[Shadow_Group] 'I reported the rape within 30 minutes - then watched my career implode'

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

>From http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,11812,1335181,00.html<http://wwwguardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,11812,1335181,00.html>

'I reported the rape within 30 minutes - then watched my career implode'
Suzanne Goldenberg reports on the scandal of unpunished sexual assault
within the US army

Suzanne Goldenberg
Monday October 25, 2004

The Guardian

The worst thing for Captain Jennifer Machmer was knowing that the US army
had actually promoted her rapist. Four years in the military, from proud
passing out at West Point to humiliating discharge, had provided an
education into the Pentagon's thinking on sexual assault in the ranks, but
Machmer never expected an accused rapist to be rewarded.
Her story, narrated to a hushed Congressional committee chamber in April
this year, was a rare first-person account of the dangers faced by women
soldiers during the Iraq war from their fellow troops. With thousands of
women on the front line of America's war on terror, the Pentagon has been
forced to acknowledge that female soldiers are at risk from their comrades
in arms, and that, in the US military, rapists often go unpunished.

As Machmer's experiences in uniform reveal, the culture of violence runs
deep. In her first command, she was nominally in charge of a soldier who
regularly abused and threatened her. Machmer had the soldier transferred,
and he was punished with a £475 fine. In her second posting, in 2002, the
military chaplain she was seeing for marriage counselling sexually abused
her. Machmer opted for discretion, and did not file a complaint.

Later, in Kuwait during the run-up to the American invasion of Iraq in early
2003, she was raped. "There was no way I could file away another violation,"
she told the congressional committee. After asking herself, "do I stay quiet
and just suck up the life that has been ruined, or do I speak out and try to
go back to that route I was on," the captain reported the attack within 30
minutes. Then she watched her career implode. Under the narrow definition of
military law, the assault was not considered rape - though it would have
been under a criminal law in most states.

Machmer was discharged against her wishes, on a partial pension because of
post-traumatic stress disorder. Her assailant was transferred to a prized
post. "The aftermath of the report has been terrifying," she told the
Congressional women's caucus. "Every time you turn around, you are
re-victimised, and retraumatised."

It has been 10 years since the Clinton administration opened up 90% of
military jobs to women. More than 200,000 women now serve in the US
military, with at least 15,000 stationed in Iraq. Some of the women who put
on the uniform and went off to war came home as heroines, like Private
Jessica Lynch, whose capture by Iraqi forces was spun by the Pentagon into a
tale of military derring-do, or Rachel and Charity Witmer, who returned to
their grieving parents in Wisconsin in April after a third sister was killed
in Baghdad. Lynndie England, a young soldier from a poor town in West
Virginia, became instead the symbol of the ugly American, grinning and
giving the thumbs-up to scenes of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

As now seems clear, the Pentagon could not sustain its military presence in
Iraq without women soldiers. However, activists say the military
establishment has done little to protect its female troops. As the committee
hearing broke up, Machmer told reporters that she came to trust the Iraqis
more than her fellow soldiers.

As in the civilian world, the greatest threat comes from known colleagues,
says Christine Hansen, director of the Miles Foundation, an independent
advocacy organisation for victims of violence. "Predominantly, we are seeing
that these are acquaintance rapes, that the victims and the alleged
assailant know each other. It might be your battle buddy, or a friend of
your battle buddy who is in another squad."

As of September this year, the Miles Foundation had received credible
reports of rape or sexual assault (in the period August 2002 to August 2003)
from 243 women serving in the US military in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and
Afghanistan. An additional 431 instances of assault were reported elsewhere.
No figures are available for the rape of male soldiers serving in Iraq,
although campaigners say there are such cases. Meanwhile, the Miles
Foundation says it has charted a sharp increase in reports of domestic
violence among military families with soldiers returned from the war.

Hansen believes the reported rapes account for just a fraction of the
attacks. Most of the known victims were senior non-commissioned officers or
officers - which Hansen says suggests that junior personnel are even more
afraid of coming forward.

And who could blame them? A woman who reports a rape often suffers hazing
(humiliation) and retaliation. She may be forced to continue serving with
her attacker. In extreme cases, she may be thrown in the brig [military
jail] and be accused of sexual misconduct. "It's a career ender," says
Louise Slaughter, a Democratic congresswoman from New York and leader of the
women's caucus. "The sad thing is that, in addition to everything else, we
are losing brain power, and people who would be extraordinary soldiers."

Meanwhile, the US military has become notorious as an institution reluctant
to confront a culture of abuse. Since 1991, when 83 women were assaulted at
the annual Tailhook pilots' convention, the Pentagon has had ample evidence
of the abuse of women within the ranks. In 2002, a civilian rape-crisis
centre near Sheppard air base in Texas saw two dozen new recruits who were
victims of assaults. Last year, the national air force academy was shaken by
reports from women cadets of rape and humiliation that went unpunished by
their superiors. During the last Gulf war, 8% of women sent overseas were
sexually assaulted or raped, according to a study by researchers for the
Department of Veterans' Affairs. Other surveys of women soldiers have
confirmed the trend; sexual assault is widespread, and there are rarely
consequences for the assailant. According to the Miles Foundation, fewer
than 3% of reported assaults result in courts martial, let alone punishment.

That was Sheri Chance's experience after she was drugged and sexually
assaulted by a navy recruiter in February 2001. "The last conscious thing I
remember is that I hit my head," she says. She woke up in the recruitment
office in Peru, Illinois as the assault was underway. Chance reported the
attack when she arrived at boot camp. After a one-day trial, the man who
attacked her was fined one month's pay. Chance was discharged from the navy.
"When all of this started happening to me I thought I was the first. Now it
seems like it was constant all the time," she says.

Over the years, the Pentagon has launched repeated investigations into sex
scandals. When the first reports of sexual abuse of women serving in Iraq
emerged, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, ordered an official
inquiry. Last month he appointed female officer Brigadier General KC
McClain, who investigated rape cases at Sheppard air base two years ago, to
head a new joint task force for sexual assault prevention and response.

But advocates say that such fact-finding missions are a substitute for real
change. "We have known for a long time that there is a problem with sexual
assault in the military. There have been more than 40 surveys in 16 years,"
says Carolyn Maloney, a New York congresswoman, "yet sexual assaults have
gone up 19% since 1991. What is very frustrating is that the military has
allowed these problems to get worse. What we have to do is to move past the
acknowledgement that there is a problem and try to address it."

In recent months, women's organisations have pressed the Pentagon for
reform, demanding amendments to military law to encourage prosecution for
assault, and urging new procedures in the war zone. By the Pentagon's
admission, the US military's record on sexual assault, from protecting
victims and their privacy to prosecuting assailants, is "inconsistent and
incomplete".

In a report issued in May, the Pentagon noted that there was no uniform
definition of rape or sexual harassment under military law. The military had
also failed to institute widespread sensitivity training for commanding
officers, or to make counselling services available to women who had been
assaulted. It is not even properly equipped to investigate such crimes: in
the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, fewer than 100 rape-detective kits
(which collect crucial DNA evidence) have been distributed to field
hospitals. The backlog for DNA testing in rape investigations is 16 months,
and overstretched commanders are disinclined to investigate reports of
assault.

That was the experience of Beth Jameson, a major in the US army reserve, who
was assigned to a large staging area in Kuwait. She was raped on March 20
2003, the first night of the war, in the shower block during an alert for a
feared chemical attack. In May this year she told ABC television: "I donned
my mask and my chemical suit, and my gloves, and my boots, everything. So I
stayed there and waited for the all-clear sign to come about. Well, then all
of a sudden there was a knock on the bathroom door. And the door opened and
somebody said, are you OK? And I gave my thumb up, saying, yeah, I'm fine.
And the door shut. And then, it seems like a split-second later, the door
just flew open and this person jumped in. He turned on me, kneed me in the
groin and pushed me in the back of the bathroom. He pushed me to the ground
and I fought with him."

She soon became convinced that the authorities were not interested in a
prosecution. The investigators asked repeatedly if she had been having an
affair with her attacker. She was also told that military regulations did
not permit investigators to match the semen sample against the DNA registry
of US service personnel, which is maintained to identify remains.

Major Jameson told ABC: "I'm just angry now at the system - the military
system that won't protect the victim. I understand now why women don't bring
forward the fact that they've been attacked - because they're made to be the
victim again."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

-----------------------------
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor
is the mind of the oppressed." (Steve Biko)


       

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