Aug 02 2008

Rape in the Military:

(11 pm – promoted by ek hornbeck)

No commentary need be added, the below speaks for itself, and more can be found if interested.

Congress Charges Cover-Up

Congress takes on the Department of Defense in the first oversight hearing held this year by the subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs on sexual assault in the military. Dr. Kaye Whitley, Director of Sexual Assault and Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) failed to show at the hearing despite being subpoenaed. Her “no show” left some members accusing the DOD of a cover up.

Col. Ann Wright

Sexual Assault in the Military: A DoD Cover-Up?

There was quite a struggle in Congress this week. The Department of Defense refused to allow the senior civilian in charge of its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) to testify in Thursday’s hearing on sexual assault in the military. Rep. John Tierney, chair of the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, angrily dismissed Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Michael Dominguez from the hearing when Dominguez said that he, the DoD chief of legislative affairs and the chief of public affairs, had ordered Dr. Kaye Whitley, chief of SAPRO, to refuse to honor the subpoena issued by the subcommittee for her appearance.

DoD official booted from sex assault hearing

The Pentagon’s No. 2 personnel and readiness official was admonished and dismissed from a House subcommittee hearing on sexual assault in the military Thursday after admitting that he had directed a key subordinate not to appear.

Tierney said Whitley would be subpoenaed and that Dominguez’s decision showed disrespect to the two women who had testified moments earleir – one a rape victim, one a rape/murder victim’s mother – as well as other victims and the subcommittee itself.

Sex Assaults Against Women in Military ‘Epidemic’

GAO Report: Sexual Assaults and Rapes in Military Under-Reported by Half

A look at slayings of 3 military women in 7 months

Rapists in the ranks

Sexual assaults are frequent, and frequently ignored, in the armed services.

Oversight Hearing on Sexual Assault in the Military

More information and video clips at The Gavel

4 comments

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    • kj on August 2, 2008 at 19:20
    • #

    (not a word i throw around lightly) you, Jim Staro, for bringing this here.

  2. so thanks Jim for writing about it.

    Yesterday, I posted a link in ek’s essay from a story in ColorLines titled Home From the Military. Here’s Maricela Guzman’s story:

    As a fresh Navy recruit a few weeks into basic training, Maricela Guzman shouldn’t have been surprised to find herself facedown on the floor, frantically doing push-ups. She had not followed proper procedure for addressing a commander in his office-knocking before entering and asking permission to speak. Accordingly, he told her to “drop” as punishment.

    But while the penalty was routine, the circumstances were not: she had come to tell him she had been raped.

    Before she could say anything, though, she had to repeat the drill to her commander’s satisfaction. “I think it was 20 minutes later after I was able to do it right,” she said. “And I was so numb afterwards that I couldn’t even say anything.”

    In the late 1990s, Guzman, a child of Mexican immigrants, was getting back to her education at a Los Angeles community college after leaving high school to work, when a young Black man approached her and told her enthusiastically about the Navy. Guzman researched the military’s education benefits and grilled the recruiter on what the service would be like. In the end, she signed up, confident she wasn’t making her decision blindly.

    But she never saw him coming.

    One night at boot camp, on watch duty, she recalled, “I passed a dark corner, somebody grabbed me, and I was raped.” Though she only caught a glimpse of her attacker in the darkness, she said, “It had to be one of the drill sergeants. Just the type of uniform that he had.”

    After being thwarted in her attempt to come forward within a few days of the incident, Guzman fell silent. Her commanders eventually noticed she was acting withdrawn, but to them, it just showed that she needed more discipline. So they intensified her work routines and upbraided her even more harshly before her peers.

  3. James Kunstler wrote something I find relevant in yesterday’s Clusterfuck Nation.  This is the opening line:

    The most striking thing about the new Batman movie, now smashing the all-time box office records, is its emphasis on sado-masochism as the animating element in American culture these days.

     

  4. …here’s the link.

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