The Portland Alliance, January 2003
I’m sure it’s no shocking revelation to Portland Alliance
readers that there is widespread sexual abuse in the armed forces. The Tailhook
Convention in 1990 is infamous, and this summer’s murders of four women
in six weeks by Fort Bragg soldiers will probably linger for some time, but
in between the splashy incidents that make headlines live the untold stories
that are a daily occurrence in the US military. Decorated veteran T. S. Nelson
has written a compelling documentary on the silence in between the occasional
media frenzy by incorporating her knowledge as a sexual trauma specialist
with official military reports and victims’ testimonies. There are many
books on sexual assault and many books on the military, but Nelson’s
research dramatically juxtaposes facts with personal accounts in a way that
vividly brings out the heartbreaking reality of this ongoing problem. First,
some facts:
• The Minneapolis Veterans’ Affairs Medical Center
found that attempted or completed sexual assaults were 20 times higher than
rates for other government workers.
• Navy spokesman Lieutenant Jeff Davis reported in 1998 that “Navy
figures recorded nearly seven rapes and more than eight sexual assaults each
month in the Pacific Fleet’s region since December 1997.”
• According to a 1995 Department of Defense study, in the previous 12
months, 86 percent of female Marines reported sexual harassment or assault,
as did 82 percent in the Army; 77 percent in the Navy;
• 74 percent in the Air Force; and 75 percent in the Coast Guard. 39
percent of males in the Army reported sexual harassment in the past 12 months,
as did 37 percent of men in all other branches of service.
• An Army survey obtained by Time magazine found spousal abuse to be
twice as high in the Army than in civilian life and concluded, “Each
week someone dies at the hands of a relative in uniform.”
• Women are discharged from the military for homosexuality three times
more often than men, with accusations of lesbianism often coming after servicewomen
refused sexual come-ons.
And now some of the testimonies that put a human face on the
above statistics:
“There is no way I would have reported what happened
to me, not after I saw what happened to other women who came forward. I wanted
to support them, but I felt I had to keep quiet to protect myself.”
“Command ordered me to ‘drop it and never accuse anyone of
rape again or I would live to regret it.’ Life was hell for me in that
unit after that.”
“The raping of my career by the Air Force I loved was far worse
than the rape of my body.”
“He [the doctor] told me that my command had asked him to kick
me out [of the service] anyway he could.”
“Can anyone explain the thought process behind punishing rape
with a letter of reprimand?”
Nelson approaches the solution by addressing what she sees as
the main avenue for improvement in the armed forces: effective leadership.
Military life is a top-down affair, and where leaders have been serious about
confronting sexual abuse in their ranks there have been large improvements.
Unfortunately, it is still more common to find commanders willing to ignore
(or actively participate in) sexual violence than ones willing to take charge
for ending such abuses.
If poor leadership is the clearest way to approach this problem,
outside accountability is a large part of the answer. A chain of command more
interested in saving face is not one working in the best interests of sexual
assault victims. As former Navy officer Carl Nyberg writes,
A finding that the command has a climate of sexism or racism
will damage, probably irreparably, the careers of the officers in the chain
of command. Therefore, supervisors desire investigations, especially of sexual
misconduct and incidents with racial overtones, to be handled “in house,”
where results of an investigation can be controlled. Telling investigators
to rewrite investigations until the right conclusions are reached is one of
the more heavy-handed methods of command influence. The chain of command,
up to the secretary of defense, also benefits when local commanders minimize
adverse publicity.
If military leaders won’t promote changes in the system
of handling sexual crimes for the sake of the servicepersons involved, they
might be persuaded to do something about stopping sexual criminals from victimizing
civilians. In the two years from 1995 to 1997, U.S. servicemen stationed in
Okinawa murdered 34 people, of which 23 were women and girls, in what amounts
to more than one murder every month. Most of these men received light sentences
considering the severity of their crimes.A constant theme throughout the
victims’ anecdotes is rage and disbelief that men convicted of rape were
given mere verbal reprimands and otherwise discharged from service without
further punishment for their violent assaults against fellow workers. That
the military releases known sexual offenders into society should be cause
for greater concern, but the few persons sounding the alarm are mainly victims
who came face to face with this astonishing ethical breach. I’ll let
them have the final word:
“Although he was transferred to a new job, it was
as supervisor of a clinic [a promotion] and a few months later he was given
another female to supervise.”
“He was allowed to retire early with only the loss
of one filthy stripe, thereby maintaining his retirement pay of chief.”
“Sure, they discharged him, but now he’s a
civilian free to rape other women. No one will know about his history in the
army. I’m sure his discharge papers are not stamped RAPIST, but they
should be.”
S. M. Berg is a local activist, writer and Alliance volunteer.
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