Sen. Patty Murray Seeks Help For Survivors Of Military Sexual Trauma

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., says women in the military return home traumatized because, in addition to the pressures of living in a war zone, they have been living in close quarters with men and, in many cases, report that they had been sexually harassed, assaulted or raped.

Senator Seeks Help For Survivors Of Military Sexual Trauma


Published on 2/10/2008



Washington — Scurrying back to her Army barracks in the dark after her shift at the hospital, Sally, a 21-year-old medic, was grabbed by a man who dragged her to the woods and raped her at knifepoint.

When she reported the attack, Sally, of Kirkland, Wash., who asks that her full name not be used, was brushed off by her superior officer at Fort Belvoir, Va., who dismissed the rape as a spat with a boyfriend.

Her story is alarmingly like that of hundreds of other veterans who have suffered sexual harassment, assault and rape in the military, according to Susan Avila-Smith, a Seattle-based advocate who has helped hundreds of women veterans get VA benefits and treatment for military sexual trauma (MST).

Avila-Smith says she also was a victim when she served in the Army, having been sexually assaulted in a hospital recovery room after sinus surgery at Fort Hood, Texas.

The pressures on women service members, who now comprise about 7 percent of all veterans, are escalating:

• According to the Veterans Administration, 19 percent of women who have sought health care in the VA were diagnosed as victims of military sexual trauma.

• Cases of military sexual trauma increased from 1,700 in 2004 to 2,374 in 2005, according to the Department of Defense Sexual Assault Prevention Response Program.
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What kind of a nation are we now? Are we a nation of laws or have we become a fraud? Women in the military raped, yet it is passed off and ignored, or worse, the women who report it face harassment instead of justice. Hallibuton/KBR employees are raped and yet when they report it they face retribution. Instead of turning it over to law enforcement, they only allow the victim to be heard in arbitration. What are we now?

Rape is a crime. When did it become something to ignore? Who wrote the rule that the victim is supposed to be ashamed someone with more power, usually possessing a weapon, decided to get their rocks off by forcing themselves on a woman? Does the nation really think that this only happens in the military and "boys will be boys" only when they are in the military? How deluded are they? Don't they understand that this type of crime will continue when they become civilians again?

Whenever we read reports like this we need to ask ourselves what kind of justice would be appropriate if it happened to someone in our own family. What if it was your daughter deployed into a foreign nation, risking her life for the sake of the nation and then finding that life taken with such disregard no one cared she was raped? What if it was your wife who was just doing her job as a nurse only to be raped by someone who apparently thinks they are worth so much more than she is?

People who rape are criminals. People who are raped are victims of a crime. This nation has laws against crimes. There are penalties when you commit a crime. Or at least that is the way it's supposed to work. Lately this nation has proven laws don't matter when the people committing the crime are employed under the banner of the nation.