Veteran servicemen and women from 27 different states around the nation joined in solidarity this week at the Truth and Justice 2012 Summit on Military Sexual Violence to speak out against sexual assault and harassment in the armed forces.
Tears flowed freely during the daylong event, which culminated with a march to Capitol Hill where veterans spoke face to face with their congressmen urging them to make key changes to help survivors.
“Congress is ultimately going to write the laws that dictate how the Department of Defense works,” said Brian Lewis, a Baltimore resident who joined the Armed Forces in 1997. “The STOP Act needs to pass and needs to be written into the Defense Authorization Act.”
The Sexual Assault Training Oversight and Protection Act (STOP Act) would create an office within the military to solely handle sexual assaults and harassment cases.
The legislation also proposes that victims not be forced to submit their complaints or attacks through the Chain of Command (CoC).
The event hosted two panels, one with veteran service members who survived sexual trauma and another of legal professionals who discussed the current laws and how to get them changed.
“We wanted to provide a space for healing, a call to action, and for people to build and connect with each other,” said Kalima DeSuze of the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) that sponsored the event. “We do have a voice. More than half of the United States is represented here. To actually take that power and go over to Capitol Hill is symbolic of what they can do in their own lives. It has to be collective, we have to organize and show them that we mean business.”
Last year alone the military had 3,192 sexual assaults reported, according to the Department of Defense’s (DOD) “Fiscal Year 2011 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military.” The DOD estimates this number is only 13.5 percent of those actually raped or assaulted. Of the 13.5 percent that reported the crime, 55 percent of women and 38 percent of men said they were stalked or harassed before any type of attack actually happened.
Even more disturbing is that of the soldiers who do make a report, only eight percent of the cases make it to the trial phase.
Last year, 2011, saw 191 convictions in the assault, rape, and harassment cases that did go before a court. Yet, of those found guilty, only 148 served any kind of jail sentence, and 122 were discharged. More alarming, the fact that 10 percent of those accused were allowed to resign in lieu of courts-martial (RILO), which essentially let the rapists go free into the civilian world.
With no official registry of sex offenders, a key way civilians deter and punish sex crimes, perpetrators in the military can move from post to post with no warning to fellow soldiers or the communities they live in. The STOP Act would create an offender registry and disclose that list with the Department of Justice, which oversees the civilian sex offender registry.
However common the act is, similar to non-military survivors, soldiers don’t report the crime for a number of reasons. Audience and panel members spoke about being assaulted by superior officers and afraid of retaliation. Others said they were made to feel responsible for what happened to them once they spoke out. Male victims were told it’s impossible to be raped, and have little to no resources to deal with the incident. “I’m not looking for an apology. I’m looking for some kind of admittance,” said Bobby Hughley, whose own 1975 assault and lack of resources to cope led down a harrowing path of drug abuse and homelessness, an issue plaguing the Department of Veteran’s Affairs.
“I was in the service from 1974 through 1976 and it was not heard of to let a sexual assault be known, but look at the damage I did to myself. I lost my G.I. Bill and couldn’t go to school because of the mental pain I was in.
“The VA needs to start moving these cases ahead and stop playing the ‘it wasn’t reported’ game,” said Hughley. Like many survivors, he was denied help in recovering from his attack because there was no report of primary physical evidence, only secondary reports corroborating his story from psychologists and sex therapists.
Though SWAN is run nationally by women veterans, the civil rights organization was intent on including male victims of sexual assault. In 2010 alone, of the 68,379 veterans who sought outpatient services for a Military Sexual Trauma, 26,904 of them, or 39 percent, were men.
