The Invisible War: New Film Exposes Rape, Sexual Assault Epidemic in U.S. Military

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Comment by Tony Nuspl on September 29, 2012 at 1:09pm

Lawsuit: Pentagon denied rape victims their constitutional rights
By Jeff Black, NBC News, 28 Sept 2012

Nineteen veterans and active-duty service members from the Army and Air Force allege in a new lawsuit filed Friday that they were sexually assaulted while in the military and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other leaders denied them their constitutional rights of due process after reporting the crimes.

The 15 women and four men named in the suit were all retaliated against after reporting rapes and were denied the right to have their cases heard by an impartial party, Burke said. In the military, senior commanders are in charge of determining whether reported sexual assaults will be referred to military courts.

Related: Victims of sexual assault in military say brass often ignore pleas ...

“Anyone who has looked closely at these types of cases knows that we have a disgraceful system,” Burke told NBC News. “It is controlled by the chain of command. These rape survivors were all denied entry into a court system, and they were retaliated against.”

While each case has different facts on the time and place of the assault, they demonstrate a pattern of a systematic failure of leadership and oversight, Burke said, explaining why Panetta is named in the suit.

The lawsuit filed Friday comes on the heels of a rare case of an Army general being charged with sexual assault and a scandal at Lackland Air Base in San Antonio, Texas, in which at least in which at least a dozen military instructors are accused of sexually assaulting young female recruits.

"This has been going on for years," Burke said. "Clearly, keeping these cases inside the military system isn't working." 

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/28/14127398-lawsuit-pentago...

Comment by Tony Nuspl on August 15, 2012 at 2:35pm

Sexual Assault Cases Flood Military Courts

Aug 13, 2012

Military.com| by Sarah Blansett and Michael Hoffman

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III faced stern questions over the service’s sexual assault scandal at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, where at least 38 female recruits have reported that basic training instructors have sexually assaulted them. One instructor convicted of raping a female recruit has received a 20-year jail sentence.
A report by the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office of the Department of Defense found that 64 percent of convicted sexual assault perpetrators were discharged from the military.

“That means we are retaining one in three sex offenders,” he said.

Welsh’s suggestion the Air Force create a test to screen out potential sex predators met skeptical responses from the military lawyers and sexual assault advocates contacted for this article. None could think of an existing test or screening process to prevent sexual predators from joining the military.

http://www.military.com/daily-news/2012/08/13/sex-assault-cases-flo...

Comment by Tony Nuspl on May 22, 2012 at 12:05pm

Gone. Finished. "Thanks, but no thanks" for your service.

"Whatever we might think of war, the systematic abuse of the enlisted and our veterans is an ongoing disgrace as old as this country." ~Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, contributing editor at The American Conservative

Now it turns out that after shock-integrating women into what is still largely an obdurate, misogynistic institution, the Pentagon is ill-equipped to deal with the staggering rise of rape and assault, the predatory behavior and harassment, and the callous nature of battlefield commanders, who in a growing number of documented cases, have reacted to the plight of young female service members with the grace of Pleistocene Neanderthals.

“In a system that is entirely built on rank and intimidation, it is no wonder that survivors do not come forward more often about the most brutal and horrifying experience of their lives,” said Anu Bhagwati, executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) in an interview with Stars and Stripes in April.

According to the Pentagon’s most recent data (.pdf), 3,192 military sexual assaults were reported in fiscal year 2011, an increase of 1 percent from 2010. The key here is even the military admits that the vast number of assaults are not reported. The Department of Defense (DoD) estimates that in 2010, for example, only 13.5 percent of assaults were reported, indicating that the total number was closer to 19,000.

Of the 3,192 reported assaults, only 8 percent went to trial.

The Rape of Our Military Women

by Kelley B. Vlahos, May 15, 2012

http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2012/05/14/the-rape-of-our-milit...