Rape Nation

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http://www.alternet.org/rights/19134/

 

Rape Nation

 

By Kari Lydersen, AlterNet. Posted July 2, 2004.

 

From prisons to barracks and from Iraq to Tennessee,

military sexual abuse is running rampant.

 

As a new officer in the Air Force who trusted the

institution and the men she worked with, Dorothy

Mackey didn't think she would ever be sexually

assaulted by her fellow servicemen. She was wrong.

 

When a military ob-gyn did things during an

examination that didn't seem right, soon after she

joined the service in 1983, she tried to rationalize

her disturbing thoughts away. When she had another bad

experience with a military ob-gyn in 1986, at the

Spangcahlem Air Force base in Germany where she was

stationed, it was harder to look the other way.

 

" He sodomized me, " she said. " I started looking into

what happens in a normal ob-gyn examination, and that

is definitely not supposed to be part of it. "

 

But when she was violated again about a year later, it

was clear. Her group was on a training mission in

Spain, passing some downtime by playing volleyball. By

this time she was a sergeant, in charge of many of the

enlisted men there.

 

" I had had a few drinks, but I know my body really

well and I was not drunk, " she said. She asked a male

friend who was a first sergeant for a drink of water,

but after two gulps of it, she realized something was

very strange. She demanded to know what was in the

drink, but soon she was staggering and losing her

balance.

 

" In college everyone has had their moments, but I

never experienced anything like that, " she said. " I

knew I had been poisoned. "

 

She staggered inside and began violently vomiting.

 

" He was standing at the door laughing, " she said of

the supposed friend who gave her the drink.

 

" When I had nothing left to throw up I passed out and

he took me to his room. I woke up and there were four

men in the room playing cards, I remember them

laughing and saying, 'Sergeant I've never seen you

like this,' like they were glad I had loosened up and

was enjoying myself. I passed out again and the next

time I came to, he was on top of me, penetrating me. I

remember telling him no and then passing out again. I

woke up again to a loud knock on the door, someone who

was concerned about me asking how I was doing. He was

hiding behind the door naked with a full erection. I

knew if I didn't do something I would be raped again. "

 

Despite feeling like she didn't have the energy to

move she pulled herself out of the room and down the

hall, she said. Later when she tried to complain to

her superiors about the rape, no one wanted to hear

it.

 

Dorothy Mackey is not alone. She and other women

veterans recounted their experiences at the National

Summit of Women Veterans Issues in Washington, DC June

19th and 20th. As an officer, scores of women had come

to Mackey and told her about abuse and rapes they had

suffered, by officers, fellow enlisted men and

doctors. Many of the attacks involved servicemen

intentionally getting women drunk or drugging them and

taking them off base.

 

" When you are a new woman walking onto a military

base, you are like a deer and it's deer hunting

season, but you don't know it, " she said. " You think

you can trust these people, you believe in the mission

you are on together. "

 

In 1992, Mackey quit the service, mainly because of

the repeated incidences of sexual assault and domestic

violence and other wrong-doing that she had seen go

unpunished on the base. In 1994 she filed a civil

lawsuit in a district court in Dayton, Ohio against

the specific men who had assaulted her, including the

superiors who abused her when she tried to report the

previous assaults. The Justice Department decided to

represent the defendants, so the case was moved to

federal court. The Department of Justice attorney said

the case should not be brought to trial on the grounds

that it constituted a threat to national security,

representing a " disruption of good order, morale and

discipline. " After making its way through the appeals

courts, it ended up in front of the Supreme Court

which refused to hear the case in 1998 and again in

2000.

 

Meanwhile Mackey founded a group called Survivors Take

Action Against Abuse by Military Personnel (STAAMP) to

fight the rampant rape and sexual abuse in the

military and demand justice and reform. She says over

4,300 women have contacted her about being raped or

assaulted while in the service, and in the vast

majority of cases watching their attackers go

scot-free while they are humiliated and threatened for

speaking out about the attacks.

 

At a press conference during the National Summit of

Women Veterans Issues, women cited surveys indicating

that up to 50 percent of military women have

experienced sexual assaults, and 78 percent have

experienced sexual harassment. Because of the

intimidation and harassment that women face for

reporting assaults, the military's own numbers are

much lower. But even so, they show a rise in assaults

over the past few years. An analysis of Army records

and reports published by The Washington Post on June 3

showed that reported sexual assaults increased 19

percent from 1999 to 2002, from 658 to 753, and rapes

increased 25 percent, from 356 to 445.

 

A May 27 report from an Army task force stated that

the Army " does not have a clear picture of the sexual

assault issue " and lacks an " overarching policy " to

deal with the problem. The report was prepared because

of complaints by women's groups and lawmakers about

apparently increased assaults against servicewomen in

Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

During the National Summit, women pointed out that far

from being an isolated problem, the military nurtures

a culture of sexual violence and contempt for women

that is linked to the rape and sexual abuse of women

in occupied countries or countries where the U.S. has

military bases, as well as rapes and assaults of women

in U.S. prisons and jails. Rapes and sexual assaults

are also often known to be high in U.S. cities and

towns with military bases. On June 28, a Nashville

T.V. station reported that Fort Campbell soldier

Johnathan David Loynes was arrested for violently

kidnapping 10- and 13-year-old girls who lived nearby

and trying to force them to perform oral sex on him.

 

" It's all connected, " said Phoebe Jones, a member of

the group Global Women's Strike, which is joining

STAAMP and other women's groups in a campaign to

" STAAMP Out Rape by the Military. "

 

" You have prison guards here, like Charles Grainer

[implicated in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal], who go

to Iraq and abuse people there. Then you have soldiers

come back from Iraq or Afghanistan getting jobs as

prison guards, and they rape and abuse people. The

military could stop it if they want to, but they don't

want to. They're socializing men into doing this. "

 

Global Women's Strike has been in contact with women's

and human rights advocates in Iraq who say women

detainees and civilians are regularly raped and abused

there. A press release they put out alleges that as

part of the inquiry into abuses in Iraqi prisons,

Congressmen have been shown photos of gang rapes and

other abuses of women.

 

" They're suppressing the photos of women being raped

because the public would just be outraged, " said

Jones.

 

The STAAMP Out Rape campaign is demanding that:

 

1) an oversight body independent of the Department of

Defense investigate all rapes and assaults by military

members;

 

2) that the Veterans Administration (VA) must provide

benefits and care to rape and assault survivors;

 

3) that women be allowed to choose a female health

care provider; that reports of rape be treated

seriously; and

 

4) other measures ensuring that there is

accountability and that the problem is taken

seriously.

 

Currently, servicewomen are not allowed to request a

female ob-gyn or to deal with a female investigator

after reporting an assault. And servicewomen who

suffer post traumatic stress disorder or other

physical and mental effects from being raped or

assaulted report that they are often unable to obtain

health care or benefits from the VA, with VA doctors

and officials denying that their trauma exists or

saying that it isn't service-related.

 

One of the campaign's demands is an end to the use of

the so-called McDowell checklist to determine whether

rape reports are valid. The checklist, developed by

retired Air Force Lt. Col. Charles McDowell, is made

up of 57 questions that are scored with .5 to 5 points

for each answer. A score of over 16 points means a

woman's rape charge is " probably false, " over 36 is

" false " and over 76 is " overkill. " If a woman is

having problems with her husband or boyfriend, she

gets three points. Financial problems earn one point.

Even " demanding " to be given medical treatment by a

female earns her a point.

 

" There is no way any rape victim can pass this test, "

said Mackey. Considering the seeming irrelevance and

bias of the questions, it is not surprising that the

McDowell checklist turns up a 60 percent incidence of

" false " rape reports, compared to a national average

of about eight percent (according to FBI numbers).

 

Other statements McDowell has made over the years show

his blatant contempt for women. The book " For the Love

of Country " by T. S. Nelson quotes a woman who

attended a 1992 Air Force Office of Special

Investigations seminar given by McDowell, in which he

said women who make rape allegations fall into three

categories: " narcissists, socio-paths and immature,

impulsive, inadequate, types. "

 

His apparent belief that women make rape accusations

mainly to get attention is belied in some of the

checklist questions, for example does the woman

" describe the assault with a sense of relish or

enthusiasm. "

 

While women bear the brunt of rape in the military,

advocates point out that as seen in Abu Ghraib, both

enlisted men and male detainees in foreign countries

are also raped and abused, and these attacks are

likewise hidden. Speakers at the National Summit said

that there is often also a racial element to sexual

attacks and harassment.

 

A male veteran who was sexually abused in the military

said that " soldiers are trained to take whatever they

want, whether from fellow servicemen or Iraqi

detainees, and they know they will be protected. "

 

Mackey sees this culture of arrogance paired with

misogyny and resentment toward women in the military.

 

" There are multiple agendas to the attacks, " she said.

" There are those who don't want women in the military,

and who want to rape them out. And there are those who

see civilians [in foreign countries] as 'practice' and

don't care what happens to them. Rape is one of the

greatest tools of war, and our government is

essentially saying that rape of human beings is

acceptable. We are a rape nation and this is all being

done in our name. "

 

Kari Lydersen, a regular contributor to AlterNet, also

writes for the Washington Post and is an instructor

for the Urban Youth International Journalism Program

in Chicago. She can be reached at karilyde.