Sexual Assault Pervasive in Military

Victim advocates and military health care leaders say that sexual assault remains a pervasive problem for women serving in all branches of the military, including those deployed overseas.

Their concern about the assaults on female members of the military is especially high now, with the nation at war and the recent removal of four high-ranking officials from their posts at the U.S. Air Force Academy following an investigation of sexual assaults there.

"It's not just the academies. It's not just the Air Force. It's all the services and it's a pervasive part of the culture," says Christine Hansen, executive director of The Miles Foundation, Inc., a victim service and advocacy agency for victims of sexual and domestic violence in the military. "Many women tell me that sexual assault is considered a rite of passage in the service, and they're treated like the black sheep of the family when they ask for accountability."

Military sexual trauma has been identified by Pentagon health care experts as a major deployment and readiness issue. Rape victims often experience post-traumatic stress symptoms such as anxiety, depression and intrusive thoughts, and are more likely to develop post-traumatic stress in other situations, according to military research. Sexual trauma is the subject of an increasing number of studies about workplace safety in the armed forces, according to Pentagon's Web site and health care experts.

Officials last week said they were not able to discover how the issue is being handled in the Iraqi war theater and in and around Afghanistan. Similarly, they could not answer the question of how many assaults have been reported to criminal investigators in recent years.

Air Force legal affairs spokeswoman Valerie Burkes did say, "we do not have a problem with sexual offenses in the Air Force."

A new assessment of risk factors for sexual assault in the military says that 28 percent of female veterans reported sexual assault during their careers, with consistent rates found across eras, according to a report in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine. The study found that "officer leadership" played an important role in the military environment and safety of women and that an environment with unwanted sexual behaviors increased the odds of rape -- factors also cited by Pentagon study panels in recent years.

Military sexual trauma even has its own acronym -- MST -- in the Pentagon's health office and in Veterans Affairs offices. Veterans Affairs hospitals have been required for two years to have counseling services available for sexual trauma. Services are provided for women and men.

Military public affairs officials were unable last week to provide any numbers of reported rapes in their ranks, though they say they are researching the question at Women's eNews' request. They also could not answer how many women have been assaulted while deployed in the Middle East or Central Asia.

Twenty-four cases of sexual assault were reported during the first Persian Gulf War deployments in 1990 and 1991, according to the Department of Defense.

Though reports to criminal investigation authorities are difficult to find, a common estimate among advocates and health care experts is about one quarter of women in the military say they have been sexually assaulted during their careers.

In 1996, the Defense Department surveyed women in the military about their experiences in the previous 12 months, and found that 9 percent of women in the Marines, 8 percent of women in the Army, 6 percent of women in the Navy and 4 percent of women in the Air Force had experienced a rape or an attempted rape that year. About 200,000 women serve in the military, so these numbers represent more than 10,000 sexual assaults or attempted assaults each year.