Feminism

Raping Our Own Soldiers and What the DoD Isn’t Doing About It.

By Maegan Carberry ⋅ August 8, 2008 ⋅   Email this post ⋅  Digg This ⋅  Share on Facebook ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

[Thx: Our Troops Newsladder]

Just read this unsettling post from Paul Rieckhoff, who is the Executive Director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. It underscores some very disturbing statistics about sexual assault in the military:

Women make up 20% of all new recruits and more than 11% of the forces deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The rates of assault are shocking. Almost one-third of women veterans say they were sexually assaulted while in the military. (In the general population, one out of every six American women has been a victim of a sexual assault.) Already, 15 percent of female Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have gone to the VA for care have screened positive for Military Sexual Trauma. But even these troubling figures may not be telling the whole story; experts estimate that half of all sexual assaults go unreported. 

The official response to individual cases of assault is also unsettling. In 2007, only 8 percent of sexual assailants were referred to courts martial, compared with 40 percent of similar offenders prosecuted in the civilian court system. 

A special DOD “task force” on sexual assault in the military was created almost 4 years ago — but it has yet to convene for a single meeting.

This disgusts me so much it’s beyond words. Contact the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program here.