Rape & the U.S. Millitary

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1/3rd of Women in US Military Raped
Posted By Ole Ole Olson On January 26, 2010 @ 1:27

According to NPR [2], “In 2003, a survey of female veterans found that 30 percent said they were raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans who were seeking help for post-traumatic stress disorder found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving. And a 1995 study of female veterans of the Gulf and earlier wars, found that 90 percent had been sexually harassed.”

The BBC [3] recently reported on The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq by Helen Benedict. This book examines the extreme difficulties female soldiers have in serving abroad. Benedict interviewed several women in the military to get a deeper understanding of the issue, and some of their stories were real eye openers.

Army specialist Chantelle Henneberry spoke of some of her experiences in Iraq, “Everybody’s supposed to have a battle buddy in the army, and females are supposed to have one to go to the latrines with, or to the showers " that’s so you don’t get raped by one of the men on your own side. But because I was the only female there, I didn’t have a battle buddy. My battle buddy was my gun and my knife.”

Another study concluded that 90% of all women serving are sexually harassed. Another one estimates that 90% of all the rapes do not get reported, despite supposedly easier ways to report the crime with confidentiality since 2005. Either way, this appears to be an epidemic that needs to be dealt with.

An online discussion from a former soldier whose identity is being protected had this to say, “At least a rape ends. It’s the day-to-day degradation that eats at you. None of my friends who were raped on active duty reported it. Or if we tried, we were told to shut up for ‘morale.’ Working with your rapist on a daily basis isn’t a lot of fun, believe me.”

How the military is dealing with this appears to demonstrate a pattern of sweeping it under the rug. In 2008, 62% of those that were convicted of sexual assault or rape received very lenient punishments such as demotion, suspension, or a written reprimand.

This problem is not confined to the US military either. This abuse is rampant among private defense contractors overseas as well, as recently highlighted by the recent press about Jamie Leigh Jones. Ms. Jones was in Iraq in 2005 when seven Halliburton/KBR employees drugged and brutally gang-raped her. Her injuries were so extensive that she had lacerations to her vagina and anus, her breast implants were ruptured, and her pectoral muscles torn. The response of KBR was to lock her in a shipping container with only a bed, and to deny her food, water, and medical treatment. The rape kit that was taken after she regained consciousness was mysteriously lost.

This crime eventually led to an amendment being added to the defense appropriations bill by Sen. Al Franken (D-MN). This would require defense contractors to allow their employees access to US courts in cases of rape or sexual assault, regardless of where they are stationed. The 30 Republican senators voted against this amendment are currently being humiliated on the Republicans for Rape website [5] and by John Stewart on the Daily Show.

The culture of sexual violence against women that is allowed to exist in both the US military and private contractors needs to come to an end. When almost a third of all women serving are raped, and over two thirds sexually assaulted, this problem is rampant and systemic.

Full article: http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/01/26/13rd-of-women-in-us-military-raped/print/

[2] NPR: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103844570
[3] BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8005198.stm
[5] website: http://www.republicansforrape.org/legislators/

Referenced Daily Show clip: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-14-2009/rape-nuts

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@Diest TKO,

Does anyone here willing to give any credit of any kind to those numbers?

This rather reminds me of the silly claims of overwhelming numbers of rapes at West Point a few years back.

Young females first/second years cadets break rules by dating upper classmen who sometimes with the aid of alcohol get said female cadets in bed. Some of the female cadets after the hangovers pass then regret having sex and claimed it were rapes.

Not my idea of rape that is defines as far as I am concern as force, threat of force or involuntary drugging including alcohol. The word of the day here is involuntary.

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@Diest TKO,

This makes me wonder (for the first time - I never really thought about it before I read this) if the military is a receptacle for a larger than average percentage of violence-prone and mysogynistic men in our society. Or are all these women being raped by the same few men?

No offense to any law abiding military personnel. But these statistics are really pretty staggering. In effect, if you're a woman who goes into the military you're much more likely than not to be raped or sexually harrassed- and have it covered up or condoned by those around the rapists and harrassers?
What's the matter with these people? Or is it the environment?

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@aidan,

Aidan you would need to look at the studies at how they define rape and sexual harassment and the general methods used in the studies just to start with.

There is no way on this earth or any other earth that such studies and those numbers are anything to do with the real universe on it face.

Such studies with such large numbers are nothing new and had been done for College Campuses for example in the past.

When you take the time to dig into such studies you find that they had so many large holes in them that you could drive an M1 tank through any of them.

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http://dad4justice.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-women-lie-about-rape-study.html

U.S. Air Force study, “The False Rape Allegation in the Military Community (1983) investigated 556 cases of alleged rape, and found a 60% rate of false accusations. As part of the study, women who were found to have made false accusations were asked “WHY?”

Motivations given by the women who acknowledged they had made false accusations:

REASON PERCENT

revenge 20

To compensate for feelings of guilt or shame 20

Thought she might be pregnant 13

To conceal an affair 12

To test husbands’ love 9

Mental/emotional disorder 9

To avoid personal responsibility 4

Failure to pay, or extortion 4

Thought she might have caught VD 3

Other 6

TOTAL 100%

The study found that most false accusations are “instrumental” " they served a purpose. If the purpose isn’t avoiding guilt, or getting revenge, it might serve a more focused purpose, for example, telling her parents; “I didn’t just go out and get pregnant, I was raped.” Or, telling her husband, “I didn’t have an affair, it wasn’t my fault, I was raped.”

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@BillRM,

Now I'm wondering if the military attracts unbalanced women...

(not making a statement - just wondering which set of statistics to believe because they're both pretty disturbing)

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@aidan,

Neither in my opinion just poor studies and or studies design to show the military in a bad light but once more they had way way overdone it and lost all creditability.

Here is another study of rape and the military.

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:2TBgwAcqLx8J:www.counterquo.org/assets/files/reference/The-Use-and-Misuse-of-Data-on-Rape.pdf+false+reports+of+rapes+in+military+studies&cd=15&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

C4. Rape in the MilitaryThe Armed Forces 2002 Sexual Harassment Survey, conducted by the Department of Defense, found that 3% of women and 1% of men were victims of sexual assault (rape and attempted rape) in the twelve months prior to filling out the survey.

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http://www.counterquo.org/assets/files/reference/The-Use-and-Misuse-of-Data-on-Rape.pdf

Prevalence of rape in the military is another area in which media misstatements often
occur. Perhaps this is because research reports on the military commonly report on a range
of conduct, from rape to unwanted sexual attention, sexual coercion, or sexist behavior.
Unfortunately, it is altogether common to find the larger percentages for sexual harassment
incorrectly cited as rape prevalence figures. The erroneous one-in-three figure is commonly
cited by journalists writing about rape in the military (Wright, 2008).In addition, some research on sexual assault in the military reports that large numbers of
recruits are victims of sexual assault before they enter the military (a provocative finding).
That, however, should not be confused with a percentage of those who are rape victims
while in the military. Data from medical and mental health providers that large percentages
of women patients were victims of sexual assault should also not be confused with general
prevalence figures. For example, one recent piece on the subject of rape in the military
(Harman, 2008), began with data that 41% of female veterans seen at a VA health center
T H E U S E ( A N D M I S U S E ) O F D A T A O N R A P E :
R E S T OR I N G S E X U A L A S S A U L T T O T H E N A T I O N A L A G E N D A
P A G E 1 6
D O C UME N T T I T L E
said they were victims of sexual assault while in the military. Although this is important and
interesting data, and some indication of a problem, it should not be cited as proof for the
prevalence of sexual assault in the military, since it reports on a subset of women who are
seeking help for a problem that may have been directly related to the sexual assault.
III. Strategies of the Rape Denial Campaign
A. Attacking

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@BillRM,

Quote:

conducted by the Department of Defense

That pretty much says it all.

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@BillRM,

So your point is that you just saying they weren't raped (as much) is a valid counter argument to their claim that they were raped? Why not just call them liars?

You have to do better than that.

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@Diest TKO,

Quote:

So your point is that you just saying they weren't raped (as much) is a valid counter argument to their claim that they were raped? Why not just call them liars?

You have to do better than that.

I am saying that 30 percent of women in the military was not raped nor had 30 percent of military women had claimed they had been raped and only a fool would think that is true in any way or in any manner.

That in fact no study had indeed shown that and as the last cut and paste article that I had posted with link stated that is a misused of the studies and is gotten by adding all complains of any possible form of sexual misconduct together and falsely classifying them as rapes complains.

I am shock that NPR would be guilty of such nonsense and I am even more shock that anyone with a brain cell working would think that one in three women in the military had been raped.

Hopefully my position is clear to you now.

Once more see below.

http://www.counterquo.org/assets/files/reference/The-Use-and-Misuse-of-Data-on-Rape.pdf

Prevalence of rape in the military is another area in which media misstatements often occur. Perhaps this is because research reports on the military commonly report on a rangeof conduct, from rape to unwanted sexual attention, sexual coercion, or sexist behavior.

Unfortunately, it is altogether common to find the larger percentages for sexual harassment incorrectly cited as rape prevalence figures. The erroneous one-in-three figure is commonly cited by journalists writing about rape in the military (Wright, 2008).In addition, some research on sexual assault in the military reports that large numbers of recruits are victims of sexual assault before they enter the military

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@JTT,

So you are of the opinion that 1/3 of all women in the military had been raped?

I seen similar numbers over the decades express for college campuses including the one that I had attended and all such claims are nonsense on it face.

Would you care to buy a bridge in NY that I own by the way?

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@Diest TKO,

Quote:

Why not just call them liars?

Second comment is it not indeed strange that you somehow see no problem with libeling a large percent of American male soldiers as being rapists in the military but somehow questioning that all claims by all American women in the American military of rape as true full is somehow shameful?

The last studies I had seen seem to indicate roughly half of all claims of rapes in or out of the military are true-full.

Some men are rapists and some women are willing to lies about being rape.

All this is beside the point that there is nowhere near a thirty percent claim rate of rape by women in the military.

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So lets say the 1/3 stat is bogus. Is rape a problem in the military or not? If 1% of women are being raped in the military as you claim, maybe we should compare that to the rest of society.

A 2005 Dept of Justice survey found that there were 191,670 victims of rape or sexual assault reported in the USA. the same survey found that 91% of rape victims were female. That give us 174,420 women raped in 2005. The census numbers for 2006 said the US population is 293,655,404. If we assume that the population is 50.7% female (estimate based on 2008 survey) that gives us a total of 148,883,290 women in the USA.

174,420/148,883,290 = 0.0011715216664006 ~ 0.12%

Compare: 1%, 0.12%

So. You said 1% of women are rapped in the military. I guess that's not so bad, it only means that you are 8.3 times as likely to be raped in the military. I guess we can close the case on this one.

Everybody head home.

This topic doesn't hinge on the 1/3 statistic being accurate. Even if the 2008 survey is right (and there is reason to believe it is a bit protective of the DoD), the problem is still significant.

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@Diest TKO,

Quote:

I guess that's not so bad, it only means that you are 8.3 times as likely to be raped in the military. I guess we can close the case on this one.

One repeat one rape in or out of the military is a problem still I question if rape is more of a problem in the military then anywhere else where we also have groups of young men and women living together such as on a college campus.

Taking the whole population of women of all ages as you had done and comparing it to the real rape figures in the military is silly and pointless. My wife is for example at a lower risk then a 19 year old woman in or out of the military. Her two late 30s something married daughters are also at a lower risk then that 19 year old young woman.

Before pointing a finger at the US military and claiming they have a larger problem then the rest of society you need to run your numbers again the same age groups of young women that are not part of the military

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@BillRM,

I'm not here to do the homework for your arguments. Your declaration that my figures are silly and pointless is truly underwhelming.

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@Diest TKO,

Sorry but your first claim of 30 percent is beyond silly and your fall back position does not hold water either for the reason already given.

Let face it your anti-military position of calling a large percent of our young male soldiers rapists had fallen down dead.

You just going to need to find other means of attacking the US military but when you do try to get a solid foundation of facts behind you.

I still can not get over how NPR fact checkers could had fallen down so badly in this case.

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@BillRM,

Yeah. Uh huh. Your reason given is it is silly, because you say so. The notion that I need to go off and do your homework for you to demonstrate that a 19 yr old service woman doesn't have a higher chance of getting raped than a non military 19 yr old is irrelevant since I already demonstrated that there is increased factor of 8.3 by being in the service alone.

Until you take the time to demonstrate your claim, I'm not giving it any of my time.

This isn't about attacking the military either. This is about calling out for the military to help itself. They don't benefit from this, and they can only have things be better by addressing this. This is very much about HELPING the military.

If you feel the military is better off by sweeping this under the rug, you're an idiot.

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@Diest TKO,

Quote:

Yeah. Uh huh. Your reason given is it is silly, because you say so. The notion that I need to go off and do your homework for you to demonstrate that a 19 yr old service woman doesn't have a higher chance of getting raped than a non military 19 yr old is irrelevant since I already demonstrated that there is increased factor of 8.3 by being in the service alone.

You compare the whole universe of American women of all ages including my 88 years old mother with the universe of military women and that is completely meaningless. Surprise my 88 year old mother is at lower risk of rape then a 20 year old servicewoman!!!!!!!!!

Quote:

This isn't about attacking the military either. This is about calling out for the military to help itself.

Calling them to help themselves by putting out completely false information such as 33 percent of women soldiers was raped in the military? Interesting way of helping.

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@BillRM,

Could your arguements be described as sticking your head in the sand.

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