1 in 4 women veterans experienced sexual harassment or assault

It is a good time to look back at Victim advocates want radical overhaul in handling of military sex assaults on Stars and Stripes By Leo Shane III Published: December 29, 2011 after reading this to see that not much has changed since then.

Vets fight for care following sex traumas
WASHINGTON POST
By Emily Wax-Thibodeaux
DECEMBER 28, 2014

A recent VA survey found that 1 in 4 women said they experienced sexual harassment or assault.

WASHINGTON — Thousands of female veterans are struggling to get health care and compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs on the grounds that they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by sexual trauma in the military.

The veterans and their advocates call it the second battle — with a bureaucracy they say is stuck in the past.

Judy Atwood-Bell was just a 19-year-old Army private when she was locked inside a barracks room at Fort Devens in Massachusetts, forced to the cold floor, and raped by a fellow soldier, she said.

For more than two decades, Atwood-Bell fought for an apology and financial compensation for PTSD, with panic attacks, insomnia, and depression that she recalls starting soon after that winter day in 1981. She filled out stacks of forms in triplicate and then filled them out again, pressing over and over for recognition of the harm that was done.

And the Pentagon released data on Dec. 4 that showed that 62 percent of those who reported being sexually assaulted had experienced retaliation or ostracism afterward. read more here