This blog may be the most shocking and gruesome realization you’ve come by in a while, uncovering horrific and gruesome secretes kept from the public eye by top ranking Military Officials. After realizing these disgusting secrete that lies within what many esteem the most respected entity of our Nation - the Military - I’ve had this urge to stand in front of recruitment offices with a sign, reading: “Warning: If you’re a female, expect to get rapped while serving your country.” This is no joke. soldiers serving in the United States Military, especially female soldiers (though men included), have a new threat that they face. This threat does not come from the enemy, but, rather, from their fellow U.S. soldiers. Stories are slowly emerging from service men and women of widespread, rampant and unreluctant sexual assault and rape by their own people. It’s reaching a point now where we can consider this an epidemic — an epidemic that’s slowly coming into public awareness.[1] Studies show that roughly 2/3 of service women have received unwanted sexual attention while serving. No, this is not a mere “spank on the ass,” this includes events of rape and attempted rape. The term recently coined for this is MST, or Military Sexual Trauma.
From the Department of Defenses own statistical publications, “9 percent of women in the Marines, 8 percent of women in the Army, 6 percent of women in the Navy and 4 percent of women in the Air Force and Coast Guard were victims of rape or attempted rape in one year alone”[2]. Note how the unseeking eye can easily be mislead by these statistics. The minimal duration one can serve in the military is 4 years. That means, for instance, 40% of U.S. Female Marines will be raped or try to be rapped within a 4 year period of service. These figures only included the instances that have been reported; if it’s one thing people know and understand about rape victims is that they often tend to not report the horrific experience they’ve had to endure due to the shame they feel associated with it. In society, for example, only 16% of rapes end up getting officially reported[3].
In a regular society, if an individual gets raped, they can go to the police and report it. Action will be taken to catch the criminal, and individuals in your private and professional life need not know about the rape incident. However, the military is far different. Unfortinatly, many women don’t report their sexual abuse to their commanding officer for fear of wreaking their military careers. Other times, it was their commanding officer that raped them in the first place, which may leave the victim feeling incapable of fighting for their case to be taken seriously. Moreover, when a rape does indeed get reported, the case often goes unpressed, and the accused individual almost never gets prosecuted for his heinous sex crime. Rape is often blown off among military officers, in a “boys will be boys” sort of manner.
At this point, you may be wondering why isn’t this understood by the American People. Why do people even consider joining the U.S. Military? The government is good at keeping secretes well hidden, for the truth is far too shameful to be made publicized. It is unfortunate that Military Recruiters do not inform their female (and even male) recruits of the high risk of being raped or suffereing from MST while serving, therefore recruits usually end up joining with no knowledge of this epidemic whatsoever. Are you the least bit disturbed by the information presented here so far? Well, go grab yourself a bucket, you have yet to hear about how the military treats their rapists. What possibly makes this alarming rape epidemic even more notably disturbing is how the U.S. Military handles rape cases. According to the Department of Defenses own statistics, 74-85% of soldiers convicted of rape or sexual assault leave the military with honorable discharges.[2] An hour able discharge means that their their rape crime won’t even appear on their record, as if they’ve done nothing wrong — thus the word “honorable.” I wounder what, exactly, the military believes is honorable about the act of rape, as it’s a known fact that rape victens often carry emotional wounds for the rest of their life due to the incident. On a side note, I’d like to add that this isn’t the first time acts of sexual abuse by America’s men in uniform have been reported. The infamous Abu Ghraib incident, where accounts of “abuse, torture, rape and homicide of prisoners [POWs]”[3] were reported, had very similar characteristics. Such abuse was supposedly authorized by Secretary Donald Rusmfeld under the Bush Administration. Read below:
“The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation … playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably … Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques.” She said that this was contrary to the Geneva Convention and quoted the same “Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind”. According to Karpinski, the handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: “Make sure this is accomplished”.[5] Put your mouse on the area below in order to see pictures.
Many uninformed Americans believe the Abu Graib incident — where soldiers raped Iraqi prisoners — was our military at it’s absolute lowest; an isolated event of the sorts. George Bush proudly proclaimed to the world that Abu Graib does not represent our Military. I don’t mean to compare the greater of two evils, but I suppose we need to decide which one is worse: Soilders raping Iraqis, or soilders raping fellow soilders. Though, there are no “leaked” images of women soldiers being pinned down by a man while he forces her to engage in intercourse with him as we have with the Abu Graib incident above.
What could be the cause of this rape epedemic?
Well, there’s several ideas one can speculate on (and note that this is pure speculation here). We first have to acknowledge that, tragically, rape is always going to occur; but the question is: Why is it more prominent in the military than in society? Here’s one interesting theory by a senior ranking officer of the U.S. Air Force, who quoted a general that spoke of using demoralization as a weapon of war, asserting that — in order to demoralize other populations [the enemy] — we must first demoralize our own population [our soldiers].
“It’s mainly the US Military, training them [soilders] to become like this, with the understanding as it was told to me when I was in squadron officer school there was a general who said: “We do not win a war by killing the other army, we win a war by demoralizing the civilian population. By doing that, when you harm someone (emotionally, physically, mentally, sexually), when you train your own to become this abriant bunch of people who will harm and rape their own, people become like sheep, or they become overly aggressive, in which you can then start to destabilize global populations. that’s the intent, and is based on a lot of my research.”
Again, here’s a quote from an article I found (citation provided below) in which a Navy Admiral speaks of a war being fought through demoralizing civilian populations:
While at a military training school a general officer responded to a question concerning a Navy Admiral who was simply retired without punishment after groping the breasts of a female Navy dental technician “[he] the admiral served with distinction for 26 years.” The same general went on to state that a war is waged not against another military but against it’s civilian population, it was learned in the Vietnam war that if you break the spirit of the civilian population the military will not fight.
I cannot confirm the legitimacy of these claims, but it seems (from people who are actually in the military) that these methods of war are present knowledge. To what extent they are being used in Iraq, I do not know, nor will I attempt to speculate. Other, more simple theories as to why this rape epidemic is occurring is because, as stated in the second quote above, soldiers tend to become broken down by war; we’d expect humans to break down and lash out occasionally if they’re getting shot at constantly, fearing death every time they drive their Hum-Vs down a road, and stressed out by the performance that’s expected of them to “get the job done,” as military leaders like to say.
Final thoughts on joining the U.S. Military:
The qualities and characteristics that the Military looks for in a solider are usually not found in a civilian, thus methods to “convert” ones mindset are carried out through a series of tough, emotionally challenging and somewhat disturbing tasks with the intent of conversion into a more “cold-hearted” individual that can act upon orders rather than thought and rationale. It’s vitally important that people — both men and women — realize what the military can do to an individual, and if one wants to subject themselves to the mental trauma of warfare, the strong possibilities of experiencing rape (Military Sexual Trauma), and the possibility of needing to kill a fellow human being during combat. The objective of this article was, however, to mainly to raise awareness of Military Sexual Trauma and the rape epidemic facing our Armed Forces. Until this rape epidemic begins to slow down, I would recommend you taking steps to encourage people to not join the military (unless they don’t mind running the risk of rape). Awareness of MST must be raised, immediately. Souces:
- http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/336/index.html NOW on PBS
- http://citybeat.com/2002-08-22/news2.shtml City Beat
- http://www1.va.gov/wvhp/page.cfm?pg=20 Military Sexual Trauma Program
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_prisoner_abuse Abu Graib Wiki
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_prisoner_abuse Abu Graib Wiki#Donald Rusmfeld
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDO9a03oZY0&feature=dir Rape Victim Story onYoutube
- http://www.geocities.com/gold_star_mother/staaamp.html
- http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-marshall30jan30,0,510658.story