
mes frères d'armes, je n'étais pas leur égale, jamais", martèle, amère, celle qui déconseille à toutes
les femmes de s'engager. Violée en Irak à l'âge de 18 ans, à quelques mètres de la couchette de son
sergent qui ne pipe mot, elle vit aujourd'hui dans un refuge pour vétérans sans-abri du Queens, à
New York.
SELON LE DÉPARTEMENT DE LA DÉFENSE, un quart
des agressions sexuelles sont le fait d'un militaire issu de la
chaîne de commandement. C'est le cas de l'homme qui a
violé Ruth Moore l'année de ses 18 ans, alors qu'à peine
sortie du lycée elle était déployée aux Açores. Quand son
supérieur hiérarchique demande un soir à lui parler, la jeune
soldate s'exécute. "J'avais reçu un ordre, je l'ai suivi sans
sourciller", regrette-t-elle aujourd'hui, la gorge serrée. Cinq
minutes plus tard, l'officier lui enfonce un couteau dans la
bouche et menace de la tuer au moindre bruit. L'aumônier
auquel elle rapporte l'incident lui conseille de "passer
l'éponge". Son agresseur, qui la viole une seconde fois pour avoir osé parler, ne fera l'objet d'aucune
enquête, poursuite ou mesure disciplinaire. Seuls 6 % des agresseurs ont été condamnés en 2012.
3
"Je lui souhaite de ne jamais croiser un membre de ma
famille ou je ne réponds de rien", confie Laura Sellinger au
sujet de l'homme qui l'a violée, après l'avoir droguée et lui
avoir frappé la tête contre le sol, en 2005, en Corée. Son
agresseur est passé aux aveux, a été reconnu coupable
mais n'a pas été condamné. Pendant l'enquête, alors qu'il lui
envoie des menaces de mort pour la dissuader de
témoigner, Laura apprend qu'il est promu sergent. "Si les
militaires savaient qu'ils risquent d'être tenus pour
responsables au moindre faux pas, ils se tiendraient à
carreau", affirme d'un ton martial Anu Bhagwati. L'impunité
dont bénéficient les responsables d'abus sexuels est, selon elle, l'une des causes principales du
fléau : "Du fait de son pouvoir discrétionnaire, le commandant décide d'intenter ou non des
poursuites, et peut annuler un verdict."
Témoin de crimes sexuels à l'encontre de ses propres
troupes lorsqu'elle était dans les marines, elle dit avoir été
incapable de les aider : "Les commandants s'arrangent
chaque fois pour noyer le poisson ou mettre en cause la
véracité des plaintes des victimes..." Transférer l'enquête et
l'instruction au système judiciaire civil, à l'instar de ce qu'ont
fait les armées canadienne, australienne ou britannique,
"provoquerait un vrai changement culturel", insiste Anu
Bhagwati. Un projet de loi proposant que des procureurs
ayant reçu une formation militaire - et non plus des officiers
supérieurs - soient chargés d'instruire les crimes sexuels a
été soumis en mai au Congrès. Son adoption protégerait les
femmes contre des mesures de représailles sociales, professionnelles ou administratives, dont 62 %
des victimes font l'objet.Ayana Harrell, qui a mis trois semaines avant de trouver le courage d'aller
rapporter son viol collectif - "un bon soldat ne doit jamais se comporter en victime", rappelle-t-elle -,
découvre qu'elle est enceinte. "Oubliez et avortez", lui conseille son sergent instructeur. Son corps
blessé au réveil, son état comateux sous l'effet de la drogue absorbée à son insu, et les hommes,
ivres, couchés sur le sol... La jeune mère de quatre enfants n'a rien oublié. Pas plus que la décharge
signée du commandant pour "troubles de la personnalité" alors qu'elle est enceinte de cinq mois. Le
coût d'une IVG pour une grossesse résultant d'un viol par un frère d'armes n'est couvert par l'armée
que depuis janvier dernier. Or les faits remontent à 2001. Sans le sou, Ayana se résout à garder
l'enfant. Si elle reconnaît avoir "longtemps été en colère avec le bébé", elle parle désormais de sa
fille Giorgia, âgée de 11 ans, comme d'une "bénédiction". En 1987, Ruth Moore avait été renvoyée
de la Navy selon le même diagnostic : "troubles de la personnalité". Après une tentative de suicide,
elle avait été jetée en prison plusieurs jours pour avoir tenté de "détruire la propriété de l'Etat", puis
internée à l'hôpital psychiatrique et congédiée.
En plein brouhaha médiatique, le mois dernier, Barack Obama s'est engagé à ne faire preuve
d'aucune tolérance envers les agresseurs, qui devraient être "tenus pour responsables, poursuivis,
démis de leurs fonctions, traduits en cour martiale, et renvoyés. Un point c'est tout". Des promesses
qui laissent les victimes sceptiques. "Si tu essaies de porter plainte contre un officier, on pensera que
tu mens et tu seras accusée de lui manquer de respect, tu risques la prison", avait prévenu la femme
à laquelle Heather Radcliffe raconta en 2006 le viol dont elle venait d'être victime sur la base
d'Okinawa, au Japon. Son agresseur : un soldat avec qui elle flirtait. L'ancienne photojournaliste
engagée dans la marine a finalement gardé le silence, mais perdu son emploi un peu plus tard après
avoir été harcelée par le responsable de la revue à laquelle elle collaborait. "Je regrette mon silence
maintenant, car d'autres femmes après moi ont pu croiser son chemin", dit cette fille d'un vétéran du
Vietnam, qui s'avoue résignée et "incapable de se défendre", du fait de son passé d'enfant abusée.
Diplômée de psychologie depuis, Heather pointe du doigt l'abondance des propos sexistes tenus par
4
les instructeurs lors de l'entraînement des nouvelles recrues et souligne "le climat hostile aux
femmes", propice à la violence, dans lequel baignent les soldats. Des militants dénoncent d'ailleurs la
manière dont l'armée a assoupli ses critères de recrutement lorsqu'elle cherchait à accroître ses
effectifs en Irak et en Afghanistan. Selon des rapports du département de la défense, des
dérogations ont été accordées aux candidats avec casier judiciaire et antécédents de violence
domestique. Le nombre de soldats ayant tenté ou commis un viol avant d'intégrer l'armée est, lui,
estimé à 15 %.
LES VICTIMES DE "TRAUMATISME MILITAIRE
SEXUEL", terme apparu au début des années 2000,
souffrent de séquelles psychologiques importantes et sont
plus nombreuses à éprouver un syndrome de stress posttraumatique que les soldats ayant combattu lors d'une
guerre. Engagée dans l'armée de l'air au lendemain du 11Septembre 2001, Laura Sellinger a été déployée en Irak
quatre ans plus tard, où elle a été blessée à la tête à trois
reprises, au contact d'explosions. Pourtant, quand elle
raconte sa "descente aux enfers", ce ne sont pas ses
traumatismes crâniens qu'elle évoque mais son viol en
Corée, où elle fut envoyée par erreur à son retour de Bagdad. A 29 ans, Laura souffre d'insomnies,
de migraines, de vertige, et avale seize médicaments chaque jour, pour tenir le coup. Son époux,
militaire lui aussi, ne la quitte plus. Malgré un beau début de carrière dans l'armée de l'air, John a
préféré démissionner pour rester à ses côtés en Floride.
"L'impact du traumatisme militaire sexuel est énorme, il est à la fois mental et physique. Combiné aux
crises d'angoisse inhérentes au syndrome de stress post-traumatique, il peut mener à une tendance
suicidaire", explique le docteur Nancy Lutwak, qui a créé en 2012 une unité spécialisée au sein de
l'hôpital des anciens combattants de New York. Après vingt-deux ans aux urgences d'un hôpital privé,
Nancy Lutwak pensait avoir tout vu. Pourtant, lorsqu'elle découvre ce que l'ancien secrétaire à la
défense, Leon Panetta, qualifie d'"épidémie silencieuse", elle est "sous le choc", et décide d'offrir aux
anciennes militaires victimes d'abus sexuels un espace "où elles se sentent en sécurité". Son
initiative commence à faire des émules dans le pays. Carla Butcher, violée par un récidiviste dans la
marine au large de Bahreïn, considère l'hôpital du département des anciens combattants, situé près
de chez elle en Californie, comme sa "seconde maison" : "J'ai longtemps cru que derrière chaque
homme se cachait un violeur, la colère m'a aidée à survivre." Après l'agression, Carla a sombré dans
l'alcool, puis la drogue, avant de faire plusieurs séjours en unité psychiatrique. Incrédule, elle
soupire : "Je ne sais pas comment je suis encore en vie."
Alexandra Geneste
Société américaine
L'armée américaine minée par la recrudescence des agressions sexuelles
Le Pentagone va autoriser les femmes militaires à servir au combat
La Californie confirme son moratoire sur la peine capitale
retour à l'index
5
POLITICS
→ Crime and Justice, Politics,
Tom Dispatch
02. Rape Was Rampant During
the Vietnam War. Why Doesn't
US History Remember This?
Thousands of books have been written about Vietnam with no mention of widespread sexual
assault.
—By Nick Turse
Tue Mar. 19, 2013 12:03 PM PDT
City of Albuquerque
This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.
On August 31, 1969, a rape was committed in Vietnam.
Maybe numerous rapes were committed there that day, but
this was a rare one involving American GIs that actually
made its way into the military justice system.
And that wasn't the only thing that set it apart.
War is obscene. I mean that in every sense of the word. Some veterans will tell you that you can't
know war if you haven't served in one, if you haven't seen combat. These are often the same guys
who won't tell you the truths that they know about war and who never think to blame themselves in
any way for our collective ignorance.
The truth is, you actually can know a lot about war without fighting in one. It just isn't the sort of
knowledge that's easy to come by.
There are more than 30,000 books on the Vietnam War in print. There are volumes on the decisionmaking of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, grand biographies of Vietnamese leader
Ho Chi Minh, rafts of memoirs by American soldiers—some staggeringly well-written, many not—and
plenty of disposable paperbacks about snipers, medics, and field Marines. I can tell you from
experience that if you read a few dozen of the best of them, you can get a fairly good idea about what
that war was really like. Maybe not perfect knowledge, but a reasonable picture anyway. Or you can
read several hundred of the middling-to-poor books and, if you pay special attention to the few real
truths buried in all the run-of-the-mill war stories, you'll still get some feeling for war American-style.
The main problem with most of those books is the complete lack of Vietnamese voices. The Vietnam
War killed more than 58,000 Americans. That's a lot of people and a lot of heartache. It deserves
attention. But it killed several million Vietnamese and severely affected—and I mean severely—the
lives of many millions more. That deserves a whole lot more focus.
6
Missing in Action (From Our Histories)
From American histories, you would think the primary feature of the Vietnam
War was combat. It wasn't. Suffering was the main characteristic of the war
in Southeast Asia. Millions of Vietnamese suffered: injuries and deaths, loss,
privation, hunger, dislocation, house burnings, detention, imprisonment, and
torture. Some experienced one or another of these every day for years on
end. That's suffering beyond the capacity of even our ablest writers to
capture in a single book.
Unfortunately, however, that's not the problem. The problem is that almost
no one has tried. Vietnamese are bit characters in American histories of the
war, Vietnamese civilians most of all. Americans who tromped, humped, and
slogged through Vietnam on one-year tours of duty are invariably the focus
of those histories, while Vietnamese who endured a decade or even
decades of war remain, at best, in the background or almost totally missing.
(And by the way, it's no less true for most of the major movies about the war.
Remember the Vietnamese main characters in Apocalypse Now? Platoon?
Full Metal Jacket? Hamburger Hill? Me neither.)
The reasons for this are many and varied, ranging from racism and ethnocentrism to pure financial
calculation. Few Americans want to read real stories about foreign civilians caught up in America's
wars. Almost no one wants to read an encyclopedia of atrocities or a tome-like chronology of
suffering. And most Americans, above all, have never wanted to know the grotesque truths of their
wars. Luckily for them, most veterans have been willing to oblige—keeping the darkest secrets of that
war hidden (even while complaining that no one can really know what they went through).
The truth is, we don't even know the full story of that war's obscenity when it comes to the American
experience. This, too, has been sanitized and swapped out for tales of combat horror or "realistic"
accounts of the war in the boonies that focus on repulsive realities like soldiers stepping on shitsmeared punji sticks, suffering from crotch rot, or keeling over from dehydration. Such accounts,
we've been assured, offer a more honest depiction of the horrors of war and the men who nobly bore
them.
Don't believe it.
As the narrator of Tim O'Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story" puts it: "A true war story is never
moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor
restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If
at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been
salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.
There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a
true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."
Which brings us back to that rape on August 31, 1969.
Aside from Daniel Lang's Casualties of War, a brilliantly-compact and harrowing account of the
kidnap, gang-rape, and murder of a young Vietnamese girl (a New Yorker article-turned-book-turnedmovie), you're not likely to encounter the story of the rape of a Vietnamese woman by Americans in
"the literature." And yet the sexual assault of civilians by GIs was far from uncommon, even if you can
read thousands of books on the Vietnam War and have little inkling that it ever happened. Hints
about the harassment or sexual assault of American women—nurses, enlisted women, and so-called
Donut Dollies—also rarely make it into the histories. And you can read most, perhaps all, of those
30,000 books without ever coming across a case of GI-on-GI rape in Vietnam.
7
But that's just what happened on that August 31st at a US base in Vietnam's far south, when three
GI's attacked a fellow American, a fellow soldier. For the purposes of this piece, we'll call him
Specialist Curtis. We know his story because the court martial records of one of his assailants, who
was found guilty of and sentenced to prison time, made it to the National Archives where I found the
document. But really, we know it because, according to the military judge presiding over the case,
Curtis delivered "clear, strong, convincing, not halting, not hesitant, not reluctant, straight-forward,
direct, willing, sincere, and not evasive" testimony. He and others told a brutal story, an obscene story
—that is, a true war story.
What Veterans Won't Tell You
Curtis was feeling sick that late summer day and wouldn't drink with his hootch-mates, so they
pounced on him, held his mouth open, and poured whisky down his throat. When he began to retch,
they let him go and he ran outside to throw up. He returned to his bunk and they attacked him again.
The cycle repeated itself twice more.
The last attempt to force Curtis to drink began with a threat. If he didn't imbibe with them—"them"
being a fellow specialist, a private first class, and a private—they swore they would anally rape him.
Curtis resisted.
In a flash, the three tore off his bed sheets and flipped him onto his stomach. They leaned on him to
hold him down as he thrashed and bucked, while they ripped off his underwear. Then they smeared
hand lotion all over his buttocks. As Curtis cried out for help, the private mounted him. He began to
rape him and was heard to exclaim that it was "really good, it was tight." After the private was
finished, the private first class raped Curtis. The specialist followed. "I know you enjoy it," Curtis
heard one of them say before he blacked out from the pain. Across the hootch, another private
watched the entire episode. Curtis had protested, he'd later say, but this soldier did nothing to
intervene. He was, he later testified, "very scared" of the three attackers.
After Curtis regained consciousness, he retreated to the showers. When he finally returned to the
hootch, the fellow specialist who raped him issued a threat. If he reported the attack, they would
swear that he had paid them $20 each to have sex with him.
That's a true war story.
And that's a Vietnam War story that's absent from our histories of the conflict—all 30,000 of them.
Given the stigma attached to rape, especially decades ago, and the added stigma attached to male
rape victims, it's shocking that the case ever became public, no less that it went to trial in a military
court, or that the victim gave clear, graphic, painful testimony. The truth was out there, but no one
ever told this story to the wider world—neither the victim, the perpetrators, the witnesses, the
lawyers, the judge, the commanders at the base, nor a historian. You could read thousands of books
on the Vietnam War—even books devoted to hidden histories, secrets, and the like—and never know
that, in addition to rifles and rice paddies, war is also about rape, even male-on-male rape, even GIon-GI rape. Just how many such rapes occurred, we'll never know, because such acts were and
generally still are kept secret.
Veterans don't tell these stories. They almost never offer up accounts of murder, assault, torture, or
rape unsolicited. They don't want you to know. Such realities need to be mined out of them. I've done
it for the last 10 years, and believe me, it can be exhausting.
Veterans, their advocates, and their defenders often tell us it's never okay to ask if a soldier or marine
killed somebody "over there." But if veterans refuse to offer up unsanitized accounts of their wartime
experiences and it's improper for us to ask what they did, how can civilians be faulted for failing to
understand war?
8
To set the historical record straight, I've traveled across the globe, walked into people's homes, and
asked them questions to which, in a better world than ours, no one should have to know the answers.
I've asked elderly Vietnamese to recount the most horrific traumas imaginable. I've induced rivers of
tears. I've sat impassively, taking notes as an older woman, bouncing her grandchild on her knee,
told me what it was like to be raped with an American weapon.
As I said, war is obscene.
I also asked these questions of American veterans because—some notable and iconic exceptions
aside—too few have had the courage of that Vietnamese grandmother. After all, some American
raped her with that weapon, but as far as I know—and if anybody knew, it would probably be me—he
never leveled with the American public about the true nature of his war. He never told the truth,
publicly apologized, voiced regret, or even for that matter boasted about it, nor did he ever make a
case for why raping a woman with a weapon was warranted in wartime. He kept it a secret and, if
he's still alive, continues to do so today. We all suffer for his silence.
On a single day in August 1969, on one base, three GIs raped a fellow American soldier. Three
rapes. One day. What does that mean? What does it say about men? About the military? About war?
We can't know for sure because we'll never know the whole truth of sexual assault in Vietnam. The
men involved in wartime sex crimes—in raping Vietnamese women, in sodomizing them, in violating
them with bottles and rifle muzzles, in sexually assaulting American women, in raping American men
—have mostly remained silent about it.
One of the rapists in this case may have passed away, but at least one is still apparently alive in the
United States. Maybe even on your street. For decades we knew nothing of their crimes, so we know
less than we should about the Vietnam War and about war in general.
Maybe it's time to start asking questions of our veterans. Hard questions. They shouldn't be the only
ones with the knowledge of what goes on in armies and in war zones. They didn't get to Vietnam (or
Iraq or Afghanistan) on their own and they shouldn't shoulder the blame or the truth alone and in
silence. We all bear it. We all need to hear it. The sooner, the better.
Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. An awardwinning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at
TomDispatch. He is the author most recently of the New York Times bestseller Kill Anything that
Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books). You
can watch his recent conversation with Bill Moyers about that book by clicking here. His website is
NickTurse.com. You can follow him on Tumblr and on Facebook.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick
Turse's The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and
Cyberwarfare. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates
from TomDispatch.com here.
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9
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 31, 2013 5:20 PM
03. Rape Victim: Retaliation
Prevalent In Military
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Stacey Thompson had just been stationed at a Marine Corps base in Japan
when she said her sergeant laced her drinks with drugs, raped her in his barracks and then dumped
her onto a street outside a nightclub at 4 a.m.
The 19-year-old lance corporal was not afraid to speak up.
She reported it to her superiors but little happened. She said she discovered her perpetrator was
allowed to leave the Marine Corps and she found herself, instead, at the center of a separate
investigation for drug use stemming from that night. Six months later, she was kicked out with an
other-than-honorable discharge — one step below honorable discharge — which means she lost her
benefits.
Now, 14 years later, she has decided to speak out again, emboldened by the mounting pressure on
the Pentagon to resolve its sexual assault epidemic.
She went public with her story Thursday in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press and
spoke Friday at a news conference with Sen. Barbara Boxer ahead of next week's Senate hearing on
the problem.
"To see that what happened to me 14 years ago is still continuing to happen now, for me that was a
big reason why I felt the need to come forward," she said. "I can finally say I have the strength."
Retaliation is part of a military-wide pattern that has prevented countless cases from being reported
and investigated, exacerbating the epidemic, according to victims' advocates. A Pentagon report
released earlier this month found 62 percent of sexual assault victims in the military who reported
being attacked say they faced some kind of retaliation afterward.
Boxer is pushing for a bipartisan bill that would put the cases in the hands of military trained
prosecutors and not the chain of command.
"Too many survivors of military sexual assault are afraid to report these crimes because they fear
retaliation, and they don't believe they will get justice," Boxer said. "They deserve a system that
encourages victims to come forward knowing that the perpetrators will be brought to justice."
Marine Corps and Navy officials declined to comment, saying they do not discuss specific cases.
All branches have been scrambling to implement sexual assault prevention programs and improve
their response to cases amid growing outrage over the Pentagon's failure to stem the problem as a
string of arrests and incidents of sexual misconduct continue to surface.
10
As many as 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year and thousands of
victims are unwilling to come forward despite new oversight and assistance programs, according to
the Pentagon. That figure is an increase over the 19,000 estimated assaults in 2011.
Only 3,374 of these crimes were reported, resulting in 238 convictions.
"It's an ongoing problem that is not getting better, it's getting worse, as the latest statistics out of the
Pentagon show," said Brian Purchia, spokesman for Protect Our Defenders, which has been helping
Thompson.
"Unfortunately commanders are conflicted: When a sexual assault occurs on their watch, it reflects
poorly on them and that's why it's shoved under the rug. The perpetrators frequently out rank the
victims, which is also why there is this bias. They're going to trust people they've known — not an 18
or 19-year-old just new to the service."
Former Marine Capt. Anu Bhagwati said military culture will not change until the military justice
system is reformed and service members are given access to civil courts to file suits in cases of
retaliation and discrimination.
"There is no outside redress," said Bhagwati, who leads the Service Women's Action Network.
Thompson said she paid heavily for reporting the assault.
The investigator called her a liar, and military authorities checked her hands for needle pricks after
accusing her of using drugs. She said she never used drugs. She was reassigned to another unit,
removed from her job and told to report to an office with nothing to do.
Then she was kicked out. She continues to suffer from her other-than-honorable discharge, which
stripped her of her benefits and she believes has led to her missing out on Defense Department jobs.
"I felt the Marine Corps re-victimized me again after getting raped," said the 32-year-old mother of
three.
Thompson said then she shut down, refusing to talk about her rape. She was afraid of men,
especially Marines. To this day, she keeps her dog nearby when she showers and sleeps with lights
on in her house, even when her combat Marine husband is home.
"That fear is still with me 14 years later," she said.
But the fight is there too. Thompson requested her records in December. She said they showed the
drug use allegations against her came from her perpetrator's friends.
She is now appealing her case to the Department of Veterans Affairs and is seeking compensation
related to military sexual trauma. After that, she plans to also appeal her discharge status to get it
upgraded to honorable.
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11
by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 02, 2013 8:18 AM
04. Military's Sexual-Assault
Problem Has Deep Roots
NEW YORK (AP) — Sexual assault occurs in myriad settings and the perpetrators come from every
swath of U.S. society. Yet as recent incidents and reports make clear, it's a particularly intractable
problem in the military, with its enduring macho culture and unique legal system.
The most significant factor, according to advocates, is the perception by victims in the military that
they lack the recourses available in the civilian world to bring assailants to justice.
"The military says they have zero tolerance, but in fact that's not true," said Dr. Katherine Scheirman,
a retired Air Force colonel with more than 20 years of service in the U.S. and abroad. "Having a
sexual assault case in your unit is considered something bad, so commanders have had an
incredible incentive not to destroy their own careers by prosecuting someone."
Insisting it takes the problem seriously, the military has put in place numerous policies and programs
to reduce the assaults, notably since the 1991 Tailhook scandal in which Navy pilots were accused of
sexually abusing female officers at a Las Vegas convention.
Still the problem persists, as indicated in a recent Pentagon report estimating that 26,000 service
members were sexually assaulted last year, compared with 19,000 in 2011. Victims reported 3,374
incidents in 2012; there were convictions in 238 of those cases.
"That means there are thousands of felons walking around — free and dangerous — in the military
today," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
Boxer is co-sponsor of a bill that would remove top commanders from the process of deciding
whether sexual misconduct cases go to trial. Instead, that decision would rest with officers who are
trial counsels with prosecutorial experience.
To advocates for assault victims, that would be a crucial step forward, given Defense Department
findings that many victims are of lower rank than their assailants and most fear retaliation if they
report the incident.
The missing element is accountability, according to Nancy Parrish of Protect Our Defenders, one of
the groups urging changes in the military justice system.
"When military leaders are held accountable for countenancing bad behavior, then you'll begin to see
a shift in the culture," she said. "They've proved they can do this with racial integration. Anyone who
countenanced racist behavior would be fired."
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has conveyed the same message,
calling sexual assault "a crime that demands accountability and consequences" and describing it as
"a serious problem that we must solve."
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Outrage over the Pentagon's failure to stem the problem has grown following an embarrassing string
of arrests and incidents of sexual misconduct. On Friday, in the latest disclosure, the Pentagon
confirmed that the U.S. Naval Academy is investigating allegations that three football team members
sexually assaulted a female midshipman at an off-campus house last year.
Some longtime advocates for assault victims say they've grown weary of promises to do better.
"They say they are dismayed, saddened, committed to making change, but all their rhetoric really
boils down to is, 'How do we not get caught?'" said Paula Coughlin, who as a Navy lieutenant in 1991
was instrumental in bringing the Tailhook scandal to light.
"There's an environment in the military that says you can get away with it — you don't go to jail if you
attack women," said Coughlin.
In the civilian world, positions of power often are exploited by sexual abusers, as evidenced by the
many cases involving clergymen, coaches and teachers.
Scheirman, now a physician in Edmond, Okla., said issues of power and control are particularly
pronounced in the military.
"Commanders have the power to destroy your career, to make your life a living hell," she said.
"Though 99.9 percent of them don't, you can't take that chance. If it was a commander who assaulted
you, you'd be delusional to think that if you reported it, any justice would be done."
While precise comparisons are difficult, the Defense Department's recent report suggests that
women in the military and the civilian world face roughly the same risk of sexual assault. One crucial
difference is that most civilian victims have options, such as going to the police or filing a civil suit, in
the aftermath of harassment or assault that aren't available to service members.
"In civilian world, all of these recourses act as a deterrent," said Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine
captain who advocates on behalf of assault victims as executive director of the Service Women's
Action Network.
In the military, Bhagwati said, "there's no freedom of movement, no right to quit your job, You're
forced to coexist with your perpetrator."
Cynthia Smith, a Defense Department spokeswoman, says the military does offer options to assault
victims, who can report incidents to a sexual assault response coordinator, a victim advocate, a
health care provider or a chaplain.
The contrasts between the military and corporate America are stark to Marene Nyberg Allison, who
was in the first class of women at the U.S. Military Academy, graduating in 1980. After six years in the
Army, she became an FBI agent, served on a Defense Department advisory committee on women in
the military, and is now a senior executive with Johnson & Johnson.
"If I go on a business trip and someone tried to sexually assault me, I could sue them, I could sue the
company, I could sue just about everybody," she said. "In the military, you're not allowed to do that."
"At a corporation, no one is asking, 'Does a woman really belong here?" she said. "You see that in
the military — this whole idea of 'Do women belong here at all?'"
Steps are being taken.
13
Two weeks ago, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the military to recertify all 25,000 people
involved in programs to prevent and respond to sexual assault. On Thursday the Defense
Department launched a service called The Safe HelpRoom, enabling assault victims to participate in
group chat sessions providing support and referrals.
Bhagwati says the biggest strides toward achieving lasting change would be to double the
representation of women in the military from the current level of 15 percent and end the exclusion of
women from certain units and missions. In particular, she said, more women are needed as officers,
so they have the collective confidence to push for change.
"It's hard for women to go against the grain," she said. "It's not a culture that teaches moral courage,
as opposed to battlefield courage."
It's also a culture that has been conducive to sexism and the degradation of women, Bhagwati
contends.
"At bases overseas, there's commercial exploitation of women thriving around them, women being
trafficked," she said. "You can't expect to treat women as one of your own when, in same breath, you
as a young soldier are being encouraged to exploit women on the outside of that base."
"We don't condone that kind of behavior," insisted Cynthia Smith. "We work in an environment where
we need to treat everyone with respect."
Jessica Kenyon, who served with the Army in South Korea, recalled a pervasive tendency to
scapegoat women.
"If there are any problems in the unit — sex, drinking and driving, anything that could possibly be
tagged to women being in the unit — it's seen as their fault," she said.
Kenyon said her Army career derailed after she was raped and impregnated by a fellow soldier in
2006. Now 32, she runs online support services for military victims of sexual assault.
"I treat my cases like they are incest survivors," she said. "You're willing to take a bullet for the guy
you just met and to have that trust willfully violated makes the sense of betrayal that much higher."
One notable aspect of the Pentagon's recent sexual-assault estimates was the level of male-on-male
assaults. Men were the victims in nearly 14,000 of the estimated 26,000 assaults, although women,
comprising a small fraction of active-duty personnel, had a higher rate of being assaulted.
"Men need to be encouraged to come forward, so if you ask for help, it's seen a sign of strength, not
of weakness," said Paul Rieckhoff, a former Army officer who heads Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of
America.
Allyson Robinson of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, one of the groups which successfully
campaigned to let gays serve openly in the military, said repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" has given
more male soldiers the confidence to report same-sex assaults.
"Under 'don't ask,' service members who were victims of assault by their own sex could have been
accused of being gay if they reported it, and thus lose their careers," she said.
She disputed suggestions from some conservatives that repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" is responsible
for an increase in male-on-male assaults.
14
"Sexual assault is never about sex or sexual orientation," she said. "It's a crime of violence that's
about power and domination."
Cynthia Smith said commanders will be the key to any improvements.
"No one should be at risk — male or female," she said. "Commanders are expected to provide the
necessary resources or training so that both men and women know where to turn should they have
questions or need support."
Dempsey, among others, suggests that the sexual assault problem has been aggravated by the
strains of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Professor David Segal, director of the University of
Maryland's Center for Research on Military Organization, said such strains are a key factor in the
surge of suicides, spousal abuse and other problems in addition to sexual assault.
"The military has been phenomenally stretched over the last decade — it's been asked to do too
much for too long with too few resources," he said. "The veneer of civilization is very thin, and the
wars have worn it down or cracked it."
Follow David Crary on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/craryap
Online:
Protect Our Defenders: http://www.protectourdefenders.com
Service Women's Action Network: http://servicewomen.org
The Safe HelpRoom: https://safehelpline.org/about-safe-helproom
Defense Department: http://tinyurl.com/bo95o68
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on May 15, 2013 at 10:00 am
05. Armed Forces Sexual Assault
Crisis Reaches New Heights
By Hayes Brown
(Credit: Getty)
Ahead of possible major actions from the Pentagon
and Congress on sexual assault in the military, the
U.S. Army is forced to confront yet another instance
of a member of the armed forces involved in a
shocking sexual assault scandal.
In the latest incident, the Department of Defense
revealed on Tuesday a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army stationed at the Ft. Hood, TX military
base is under investigation for sexual assault. Along with allegedly sexually assaulting two of his
peers, the the sergeant is being investigated for possibly forcing a subordinate into prostitution.
15
Making matters even worse, the soldier under investigation was assigned as the Sexual Harassment/
Assault Response and Prevention (SHARP) program coordinator for an eight-hundred person
battalion stationed at the base.
The investigation draws a parallel to a case just last week in which the head of the entire Air Force’s
sexual assault response program was himself charged with sexual battery in Arlington, VA. No
charges have yet been filed against the individual at Ft. Hood, but Pentagon spokesman George
Little issued a statement about DOD’s response to yet another alleged instance of rape culture in the
military: I cannot convey strongly enough [Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's] frustration, anger,
and disappointment over these troubling allegations and the breakdown in discipline and standards
they imply.
Secretary Hagel met with Army Secretary McHugh this morning and directed him to fully investigate
this matter rapidly, to discover the extent of these allegations, and to ensure that all of those who
might be involved are dealt with appropriately.
To address the broader concerns that have arisen out of these allegations and other recent events,
Secretary Hagel is directing all the services to re-train, re-credential, and re-screen all sexual
assault prevention and response personnel and military recruiters.
Lawmakers quickly lined up to add their voices to the long list of those condemning the latest outrage
and sexual assault in the military writ large. “These allegations only add to the mounting evidence of
the need to change our military justice system to better hold perpetrators accountable and protect
survivors of sexual assault,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said in a statement. Rep. Howard “Buck”
McKeon (R-CA) head of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement he was “outraged
and disgusted” by the latest reports from Ft. Hood, pointing to his own granddaughter in the Army and
the “feelings of worry and doubt” many feel when family members join the service.
Much as last week’s case came just days ahead of the Pentagon releasing its annual report on
sexual assault in the armed services, Tuesday’s story broke with major implications for the military on
the horizon. Wednesday is the deadline for branches of the armed services to provide their plans for
how to integrate women into combat units to the Pentagon. Last year, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told reporters that the move could help reduce the number of sexual
assaults in the military in the long-run as “the more we treat people equally, the more likely they are
to treat each other equally.”
The Senate Veteran Affairs Committee is also holding hearings Wednesday morning on the Ruth
Moore Act of 2013, which passed the House Veteran Affairs Committee last week. The Act is named
for a former Navy enlistee who was raped twice during her service and later developed posttraumatic stress disorder from the experience. According to the ACLU’s statement to the Senate, the
bill “would remove current barriers that far too often prove insurmountable for sexual assault
survivors who apply for disability compensation for post traumatic stress disorder and other mental
health conditions.”
According to the most recent report, an estimated 26,000 instances of sexual assault took place in
the military last year. President Obama at a press conference last week called the epidemic “an
outrage” and said soldiers who rape are “betraying the uniform that they’re wearing.” “When you
engage in this kind of behavior that’s not patriotic — it’s a crime,” Obama went on to say. “And we
have to do everything we can to root this out.”
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16
on May 7, 2013 at 12:00 pm
06. Pentagon: Estimated 26,000
Sexual Assaults In Military Last
Year
By Hayes Brown
(Credit: Service Women Action Network)
Just one day after the Air Force’s chief of sexual assault prevention
was arrested for sexual assault himself, a new Pentagon report shows
a sharp increase in the estimated number of assaults in the military
annually.
The report from the Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault
Prevention and Response Office for Fiscal Year 2012 found a 6
percent rise in reported assaults over the last year, for a total of 3,374.
But much more troubling is the estimated number of sexual assault
incidents that were never officially reported. In last year’s report, there
were an estimated 19,000 instances, but this year the number has jumped to an unprecedented
26,000 instances of assault, leaving thousands unreported.
The disparity in the total number of instances of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) compared to those
fully reported — where the victim fills out an official report and action is taken — can be seen as
being due to victims’ fears of retaliation, including possible discharge from service or being
overlooked for a promotion. The new results line up with those seen in a 2011 Pentagon health
survey released in April. According to that report, more female service members were willing to come
forward about sexual abuse and assault, with roughly one in five women saying they were victims of
unwanted sexual contact from another member of the military, but under reporting remains a serious
issue.
“Sexual assault has no place in the United States military,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said
in a statement released Monday night in response to news that Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski, the Air
Forces’s chief of sexual assault prevention, had been arrested on charges of sexual assault. “The
American people, including our service members, should expect a culture of absolutely no tolerance
for this deplorable behavior that violates not only the law, but basic principles of respect, honor, and
dignity in our society and its military.”
Despite that pledge, assault and abuse in the military has been under increased scrutiny in recent
months, following a series of high-profile scandals. In February, Lt. Col. James Wilkerson was
reinstated into service after an Air Force general overturned a jury, voiding Wilkerson’s sexual assault
conviction. In 2012, Lackland Air Force base saw 12 instructors investigated for sexual misconduct
toward 31 trainees, with at least one trainer sentenced to twenty years for rape and sexual assault.
Army Gen. Jeffery Sinclair was likewise charged in 2012 with sexually assaulting a female
subordinate, then threatening her career if she went public.
17
On Monday, a female Air Force general — Lt. Gen. Susan Helms — found her career in question
after a hold was placed on her nomination to become vice commander of Space Command. The
reason? Her decision to overturn a case of aggravated sexual assault, much in the same fashion as
seen in the Wilkerson case. Legislation is currently on the Hill to strike the ability of generals to
overturn jury cases in instances of sexual assault, but the underlying problem remains.
To correct that problem, Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) will introduce the
Combat Military Sexual Assault (MSA) Act of 2013 in the Senate on Tuesday. “It’s inexcusable for us
to wait any longer to address this issue and I’m glad this bipartisan legislation is taking meaningful
steps to do right by our nation’s heroes,”Murray said in a statement.
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on Mar 14, 2013 at 4:30 pm
07. Dem. Senator Pushes For
Change In Military Response To
Sexual Assault
By Hayes Brown
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is bringing the ongoing crisis of sexual
assault in the military into the spotlight, hoping to use a recent
outrageous case as a springboard to change.
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on
Personnel, chaired by Gillibrand, met on Wednesday to begin the
process of reforming the military justice’s handling of sexual assault
cases, speaking to panels of both survivors of sexual assault in the military and top military law
experts. Dem.
Gillibrand appeared on MSNBC on Thursday to present the hearing’s findings, leaving host Andrea
Mitchell stunned. Over 19,000 allegations of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) were made in 2011 alone,
but as Gillibrand informed Mitchell there were only 2,400 cases where action was taken. The
disparity, according to Gillibrand, comes from fear of retaliation and “not being able to stay in the
military and having no ability to be promoted.”
Both women shared their disbelief that the military justice system could take such a lax approach to a
clear problem:
MITCHELL: I don’t understand the Military Code of Justice, in that it was a reason for dismissal for
expulsion from the military until last year, if you violated Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Yet, if you were found
18
guilty in a military court of a criminal assault, of rape, you could go back to your unit. How is that
possible?
GILLIBRAND: It’s outrageous and it’s something that should outrage every American. When we look
at our best and bravest, our strongest, our most courageous. When you enter the military, you may
expect to lose a limb. You may expect to lose your life. But no one should be expecting to be
assaulted or raped by one of their colleagues.
Watch their exchange here:
➫ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1qO260wMEo&feature=player_embedded
The permissive culture towards sexual violence Gillibrand described was underscored by the
testimony of former Sgt. Rebekkah Havrilla. Havrilla told the subcommittee of the U.S. Army’s failure
to provide proper assistance following several instances of alleged sexual assault and rape. At one
point, an Army chaplain told Havrilla “that the rape was God’s will and that God was trying to get my
attention so that I would go back to church.”
“Rape and assault are violent, traumatic crimes, not mistakes, leadership failures or oversights in
character,” Anu Bhagwati, Co-Founder of the Service Women’s Action Network told the panel.
Bhagwati offered a series of possible reforms to the military criminal justice system to the senators,
including opening civil courts to military sexual assault victims.
Currently, the Uniform Military Code of Justice features an article that allows a commanding officer
through his or her “convening authority” to overturn the conviction of a jury in courts-martial. Lt. Gen.
Craig Franklin used that ability last week to overturn Lt. Col. James Wilkerson’s conviction of sexual
assault, waive the one-year prison sentence, and reinstate Wilkerson in the Air Force. Under the law
as written, Franklin’s decision can’t be overturned by the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of the
Air Force.
Wilkerson’s reinstatement has sparked outrage from both houses of Congress and prompted a
review of the statute in question by the Department of Defense’s top lawyers. A bill has already been
introduced in the House of Representatives related to the Wilkerson case. Reps. Jackie Spiers (DCA), Bruce Braley (D-IA), and Patrick Meehan (R-PA) put forward the bill on Tuesday to strip
commanders of their ability to overrule juries and lessen sentences.
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on Mar 6, 2013 at 10:30 am
08. How One Man Can Let His
Fellow Service member Get
Away With Rape
By Annie-Rose Strasser
19
On Monday, one air force general overturned a jury’s rape
conviction of Lieutenant Colonel James Wilkerson.
Wilkerson was originally dismissed from the Air Force and
sentenced to one year in jail for aggravated sexual assault
of a woman who was staying the night as a guest in his
house.
A jury of four servicemembers found him guilty of having
sneaked into the woman’s room while she was sleeping,
fondled her breasts, and penetrated her with his fingers. He reportedly stopped when his wife entered
the room and turned on the lights.
But Lieutenant General Craig Franklin overturned the case single-handedly, citing his “convening
authority” — the absolute ability of one member of the military to overturn a jury. Franklin’s reasoning
for overturning the conviction was vague: A spokesperson said he “declined to approve the conviction
because he did not think that there was enough evidence to say that he was guilty.”
A group of U.S. Senators on Monday blasted Franklin’s decision, saying that he had, “not adequately
explained why he chose to overturn a guilty verdict.” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) added that the
case was an opportunity for the military to show whether it took sexual assault accusations seriously,
and that Franklin had failed them: “The military needs to understand that this could be a tipping
point,” said McCaskill, a former Jackson County prosecutor and a senior member of the Senate
Armed Services Committee. “I question whether, after this incident, there’s any chance a woman
assaulted in that unit would ever say a word. There’s a culture issue that’s going to have to be
addressed here. And what this decision did — all it did was underline and put an exclamation point
behind the notion that if you are sexually assaulted in the military — good luck.” [...]
“I think there is a culture issue,” McCaskill said. “I don’t think one general should be able to overturn a
jury. … I have a high degree of frustration.”
Sexual assault is a rampant and under-reported problem in the military. While the actual data is
sparse, it was predicted that 19,000 instances (PDF) of Military Sexual Trauma (MST, as it’s called
within the armed forces) occurred in the year 2011 alone. Reports of such incidents have been on the
rise, to the point that former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pledged to make it an ongoing goal of
the Department of Defense to put a stop to the assaults and the cover-ups of such behavior.
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ar. 4, 2013 - 09:10AM Last Updated: Mar. 4, 2013 - 09:10AM | 09. IG to return to duty after
conviction tossed
20
A former Aviano Air Base, Italy, inspector general convicted in November of
sexual assault will return to active duty and could pin on his next rank of colonel
after an unusual Feb. 26 decision to throw out the case by the commander of the
3rd Air Force.
A jury of four colonels and one lieutenant colonel, all of them men, sentenced Lt.
Col. James Wilkerson to a year in prison and dismissal from the service after
finding him guilty Nov. 2 of sexually assaulting an American physician assistant in
his home.
Third Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, who sent Wilkerson's case to court-martial and
selected the jury, "declined to approve the conviction because he did not think that there was enough
evidence to say that he was guilty," said Lt. Col. Paul Baldwin, a spokesman for U.S. Air Forces in
Europe.
In the military justice system, the convening authority — in this case, Franklin — can single-handedly
reduce or set aside sentences or overturn a jury conviction, although the latter is "exceedingly rare,"
said Frank Spinner, Wilkerson's civilian attorney and a longtime court-martial defense lawyer.
Franklin reviewed evidence presented before, during and after the court-martial, Baldwin said. That
included a clemency package of dozens of letters of support for Wilkerson, an F-16 pilot who has
spent the past 20 years in the Air Force, and other information the jury was not allowed to hear. One
of the letters in support of Wilkerson came from a friend of the accuser.
Baldwin could not elaborate on why Franklin reached his decision.
Franklin, a command pilot who has flown the F-16 and B-52, does not know Wilkerson personally or
professionally, Baldwin said.
Spinner said Wilkerson was a victim of a military that has become overzealous in the wake of highprofile sex assault scandals across the services, including the investigation of at least 32 basic
training instructors at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in less than two years.
"The zero tolerance policy is turning into, ‘We need to prosecute more cases, and we need to get
heavier punishments,'" he said. In today's climate, "I think you're not going to see many other cases
set aside by a convening authority after a conviction."
For victims of military sexual assault and their advocates, Franklin's move to overturn the conviction
is a step backward.
"It's an example of a broken military justice system," said Nancy Parrish of Protect Our Defenders, a
vocal advocacy group. "It's a system that elevates an individual commander's authority and discretion
over the rule of the law."
Conflicting accounts
There was no physical evidence in the case, which ultimately pitted the word of Wilkerson and his
wife, Beth, against the accuser.
The night in question, March 24, began with a concert and drinks at a base club and ended with an
impromptu gathering at the Wilkerson home.
The accuser stayed behind after the other guests left. She testified she woke in a guest bedroom to
find Wilkerson touching her. She said the incident ended when Wilkerson's wife walked into the room
and ordered her out.
21
The Wilkersons have maintained the lieutenant colonel never left his own bed that night. Beth
testified she got up about 3 a.m. and told the woman to either go to bed or go home because she
was walking around the house and noisily talking on her cellphone. The woman left.
After the conviction, Wilkerson's attorneys appealed to the 3rd Air Force commander for clemency,
writing that military judge Col. Jefferson B. Brown had refused to allow "favorable defense evidence"
and evidence that would have called into question the truthfulness of the accuser, Spinner said.
While many of the clemency letters came from friends and family of the Wilkersons, at least one
came from a friend of the accuser, who did not know the Wilkersons. The woman wrote to Franklin
that she and the accuser had exchanged multiple text messages on the evening of the incident and
had spoken by phone around midnight. During the conversation, the woman offered to pick up her
friend multiple times, she wrote, but her friend declined the offers.
The next day, according to the woman's letter, she took Wilkerson's accuser to seek medical care
because she thought she might have been drugged. She wasn't, according to trial testimony.
Over the next several months, the woman said her friend gave varying accounts of what happened
that night. She suggested her friend may have made up the story because her contract at work was
up for renewal and an "inappropriate alcohol-related incident" could jeopardize it. The woman asked
Franklin to reconsider the conviction and "provide an opportunity for justice for the Wilkerson family."
Wilkerson was released from the U.S. Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C., the day Franklin
dismissed the case — the equivalent of an acquittal, Spinner said.
Beth Wilkerson flew to Charleston to meet her husband the following day.
In a telephone interview, she said of the events of March 24: "I was awake. I was up. There was no
way that this happened. I know it wasn't true. I was there."
Wilkerson planned to take some time off before returning to duty. It is not clear where he will go next.
At the time of his arrest, he was a full colonel select, Spinner said.
"I'm so very thankful. I have prayed for this," Beth Wilkerson said. "We are very, very thankful to all
our friends and family that supported us."
The lead prosecutor on the case, Col. Don Christensen, declined comment through a Pentagon
spokesman.
Attempts to reach the alleged victim through email and Facebook were not successful.
In a statement to Stars and Stripes, she said she was shocked by the reversal. "I was assaulted. I
reported it. I endured the public humiliation, and the end result is that it was all for nothing."
Staff writer [email protected]
subject=Question from AirForceTimes.com reader"
>Jeff Schogol contributed to this report.
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22
BY TARA CULP-RESSLER
ON SEPTEMBER 10, 2013 AT 1:18 PM
10. United Nations researchers
just published a sweeping study
on the roots of sexual violence,
spanning six countries and two
years.
The survey, which they say represents the world’s largest
scientific project into the subject so far, aimed to investigate
the “under-researched” area of male-perpetrated rape. On
average, about one in ten men living in the region included
in the study said they had raped someone at some point in
their lives.
The UN study included over 10,000 men from Bangladesh,
China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Sri
Lanka. The researchers caution that some regional attitudes
about sexuality in Southeastern Asia may contribute to the
results that they gathered across those six countries.
Still, though, there are some big takeaways from their findings. Here’s what the new research can tell
us about the landscape of sexual violence as a whole: Many people have the wrong idea about what
“rape” actually is. The researchers intentionally didn’t use the word “rape” in any of their
questionnaires about Asian men’s sexual histories. Instead, they asked men whether they had ever
“forced a woman who was not your wife or girlfriend at the time to have sex,” or if they had ever “had
sex with a woman who was too drunk or drugged to indicate whether she wanted it.” That likely
helped researchers gather more accurate information about the nonconsensual sexual acts that men
had engaged in. Since many people don’t learn the lines of consent, many sexually active adults may
not understand when they’re violating someone else — and they may not believe they have actually
raped someone. “Rape doesn’t just involve someone with a gun to a woman’s head,” Michele Decker,
a public health professor who co-wrote the commentary that accompanied the new study, pointed out
to CBS News. “People tend to think of rape as something someone else would do.”
Rape occurs within marriages, too. Along those lines, many people think about rape as something
that occurs between strangers, when women are accosted by criminals in dark alleyways. But that’s
not the reality of sexual assault. The UN survey found that rape between married partners was more
prevalent than rape among people who were not in a romantic relationship. Studies conducted within
the United States have revealed similar results about the prevalence of intimate partner violence in
this country. When it comes to educating people about sexual assault, it’s important to emphasize
that consent never carries over — that is, even when it comes to spouses who have had consensual
sex many times before, neither of them have consented to every instance of sexual contact their
partner may demand in the future.
23
Repeat offenses are very high among rapists. Nearly half of the respondents who said they had
raped at least once went on to rape multiple victims. Nearly 23 percent said they had raped two to
three people, 12 percent say they had raped four to ten people, and about 4 percent said they had
raped more than ten people. Here in the United States, some research has drawn similar conclusions
about repeat rapists at the college level. A Harvard University study found that the young men who
commit a rape in college are likely to become serial offenders — and many of them do, since lenient
sexual assault policies on college campuses often allow them to evade punishment.
Unhealthy attitudes about sexuality take root at a young age. More than half of the study’s
respondents who admitted they had violated someone’s consent were teenagers when they first
raped someone. Most sexual crimes recorded in the study occurred when men were between the
ages of 15 and 19. The authors point out this finding “reinforces the need for early rape prevention.”
Sexual violence prevention advocates in the U.S. say that this type of education can begin with
comprehensive sex ed. Teaching kids about the bodies from an early age helps instill a sense of selfconfidence and ownership in them. Then, they’re more likely to avoid violating another person’s
consent, or be more willing to speak up when someone tries to violate theirs.
Men rape because they have been taught that they have a right to claim women’s bodies. One of the
fundamental concepts at the heart of “rape culture” is the idea that rape is inevitable, men can’t help
themselves, and women must therefore work to protect themselves against it. Within the context of
rape culture, the idea that men are entitled to sexual experiences is deeply entrenched. The UN
researchers found that this attitude is pervasive among the rapists they surveyed. Among the men
who acknowledged they had sexually assaulted someone else, more than 70 percent of them said
they did it because of “sexual entitlement.” Forty percent said they were angry or wanted to punish
the woman. About half of the men said they did not feel guilty.
Rape typically goes unpunished in Southeast Asia. Just 23 percent of the men who said they had
raped someone had actually been imprisoned for their crimes. That trend holds true outside of the
Southeast Asian countries that were included in the study. The Rape, Abuse, and Incest National
Network (RAINN) estimates that, after factoring in the extremely high number of rape cases that go
unreported to the police, about three percent of U.S. rapists end up serving jail time. This has been a
particularly contentious issue on college campuses lately, where many rapists receive extremely light
punishments, like being assigned essays and placed on social probation, instead of being expelled.
***
“It’s clear violence against women is far more widespread in the general population than we thought,”
Rachel Jewkes, a member of South Africa’s Medical Research Council and the leader of the new
study, said in a statement about her results. Previous research that Jewkes also oversaw found that
one in three women worldwide has experienced some type of intimate partner violence, prompting
the World Heath Organization to declare it an “epidemic” global health problem.
Jewkes and her fellow researchers hope that their new study — one of the first to focus on male
perpetrators of sexual assault, rather than female victims — will help encourage concrete policy
changes to reverse some of the dynamics that contribute to rape culture. “Prevention of rape is
essential,” they conclude. “Interventions must focus on childhood and adolescence, and address
culturally rooted male gender socialization and power relations, abuse in childhood, and poverty.”
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24
Jodie Gummow is a senior fellow and staff writer at AlterNet.
September 11, 2013
11. Shocking UN Report Reveals
1 in 4 Men Admit to Raping
Women for 'Fun' and Because of
'Sexual Entitlement'
As prosecutors fight for death penalty in Delhi fatal rape case, UN
study finds disturbing facts about prevalence of sex crimes in Asia.
A disturbing new report on sexual assault released by the United
Nations reveals that one in four men have admitted to raping a
woman once in their lives for entertainment, punishment and
revenge amongst the top reasons listed, IBT reported.
The study which was published in the British Medical Journal The
Lancet and conducted by the World Health Organization in the Asiapacific region involved interviewing 10,178 men aged between 18
and 49 years old in Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Sri
Lanka and Papua New Guinea about engaging in non-consensual
sex.
Almost 75 percent of those interviewed said they committed rape because of “sexual entitlement,” or
as form of punishment because the man was angry: “They believed they had the right to have sex
with the woman regardless of consent. The second most common motivation reported was to rape as
a form of entertainment, so for fun or because they were bored. Perhaps surprisingly, the least
common motivation was alcohol," report author Dr. Emma Fulu said.
The study also highlighted, poverty, personal history of violence and victimization as contributing
factors that led to rape crimes.
Dr. Michelle Decker of John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore said the
findings should generate global outrage particularly in light of recent high profile rape cases such as
the New Delhi student gang rape case in India: “More than half of non-partner rape perpetrators first
did so as adolescents, which affirms that young people are a crucial target population for prevention
of rape. The challenge now is to turn evidence into action, to create a safer future for the next
generation of women and girls," she said in an interview with BBC.
The report comes amidst the news that prosecutors of the four men found guilty of the fatal gang
rape of a 23-year-old in New Delhi, India in December say the men should face the death penalty for
the crime that shocked the “collective consciousness,” of the people, BBC News reported.
25
In an address to Judge Yogesh Khanna, public prosecutor Dayan Krishnan said on Tuesday that the
"sentence which is appropriate is nothing short of death”.
In December, the female student was tricked into boarding an out-of-service bus by the men before
they violently raped and tortured her.
The woman was flown to a Singapore hospital but subsequently died of her internal injuries as a
result of the rape.
The incident sparked international outrage and widespread protests across the country calling upon
the government to introduce harsher penalties for serious rape cases as well as increasing prison
sentences.
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—By Asawin Suebsaeng
Wednesday September 25, 2013 7:56 AM PDT
12. This Indian Sketch Comedy
Group Is Taking on Rape Culture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hC0Ng_ajpY&feature=player_embedded#t=0
26
The above video—staged as a public service announcement—has a message for women dealing
with the trauma of rape and sexual assault: "It's your fault." Two Indian women (played by noted
Bollywood actress Kalki Koechlin and TV personality Juhi Pande) talks about how women cause rape
because "men have eyes" and women often dress in provocative clothing. (The "provocative" clothing
includes thick yellow raincoats and spacesuits.)
"It's my fault," Pande says, as a stranger drags her away out of the blue. The pair run down a whole
list of other ways women can cause rape to happen to them. "Another way women shamelessly
propagate rape is by working late into the night," Pande says. "Ladies, why work late and be
independent? In fact, why work at all? That's what husbands are for. Fun fact: If he's your
husband...it's not rape."
Later in the video, Koechlin is shown bloodied, with gauze on her head. "If you tired of being
humiliated by rape, you can always go to the cops and be humiliated by them instead!" she informs
female viewers.
The video is, of course, satire. It ends with this simple note:
YouTube
Posted to YouTube last Thursday, the video was created by All India Bakchod, an Indian sketch and
stand-up comedy troupe influenced by comedians such as Louis C.K. and Patrice O'Neal. The video
has since gained significant international attention for its blasting of rape culture, victim-blaming, and
India's rape epidemic. (The sketch is in English, but there are hopes for a Hindi version.)
"I don't think we even expected much of a national response or for people to get the sarcasm behind
it," Gursimran Khamba, an AIB co-founder, tells Mother Jones. "The fact that so many women and
men across the world identified with it has been heartening but also made the experience more real
because you realize the magnitude of the problem and the kind of attitudes women have to deal
with."
Khamba runs All India Bakchod with Tanmay Bhat, Rohan Joshi, and Ashish Shakya. It all began as a
podcast, which then evolved into AIB live shows, which then became a comic enterprise that includes
creating online sketches. The group's name is play on the country's All India Radio; "Bakchod" is
slang for talking trash—because the four eschew political correctness.
Facebook
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AIB's live performances regularly tackle social issues, religion, politics, and taboo topics. In their
current live show (titled The Sex Show), they dedicate an hour and a half of sketch comedy and
stand-up to the subject of the Indian sexual experience. "It's Your Fault" was inspired by their disgust
toward the "hateful remarks" hurled at rape victims in India.
"We had been toying around with the idea of talking about how the police and society say stupid
things to blame everyone but the perpetrators and did some live stand-up on the issue...in 2012 in
our year-end news comedy special," Khamba says. "Since then the idea kept bouncing around until
we started our YouTube sketch show."
The sketch was shot in mid-September, and they spent a few days seeking feedback from family,
friends, and professors. Since it was uploaded to YouTube last week, it has gained over a million
views.
"At no point have we trivialized rape, at no point have we added any frivolity to it," sketch costar Pande told NDTV. "It's very dark and it's treated with a certain bit of sarcasm. It's not just
education...it's about changing mindset, changing upbringing."
Front page image: Screenshot: All India Bakchod/YouTube
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG is a reporter at the Washington, DC, bureau of Mother Jones. For
more of his stories, click here. You can also follow him on Twitter. Email tips, insights, and
anger to asuebsaeng [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS | TWITTER
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28
You are here: Home > News & Features
Friday, April 26, 2013
13. Saudi Arabia finally says no
to domestic violence
The King Khalid Foundation's anti-domestic violence ad (translated from Arabic by BuzzFeed).
It's 2013, but Saudi Arabia has only just started informing its
citizens that domestic violence is wrong.
The Middle Eastern country — which is ranked 131st out of 134 countries for gender parity in the
World Economic Forum's 2012 Global Gender Gap Report — has released its first ever advertising
campaign condemning violence against women.
The poster features a woman in a burqa with a black eye next to the slogan "Some things can't be
covered: Fighting women's abuse together".
It is the first ad for the King Khalid Foundation's No More Abuse campaign, which encourages Saudi
women to report domestic violence.
29
Currently, all Saudi women are under the guardianship of a man, usually their father, brother or
husband, so most domestic abuse is not reported. Violence against children, particularly female
children, is also believed to be endemic.
"The phenomenon of battered women in Saudi Arabia is much greater than is apparent on the
surface," the No More Abuse website reads.
"It is a phenomenon found in the dark. We want to achieve justice for all women and children
exposed to abuse in all parts of the Kingdom."
It's been a big year for women's rights in Saudi Arabia. In August, two athletes became the first Saudi
women to compete at an Olympic Games.
Women are forbidden from playing sport in the conservative country, but the rules were relaxed to
allow Sarah Attar, 19, and Wojdan Shaherkhani, 16, to compete, although they had to do so in a full
burqa.
More about Domestic abuse:
Nigella Lawson's fatal attraction
Nigella Lawson photographer witnessed '27 minutes of madness'
Report: One in three women are victims of domestic violence
Nigella Lawson takes off wedding ring
Escaping domestic violence: A survivor's story
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