Unfriendly Fire: One In Three Female U.S. Service Members Are Sexually Assaulted

The rate of sexual assaults within the US military exceeds that of the general population. A Pentagon report earlier this year found one in three female service members are sexually assaulted at least once during their enlistment. Sixty-three percent of nearly 3,000 cases reported last year were rapes or aggravated assaults. Despite what some have called an epidemic of military sexual trauma, the delivery of healthcare to women veterans remains grossly inadequate.

A documentary by French journalist and filmmaker Pascale Bourgaux, titled, Rape in the Ranks: The Enemy Within addresses this epidemic by featuring and highlighting the lives of three women who were sexually assaulted while serving in the U.S. armed forces. One of the victims, Tina Priest, was found dead in Iraq in March 2006, just weeks after she had accused a male soldier of raping her. Her family was told she took her own life, but they don't believe that. They think she may have been killed because she came forward with the rape accusation.

When asked about her daughter's death Joy goes on to say: "She died in Iraq from what the Army says was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to her chest. That's what the Army says. I don't-I don't know how she died. I want to find out how she died." "There are so many different opinions. I don't-I don't see her killing herself. But if she did, I can understand why [she did]." "Yes, because of the trauma that she had been through with the rape and the way that people treated her afterwards. And so, I can see how she would be depressed enough to do that. But it's not like her."

At her own expense, Joy Priest consulted a ballistics specialist. Today, this independent expert seriously questions the official theory of suicide.

Now I can't say definitively what actually happened to Tina Priest, in regard to her death, her sexual assault, however, fits into the narratives of many former and current female service members and the Pentagon's own report. Before I begin to focus on the raw data, there is another tragic story that demands our attention.

In an 2008 article from the fall issue of Ms. Magazine, we are told of the case of Army Private LaVena Johnson, just 19 years old, found dead on her military base in Balad, Iraq in July 2005. At first the Army initiated a homicide investigation, then suddenly, without explanation, closed it and ruled her death a suicide by an M-16 rifle. Yet her parents said she had been calling home every day, always sounding happy and healthy.

When her father, Dr. John Johnson, a veteran of the Army himself, viewed his daughter's body at the funeral home, he noticed several suspicious factors. Her face was bruised, the gunshot wound did not match the description in the autopsy and white uniform gloves had been glued onto her hands. He later gained access to photographs that showed abrasions to her face, a broken nose, burns on her hands, signs of sexual abuse and more burns to her back and genital area.

He also learned that she had been re-clothed after her death, dragged across the ground and set on fire inside a KBR-owned tent. Johnson and his wife believe that their daughter was raped, murdered and burned to cover the evidence.

The article then goes on to tell us that the Johnson's efforts to reopen their daughter's case have been continually blocked by the Army. How do we respond when the sworn protectors, become the attackers and rapists of their own?

The Pentagon's annual report on sexual assault shows a sharp 8 percent increase overall in reports of sexual assault over last year's survey, but data compiled for the report show an even sharper 26 percent increase specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan. Defense officials attribute the increase in part to greater awareness to report sexual assault and rules that make it easier to report sexual assaults.

In fiscal year 2008, the Pentagon says the military services received a total of 2,923 reports of sexual assault involving service members as victims or assailants compared to the 2,688 reports filed in fiscal year 2007 --- Fiscal year 2008 is defined as beginning on October 1, 2007 and ending on September 30, 2008.

Dr. Kaye Whitley, Director of Defense Department's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, believes that the increase in reports means the Department's policy of encouraging victims to come forward is making a difference. A great deal of that confidence comes from the U.S. military's implementation of a, fairly recent, category of filing assaults.

Filing the assaults under a category known as restricted reporting removes barriers in reporting sexual assault crimes for military victims. Under this option, victims get access to psychological and medical care, but choose not to pursue a criminal investigation while maintaining their anonynimity. The victims then have a year to pursue charges if they change their mind. Restricted reporting was first offered as an option a few years ago because Pentagon officials said some victims were foregoing services rather than participate in the investigative process and risk their commanders being notified.

This program seems to me, however, a bit like blackmail. It says, essentially, that we will take you at your word that you have been raped or sexually assaulted; we will give you the cadre of services that you need, but we will allow your attacker to escape full or complete justice. In the face of these crimes against our female soldiers, our response should not be so tepid.

Additionally, of the sexual assaults reported and recorded by the Department of Defense in fiscal year 2007, half were met with no official action, a third were dismissed as unworthy of investigation and only 8 percent of those investigated were referred to Court Martial. Of those few military men found guilty of rape or sexual assault, the majority received punishments so mild they amounted to slaps on the wrist, conveying the message that men can do what they want to women in the military with little consequence.

In 2007, the Department of Veteran's Affairs reported that 20 percent of female veterans seen at its facilities nationwide said they had been raped or sexually assaulted while serving. Furthermore, the Department of Defense admits on its website that 80 percent of rapes in the military are not reported because women (and the men who are raped, too) fear ostracism, punishment and loss of careers. The rate of sexual assault and rape in the military is at least twice as high as it is among civilians.

The aforementioned ostracism is also touched on in the Bourgaux documentary. A military veteran, Stephanie, said she was too afraid to take action after she was sexually assaulted. She also lost her husband, who took his own life after serving in the military.

Here is Stephanie in her own words: "I was sexually assaulted. And when I went days later to see someone about it, because I was bleeding very heavily, she was a higher-ranking officer, and she told me, of course, that it was very stupid that I put myself in that situation. In so many words, she said that. And she asked me how could I not know that that could happen to me and kind of placed the blame on me."

"But I was also an officer, and I should have been the one to step up to the plate at that time. So I was guilty, too, of telling people, Well, you should move on and go on with your career.' So I was guilty, too, of that. And I think it's a very common attitude to encounter in the military, unfortunately."

Stephanie's story should give us some idea about the challenges that our women in the military face in regard to rape and sexual assault. Attitudes that are so pervasive and entrenched, that U.S. female service members cannot even, at times, depend on one another for understanding or assistance.

On October 6th of this year, Sen. Al Franken pushed through an amendment that would withhold defense contracts from companies like Halliburton if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court. A powerful impetus for this amendment was the gang-rape of former Halliburton/KBR contractor Jamie Leigh Jones. She was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job. As a result of this new law, female contractors now have protections that they did not have before. The American female soldier appears to not have the same level of protection.

In the United States, there are more women serving in the Armed Forces than in any other period in American history. More than 190,000 female US soldiers have served in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East since 2003, which means one in seven soldiers are women. At least 450 women have been wounded in Iraq, seventy-one have died-more female casualties and deaths than in the Korean, Vietnam and first Gulf Wars combined.

What do we believe our wives, mothers, daughters and sisters deserve? Isn't it a bitter and cruel irony that a great deal of what we say we are fighting for in Afghanistan is greater freedoms and security for Afghani women? As it stands today, the American female service member has a greater chance of being sexually assaulted by her fellow male comrades-in-arms than she does of being killed by the enemy. When they signed up and took the oath, they were prepared to make sacrifices, even the ultimate one. This should not; and indeed cannot, be one of them.

Sources:

Department of Defense FY07 Report on Sexual Assault in the Military

The Scandal of Military Rape

Sexual assault in military 'jaw-dropping,' lawmaker says

Sexual Assault in the Military: A DoD Cover-Up?

UI, VAMC Researchers Study Women's Risk Of Rape In Military