The Military's Secret Shame (male on male rape)

[iwishiwas]

I really had no idea it was so prevalent!!


http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/03/the-military-s-secret-shame.html

The Military's Secret Shame

When men in the military rape other men in the ranks, no one wants to talk about it. Why the sexual assault of males in the service is finally being confronted.

(Page 1 of 4)


Greg Jeloudov was 35 and new to America when he decided to join the Army. Like most soldiers, he was driven by both patriotism for his adopted homeland and the pragmatic notion that the military could be a first step in a career that would enable him to provide for his new family. Instead, Jeloudov arrived at Fort Benning, Ga., for basic training in May 2009, in the middle of the economic crisis and rising xenophobia. The soldiers in his unit, responding to his Russian accent and New York City address, called him a “champagne socialist” and a “commie faggot.” He was, he told NEWSWEEK, “in the middle of the viper’s pit.” Less than two weeks after arriving on base, he was gang-raped in the barracks by men who said they were showing him who was in charge of the United States. When he reported the attack to unit commanders, he says they told him, “It must have been your fault. You must have provoked them.”

What happened to Jeloudov is a part of life in the armed forces that hardly anyone talks about: male-on-male sexual assault. In the staunchly traditional military culture, it’s an ugly secret, kept hidden by layers of personal shame and official denial. Last year nearly 50,000 male veterans screened positive for “military sexual trauma” at the Department of Veterans Affairs, up from just over 30,000 in 2003. For the victims, the experience is a special kind of hell—a soldier can’t just quit his job to get away from his abusers. But now, as the Pentagon has begun to acknowledge the rampant problem of sexual violence for both genders, men are coming forward in unprecedented numbers, telling their stories and hoping that speaking up will help them, and others, put their lives back together. “We don’t like to think that our men can be victims,” says Kathleen Chard, chief of the posttraumatic-stress unit at the Cincinnati VA. “We don’t want to think that it could happen to us. If a man standing in front of me who is my size, my skill level, who has been raped—what does that mean about me? I can be raped, too.”

In fact, it is the high victimization rate of female soldiers—women in the armed forces are now more likely to be assaulted by a fellow soldier than killed in combat—that has helped cast light on men assaulting other men. For most of military history, there was neither a system nor language in place to deal with incidents of soldier-on-soldier sexual assault. It wasn’t until 1992 that the Defense Department even acknowledged such incidents as an offense, and initially only female victims were recognized. But last year more than 110 men made confidential reports of sexual assault by other men, nearly three times as many as in 2007. The real number of victims is surely much higher. Even among civilians, sexual assault is a vastly underreported crime. In the military the silence is nearly complete. By the Pentagon’s own estimate, figures for assaults on women likely represent less than 20 percent of actual incidents. Another study released in March found that just one in 15 men in the Air Force would report being sexually assaulted, compared with one in five women.
..............Much More....

[no_hypocrisy]

1. The "other" DADT in the Military

It has to be addressed and dealt with.

[xchrom]

2. ...

:mad: there are so many layers to be angry about here -- it's hard to know where to start.

[closeupready]

3. American culture is very violent, and this shows how

some men take great pleasure in raping, sadly and outrageously. It's not much of a surprise, but it is something that needs to be stopped entirely.

[Snoutport]

4. rape has always been a tool of war

just nobody talked about it much.

[closeupready]

5. Yes - I recall reading about women in Germany, right after WWII, who

would try to make themselves as ugly as possible in hopes that the Soviet troops would pass them by unmolested.

The difference with this story, of course, is that the rape is not being employed as a tool of war, as such, but being used as a kind of internal disciplinary measure, in some cases.

But in other cases, I have no doubt that some (most?) of these men are raping because they enjoy raping.

[Snoutport]

8. The Rape of Nanjing.... I read that many years ago and it..changed me

Shocking how that war lead to so much misery around the world.

I realize that this wasn't a war situation but from the article the russian fellow was obviously seen as an outsider and an enemy. So they treated him as such using the tools of the trade.

[nykym]

6. Yet these are the same people

who will scream at the top of their lungs how depraved LGBT people are and deny them their rights.

[Doctor_J]

7. Unfortunately, the same genes/personality traits

that make good killing machines (a necessary tool in wars) also make good rape/degradation machines. A kindhearted, gentle soul makes a lousy foot soldier.