Sexual assault in the military: Congress pressures Pentagon to fix the system

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/09/sexual-assault-congress-pressures-pentagon

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Brian Lewis's career in the US navy ground to a halt after he was raped on board ship by a superior. Navy commanders made clear they regarded Lewis as the problem for demanding his attacker be brought to justice, and he was discharged as mentally unfit.

Olga Ferrer was in the air force when she was raped in a shower by an American serviceman during the Gulf war against Iraq two decades ago. Again, the military turned against the victim.

"The security police told me: just go back to your tent and go back to work tomorrow. I went back to my tent and I thought: how can I go back to work? I don't know who is my rapist. He could work with me every day. He could be talking to me," she said.

"They tell you that as a victim, you're the one who is disturbing the unit, you are the one doing wrong by the unit – so you're the one who needs to go."

Then there was the former army nurse who told a member of Congress that during her tours in Iraq and Afghanistan she was more afraid of being attacked by her fellow soldiers than she was of the enemy.

All are are among what veterans' groups say are thousands of former service members who have been sexually assaulted by their own colleagues only to discover that the military was more interested in preventing public embarrassment than disciplining the attackers.

Now, under pressure from Congress, the Pentagon is promising to "fundamentally change" a system that, among other things, allows junior commanders with no legal training to act as investigator, jury and judge in alleged rape cases.

Last year, nearly 3,200 rapes and sexual assaults were reported in the US military, slightly up on the year before. The defence department estimates that a further 19,000 go unreported.

Veterans' groups, such as the Service Women's Action Network (Swan), say that is in part because of a system in which rape allegations are not investigated by sexual crimes specialists, the military police or prosecutors, but by commanders frequently more interested in preventing a stain on their unit's reputation. Even if an officer regards an offender as guilty, he or she is free to impose a relatively minor punishment instead of referring the case to a court martial, particularly if the service member is regarded as essential to the outfit.

Swan says sexual assault is treated with such disregard in the military that one in ten of those accused are simply allowed to resign from the service before charges can be brought, and they cannot be touched by civilian courts.

Where it does come to trial, about one third of those convicted are permitted to remain in the forces.

'We keep talking and talking, and nothing ever changes'

Political pressure over the issue has been rumbling for years. Last month, Barack Obama spoke out.

"The men and women of the United States military deserve an environment that is free from the threat of sexual assault, and in which allegations of sexual assault are thoroughly investigated, offenders are held appropriately accountable, and victims are given the care and support they need," the president said.

Congressman Bruce Braley, a member of the veterans' affairs committee, told a Swan conference on Tuesday that the military is not taking the issue seriously enough.

"I'm very angry that we keep talking and talking, and nothing ever changes," he said.

Braley said he recently met with the defence secretary, Leon Panetta, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Martin Dempsey, and the army chief, General Ray Odierno, to press for more urgent action.

"Like most of those meetings, it was very informative and very polite, and nobody else in the room seemed to be pissed off. Because there were more senior members on the armed services committee there with us, I waited until the time was right and then I told them how pissed off I was because when they have the audacity to talk about a zero tolerance policy toward sexual harrassment and violence in the military when they aren't even close to being there, I get pissed off. And I told them that," he said.

"I said my wife teaches at a high school in Waterloo, Iowa – a very large high school – and they have a real zero tolerance policy which tells students if you bring a weapon to this school you will be given due process and then you will be expelled. That is a zero tolerance policy."

Another member of Congress, Chellie Pingree, was similarly exasperated with the military.

"We meet for the briefings, we hear from the military, and they say: Oh yeah, yeah – we've got a new policy, it's all working," she said. "How could we let this happen to our soldiers? Why aren't we there admitting it happened? Why aren't we there prosecuting the perpetrators? We get calls from people who said this happened to me in world war two."

'They disregarded the privacy laws'

Lewis was 20 and serving as a fire control technician on a warship when he was raped by another seaman, leaving him traumatised and with prostate damage. He went to a superior to report the man. As his complaint moved up the chain of command, Lewis said it was met with increasing hostility.

"The command didn't want to hear it. It was swept under the rug. The commanding officer's fitness reports are based on discipline under his command, and to admit you have a rapist on your ship doesn't look good," he said.

Lewis said that instead, the ship's commanders turned on him. They did not deny he had been raped but sought to get him off the vessel by saying it had affected his discipline.

"It was: this person is now making a stink. How do we get him off our ship quickly without harming ourselves in the process? They said that I was having behaviour problems and rape was why. It was a justification for getting rid of me. They disregarded the privacy laws. They told my mom that I was having behaviour problems, and the rape was why," he said.

Lewis said when he returned home, the whole family knew he had been sexually assaulted by another man. Some male relatives shunned him, believing it shameful or that he might have been a willing participant.<br />His attacker also left the ship, but Lewis said he was never charged.

"It was the blind eye of everything else is subordinate to the mission, and that should simply not be," he said.

Ferrer gives a similar account of a military indifference to the victim.

She was recruited into the air force in 1988 and endured sexual harassment on several occasions including a supervisor who came up behind her as she sat at a desk and laid his penis on her shoulder. She said that when she complained to her first sergeant, she was told she was a troublemaker.

"He said to me: women shouldn't be in the military," said Ferrer.

But it was not until she was posted to Bahrain on her 20th birthday in 1991 that she was physically attacked. Ferrer was based with thousands of soldiers and marines at a desert base under canvas.

"I went to take a shower, like I did every day," she said. "There was only one woman shower and the others were male showers. I took my clothes off and went into the shower stall and started to take a shower. I felt somebody was behind me. I figured it was one of the girls who'd been in the sink area doing their hair. Then he grabbed his arm completely around my neck and his body pressed against me. He was over six feet tall and tremendously strong," she said. "I could not get his grip off my neck. He kept squeezing my neck more and more and I kept feeling I was about to pass out. I remember the only thing I could think of was my son and thinking: God, let me survive it so I can see my son.

"He was so brutal. He sodomised me. He raped me. I must have passed out. When I came to the shower was still going. I was in the corner in so much pain."

Ferrer put back on her uniform and returned to her tent. She went with a fellow soldier to report the incident to the security police and to her first sergeant. Neither was interested in taking action, she said.

"They didn't take me to see a doctor. They did nothing. They just left me out there with the rapist for another six months," she said. "Finally a vice-commander went ahead and medevaced me to Germany because I was still in pain all that time later."

Ferrer said that there were other assaults on other women. Some felt so felt so threatened that the women's showers and tents were moved in front of police post and a guard was posted on the door to the washing facilities to make sure only women entered.

'They have to accept this is a terrible system'

Ferrer said the problem – which remains today – is that there was no independent official or body she could turn to for assistance.

"They have to accept this is a terrible system," she said. "Your commander decides. He's thinking of his promotion and where he's going to go next. Who wants to say my unit has a rapist? It makes him look bad."

Rachel Natelson, legal director at Swan, said that while in the civilian system the police investigation and prosecution serve distinct functions, in the military they are often combined in a single relatively junior officer who has no legal experience and invariably knows both the victim and the accused because they are under his or her command.

"In the military these roles are in conflict. It's effectively the boss who decides if there's a case," said Natelson. "On top of that, the military allows commanding officers to take into account the value of a soldier to a unit in deciding whether to prosecute or the punishment. It's called the good soldier defence."

Legislation making its way through Congress is intended to change some of that by requiring that the officer overseeing a case be at the rank of colonel or above, making it more likely they would not know the complainant or alleged perpetrator personally.

Natelson said that should help improve the situation but that "the authority to decide still lies with someone who is not an experienced prosecutor". She said that attempts to involve the justice department and other arms of government with relevant experience have met with resistance.

"The Pentagon is very good a convincing everybody else in the government that anything that happens in the military is the military's business alone," said Natelson. "The military has succeeded at marginalising the issue."

The impact of that policy is evident.

A US military survey revealed that one in five women in the US forces has been sexually assaulted, but most do not report it. Nearly half said that they "did not want to cause trouble in their unit". Others said that they did not see any point in reporting the assault because they did not expect the military to bring the attacker to justice.

Special victims unit

Last month, Panetta said the Pentagon has to turn that around.

"There is no silver bullet when it comes to this issue," he said. "But what is required is that everyone, from the secretary to the chair of the joint chiefs all the way down at every command level, be sensitive to this issue, and be aware that they bear the responsibility to take action on these cases. The most important thing we can do is prosecute the offenders."

The Pentagon said it will set up a "special victims unit" to treat attacks like crimes not complaints and require that better records be kept.

Some members of Congress remain sceptical.

Previous efforts at reform have not changed very much. The Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office was established seven years ago under pressure from Congress. But it has little authority over the handling of alleged assaults and has been dismissed by critics as responsible for not much more than compiling statistics.

Representative Niki Tsongas suggested last month that after meeting the chairman of the joint chiefs she was not filled with confidence.

"Chairman Dempsey acknowledged that despite all their efforts, they really haven't been able to make any appreciable difference with sexual assaults. They're becoming very concerned with it," she said.