Military Sexual Assaults Not Forgotten By Vicims

We have unlimited access to knowledge today but if we settle for what some folks want us to know, we won't know much at all. That is the basis behind one issue veterans face after another. Some want to believe PTSD only hits the OEF and OIF veterans. That way they won't have to take a look at how many years this has all been going on while members of congress make a bunch of bullshit speeches that allow bad to turn into worse.

We also see it going on even know with speeches about military sexual assaults, as if anything has changed.

Never settle for what we're being told today without wondering how it got this bad. Reporters have a nasty habit of forgetting who did what and when they did it. Nothing will get fixed unless we really hold folks accountable. Never stop asking questions and when you get the answer, ask for more.

In 2012 there was a case where a female veteran had been waiting years for justice. How long? 50 years!

PORTLAND, Ore. -- A former Marine is coming forward with a painful secret.
An 80-year-old Portland woman says she was raped during her military service — and has been fighting ever since for the veterans benefits she says she deserves.

If you want to know why female veterans are fed up with what has been coming out of congress, begin with understanding this betrayal is far from new. All of these stories are on Wounded Times and when possible the link to the source is provided, still active and you can read the entire story.

2008

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., a member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said in a Monday letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates that harassment and assault of military women, especially in combat zones, is a “scourge” that needs to be eliminated.

Casey is particularly interested in how the military handles complaints from women in the National Guard and reserve, whose cases may be harder to investigate than those of women on full-time active duty and in the federal civilian workforce.

In the letter, Casey said he knows the military is trying to do more, but added: “I am still very troubled by a process that may dissuade many victims from ever coming forward with claims.”

From Reuters

Nearly 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking medical care from the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department have suffered sexual trauma, from harassment to rape, researchers reported on Tuesday.

And these veterans were 1.5 times as likely as other veterans to need mental health services, the report from the VA found.

2009 New York Times James Dao, veterans had to pay after being assaulted.

The department is required to provide free care, including counseling and prescription drugs, to veterans who were sexually harassed or assaulted while in military service. Sexual assault includes rape and attempted rape.

But the Office of Inspector General at the department found this year that an outpatient clinic in Austin, Tex., had repeatedly charged veterans, mostly women, for those services. Based on concerns that the practice may be more widespread, the office decided to expand its review to a sampling of veterans health care centers and clinics nationwide.

An official in the office declined to comment, saying it does not discuss pending reviews. The official said the review would be made public when it was completed, possibly by October.

In a statement, the Department of Veterans Affairs said the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System, which oversees the Austin clinic, was reimbursing patients who had been improperly billed. “Patients seen for military sexual trauma should not be billed for payment,” the statement said. “We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.”

From RawStory report of 2011 based on what happened in 2009 when a female soldier was told by a military Chaplain the rape was God's will.

In February 2009, she reported for active duty training and, upon seeing her rapist, went into shock.

"She immediately sought the assistance of the military chaplain," the lawsuit reads. "When SGT Havrilla met with the military chaplain, he told her that 'it must have been God's will for her to be raped' and recommended that she attend church more frequently."

2011
From Army Times

The House Armed Services Committee adopted a series of new protections when it passed the 2012 defense authorization bill last week, and similar legislation was introduced Wednesday in the Senate by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Rep. Niki Tsongas, D-Mass., one of the cosponsors of the House sexual assault provisions, said introduction of a Senate bill “will help move this legislation closer to becoming law.”

The House and Senate initiatives are similar, drawn from recommendations of the 2009 final report of the Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military Services to fix flaws in the rights and legal protections for assault victims.

Supporters said one in three women leaving the military report experiencing sexual trauma while in the service, but less than 14 percent of sexual assaults in the military are reported to authorities, and only about 8 percent of reported sexual assaults in the military are prosecuted.

2012 From Huffington Post

A U.S soldier committed a violent sex crime every six hours and 40 minutes in 2011, a rate far above that of the general population, the report found.

"This is unacceptable. We have zero tolerance for this," Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Army vice chief of staff, said at a press conference Thursday. "Army leaders take sexual assault seriously."

Chiarelli said the Army was confronting the problem by stepping up surveillance of barracks and cracking down on drug and alcohol abuse, a key factor in sexual assault.

CNN reported that women were being discharged under "personality disorders"

Stephanie Schroeder joined the U.S. Marine Corps not long after 9/11. She was a 21-year-old with an associate's degree when she reported for boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina.

"I felt like it was the right thing to do," Schroeder recalls.

A year and a half later, the Marines diagnosed her with a personality disorder and deemed her psychologically unfit for the Corps.

Anna Moore enlisted in the Army after 9/11 and planned to make a career of it. Moore was a Patriot missile battery operator in Germany when she was diagnosed with a personality disorder and dismissed from the Army.

Jenny McClendon was serving as a sonar operator on a Navy destroyer when she received her personality disorder diagnosis.

These women joined different branches of the military but they share a common experience: Each received the psychiatric diagnosis and military discharge after reporting a sexual assault.

2013

Earlier in the month, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa., was one of the first to call for action in light of the Pentagon’s Fiscal Year 2012 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military.

“I am deeply outraged that today’s report released by the Pentagon indicates that sexual assault continues to be so prevalent today in our military,” Casey said in a May 7 statement.

And here we are after all these years.

2014 December report from the Washington Post

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.

They have been waiting for someone to change things so that more victims won't have to remember what we've been allowed to forget.