We're having the wrong conversation on abortion

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 14, 2022 

Rape is traumatic. So is forcing someone to deliver the offspring of the rapist. Now imagine it is a 10-year-old girl?

Man charged with rape of 10-year-old who had abortion after rightwing media called story ‘not true’

BUT IT WAS TRUE!

Why does it matter aside from the obvious that this child had sex forced on her when she was raped, and the laws from zealots would force her to deliver the rapist's offspring and the age of 10? Because this was reported on The Guardian!

Protesters rally at the Ohio statehouse in support of abortion after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade on 24 June 2022 in Columbus, Ohio. Photograph: Barbara J Perenic/AP

Police say Ohio man confessed to raping a girl who went to Indiana for abortion, following the right’s attempts to discredit story

Gerson Fuentes, 27, who was arrested on Tuesday, appeared in Franklin county, Ohio, municipal court for an arraignment on Wednesday. A police investigator testified at the hearing that Fuentes had confessed to raping the girl at least twice.

The arrest came after rightwing media – and the Republican Ohio attorney general – had poured scorn on reports of the child’s abortion, suggesting it was “not true” and “too good to confirm”.

Now, while no one is trying to take away the rights of folks on the "right" to believe what they want, they seem to have been under the delusion they should be able to force what they believe on the rest of the country.

Imagine if they decided to have ten kids, but could not afford to have them, and laws were also passed to take away any social services they receive. You may think that is never going to happen but you need to think again because the "right" is also on the side of cutting social services to the poor and needy.

Imagine if they wanted to continue the pregnancy after a doctor said it would suffer from birth defects and would never be able to survive without constant medical care, but medical coverage was canceled because, yet again, the "right" seem to hate health care, along with all other social services they constantly slam and cut the budgets of.

Imagine this country adopted something like China when they had one child rule, replaced by allowing two children, and suddenly allowing three? Amnesty International has been fighting for the rights of people to make their own choices there. Will they have to do the same here and will we read something like this with China replaced by the USA?

"Governments have no business regulating how many children people have. Rather than 'optimising' its birth policy, China should instead respect people's life choices and end any invasive and punitive controls over people's family planning decisions," said the group's China team head, Joshua Rosenzweig.

While the "right" is all too willing to fight to take rights away because they don't like what people choose to do, they haven't noticed that they put their rights in peril from their own party. The rest of the people in this country fight for their rights and defend the rights of all others to make their own choices too! You know, the way it should be.

 

Fort Campbell Did Not Search For AWOL Suspected Rapist?

Suspected rapist goes AWOL, but Army doesn't search for him
Associated Press
By Richard Lardner
Published: March 21, 2016

Had anyone looked, Hazelbower may not have been hard to find. After fleeing Fort Campbell, he had gone home to Lanark, Ill., a small town two hours west of Chicago. Lanark Police Chief Matt Magill and other local law enforcement officials said they were never asked to search for him.

WASHINGTON — Army Pvt. Jameson T. Hazelbower went AWOL after learning he was suspected of raping a 15-year-old girl. Despite the potential threat to the public that he posed, the self-described sex addict roamed free for nearly three months before local police collared him in Winnebago, Ill., near where he grew up.

And that was only by chance, according to interviews, police reports and court-martial records obtained by The Associated Press.

An officer responded to a call late on a Friday night in March 2014 about a suspicious vehicle parked in a cul-de-sac outside an apartment complex. Hazelbower, his pants down to his knees, was in the car with a girl, barely 14. She was unharmed.

Hazelbower's case is a window into an obscure but significant aspect of the U.S. military's legal system. Deserters suspected of serious crimes are to be prioritized for capture based on the severity of the offenses. But the Army never searched for Hazelbower and the U.S. Marshals Service was not called in, even though marshals have arrested more than 200 deserters over the past five years alone.

In fact, there was a lack of urgency to locate Hazelbower despite strident warnings from his superiors at Fort Campbell, Ky., records show. The military's version of an arrest warrant described him as a "sexually violent predator" and a known drug abuser. Also, he had gone AWOL before. "CAUTION - ESCAPE RISK" is stamped in bold letters on the right side of the document. read more here

Army and Congress Efforts on Rape Make it Worse for Victims Still

In the war against sexual assault, the Army keeps shooting itself in the foot
Washington Post
By Craig Whitlock
December 19, 2015

FORT STEWART, Ga. — To mark the end of Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April, the 188th Infantry Brigade held a potluck luncheon here at the largest Army installation east of the Mississippi River. The deputy commander reminded his soldiers they were all “responsible for bringing an end to sexual assault and harassment,” according to the brigade’s Facebook account.

What most of the soldiers didn’t know was that the deputy commander, Lt. Col. Michael D. Kepner II, was himself facing court-martial on charges that he had sexually harassed and assaulted a female lieutenant on his staff.

Despite repeated complaints from the victim and other officers, Kepner’s chain of command violated Army rules and allowed him to stay in a leadership post for at least eight months while he was under criminal investigation, internal Army emails and memos show. He later pleaded guilty to some of the charges and is serving time in a military prison.
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Well, Congress is trying to do something about it, or kind-of-sort-of.

A Pennsylvania lawmaker who says he continues to hear many complaints about sexual harassment and abuse from women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan wants the Defense Department to do more to stop mistreatment and provide more care for victims.

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.

Dose that sound like something new? It isn't. It was reported by Army Times way back in 2008. 

Congress followed up by holding, you guess it, another hearing on what they thought was such a serious issue they had to get someone to account for all of it. Dr. Kaye Whitley didn't show up.

“It’s an oversight hearing on sexual assault in the military. As such, we thought it was proper to hear from the director of the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. ... Inexplicably, the Defense Department — and you, apparently — have resisted.”

So, Congress held another hearing since Whitley was "director of the office of sexual assault prevention and response."

By January of 2009 the DOD announced it was "expanding its attention to sexual abuse cases by adding prosecutors, rearranging its criminal investigative unit and stepping up training to change behavior.

"Geren approved the hiring of 15 new prosecutors and five prosecutor trainers for the Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG). The JAG also will hire seven experts in sexual assault litigation training to help prosecutors and train Army lawyers around the world."

What we soon learned was that the "seriousness" of those efforts didn't really turn out to be true at all. As a matter of fact, Military sexual assault victims raped twice, forced to pay for care.

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.

But even Chaplains were not taking any of this seriously.

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."

Another young victim was tossed out after she was raped.

"admitted to the investigator taking her statement that she’d been socializing the previous night at an officer’s club, got drunk, and accepted a ride from a man whom she’d only just met.

The officer sounded skeptical. You went with this man to a hotel, she remembers the officer saying, and you want me to believe that it wasn’t consensual?

Then, before the young private had time to think it through, she blurted out the words she’d been warned never to say in the military: “I’m gay…”

Eight weeks later, plagued by anxiety and flashbacks, she was ordered to pack her bags and was handed a plane ticket home. Her discharge sheet read: “homosexual admission.”

Should remove any doubt as to why most of these "assaults" were not reported.

The Defense Department has estimated that 86 percent of sexual assaults go unreported, an indication that some women are worried about the effect reporting an assault may have on their career and that they mistrust the military prosecution system. Nearly 3,200 sexual assaults were reported in the military last year.

Because even when they did try to get justice, tried to get Congress to actually act for their sake, they were just left to worry what would happen to them afterwards could be worse than the rape itself.

FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- A former subordinate to an Army general facing sex crimes charges testified Tuesday that the general started an affair with her in Iraq and later threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone. The woman says she was honored at first by the attention from Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, who she said was highly regarded. They first had sex in 2008 at a forward operating base in Iraq, she said. "I was extremely intimated by him. Everybody in the brigade spoke about him like he was a god," she said. The AP does not name victims of alleged sexual assaults.

Army failed to tell Mom 6 year old daughter's rape was on video

Tennessee mother sues Army over soldier rape case
Associated Press
Posted August 31, 2013

CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A Tennessee woman has sued the U.S. Army for $30 million, claiming authorities did not alert her to an investigation into allegations that a Fort Campbell soldier raped her daughter and videotaped the act.

The soldier, Joshua Cline, has been convicted on rape charges in Tennessee and federal child pornography charges involving the girl, who was 6 when the abuse was discovered in 2008.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Nashville earlier this month. It claims the Army failed to warn the girl's mother after officials began investigating the charges, and instead told her that she didn't have anything to worry about regarding her daughter. The Army also waited at least 10 months to notify the Tennessee Department of Children's Services that the girl could be in danger, according to court and state records.
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Marine’s scream halts rape in New York

Marine’s scream halts rape
By JOE MOLLICA and CYNTHIA R. FAGEN
September 29, 2011

A Marine vet who served five years in Iraq and Afghanistan saved a woman from a would-be rapist in Queens yesterday morning -- scaring him off with a jarhead scream.

Brian Teichman was dropping off his 2-year-old daughter at her babysitter near the Cross Island Parkway and 148th Street in Whitestone at around 9 a.m. when he spotted the hulking man force his victim over a guardrail and into a deserted, wooded area.

“It was 100 percent instinct as a Marine that the situation didn’t look right,” said Teichman. “I looked down and I saw him straddling her and he had his hand over her mouth and he was trying to rip her shirt off.

“My thought was scream first. If he runs, you don’t need to worry if he has a gun or a knife.
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Three year old girl, taken from Mom's arms, raped, beaten and killed

3-Year-Old Girl Raped And Killed
Isaac Paul Vasquez - KFOX News Producer
Posted: 6:45 pm MDT July 30, 2011
Updated: 4:13 pm MDT July 31, 2011

CUAUHTEMOC, Mexico -- Police in Cuauhtemoc arrested two men they said raped and killed a 3-year-old.

The town sits about 60 miles west of Chihuahua City, Mexico.

KFOX media partners at the El Paso Times report that's where investigators said the men snatched the girl from her mother's arms.
read more here
3-Year-Old Girl Raped And Killed

Halliburton, KBR drop court appeal in rape case

Halliburton, KBR drop court appeal in rape case
By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI Associated Press Writer © 2010 The Associated Press
March 22, 2010, 5:09PM

HOUSTON — Halliburton Co. and KBR Inc. have withdrawn an appeal asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block a lawsuit by a former military contractor who says she was raped by KBR co-workers in Iraq.

KBR said in a statement Monday that it withdrew the appeal to not risk violating a recently passed federal provision it called "very broad and vague," that restricts the Defense Department from doing business with companies that prohibit employees from seeking redress for certain crimes through the courts.
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Halliburton, KBR drop court appeal in rape case
linked from RawStory

Woman awarded $3M in assault claim against KBR

Woman awarded $3M in assault claim against KBR
By JUAN A. LOZANO (AP) – 3 days ago

HOUSTON — A woman who claimed she was raped in 2005 while working in Iraq for a former Halliburton Co. subsidiary has been awarded nearly $3 million by an arbitrator to settle her case.

Tracy Barker had sued U.S. contractor KBR Inc, its former parent company Halliburton and several affiliates in May 2007, claiming she was sexually attacked by a State Department employee while working as a civilian contractor in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

A federal judge in Houston had dismissed Barker's lawsuit in January 2008, ruling she had to abide by an employment agreement she signed that said any claims she made against the companies would have to be settled through arbitration and not the courts.

Court records filed this week show Barker was awarded a judgment of $2.93 million to settle her arbitration claim against KBR.

The Associated Press doesn't usually identify those who report they were sexually assaulted, but Barker made her identity public in her lawsuit.
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Woman awarded 3M in assault claim against KBR

Motorist accused of raping stranded woman he stopped to "help"

Motorist accused of raping stranded woman

Rene Stutzman

Sentinel Staff Writer

9:54 p.m. EDT, October 29, 2009


ALTAMONTE SPRINGS - (An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the victim was a teenager. She is 26.)

ALTAMONTE SPRINGS
Police today arrested a 33-year-old man, accused of stopping to help a young woman who was stranded on Interstate 4 then driving to a storage facility and raping her.

Winel Albert Castro Molina of Lake Mary was booked into the Seminole County jail this morning. He's accused of rape and is being held on $25,000 bail.

Altamonte Springs Officer Todd Smith interrupted the rape in progress shortly after 3 a.m, said Special Officer Tim Hyer, an agency spokesman.

Smith was on a routine patrol when he found Castro Molina and the 26-year-old woman in the back seat of her car at a rental storage facility on Douglas Avenue.
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Motorist accused of raping stranded woman

Mother wants U.S. military to allow justice for girl's rape

Mother wants U.S. military to allow justice for girl's rape
The alleged rape of a girl at the hands of a U.S. officer on a Colombian military base has rekindled the anger and frustration of her mother, who also was raped 12 years ago and faces major hurdles in her quest for justice.
BY GONZALO GUILLEN AND GERARDO REYES
El Nuevo Herald
Olga Lucía Castillo could never bring to justice the men who raped her in Bogotá when she was pregnant with her daughter. Twelve years later, she is putting up the fight of her life to have a U.S. Army officer and a Mexican-born contractor indicted because, according to her, they raped her daughter at the military base in Melgar.

The older of her two daughters was sexually abused at a military base in this city, 62 miles from Bogotá, in August 2007, according to a criminal charge filed by Castillo at the Colombian prosecutor's office.
read more here
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/1218573.html

Recent Rapes Leave UConn Students Unsettled

Recent Rapes Leave UConn Students Unsettled
By JODIE MOZDZER Courant Staff Writer
September 15, 2008
STORRS — - Lauren Walker could hear parts of conversations from dorm rooms as she walked through the halls of her University of Connecticut dorm this weekend.

Everyone seemed to be talking about the rape that happened just off campus Saturday, she said.

The campus has been abuzz with talk about the sexual assault — the second involving a UConn student this month — since students found out about it in a university issued e-mail.

UConn police said the sexual assault happened about 2:28 a.m. inside an apartment at the Celeron Square complex on Hunting Lodge Road. The attacker apparently forced his way into the apartment and assaulted a sleeping woman. Police arrested UConn student Frank P. Cirillo, 21, of Woodbridge shortly after, when they found him partially clothed, allegedly trying to force his way into another apartment.
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Young Rape Victim's focus on recovery

Rape victim's focus is recovery

By Dong-Phuong Nguyen and Thomas French,

Times Staff Writers

Sunday, September 14, 2008
For a young woman brutally raped, beaten and left for dead in April behind a Valrico library, months of recovery center on just this: get just a little better every day.

Inside the hushed and darkened room, the girl is awake. She does not remember what happened that night outside the library. But she understands that she is now lying in a hospital, in a state of suspended possibility, floating between the life she used to know and whatever awaits her.
Her long black hair flows over her pillow, thick and shiny and meticulously combed by others. She can't speak because of the strokes that followed her attacker's efforts to choke her. But her lips sometimes move as though she is trying to form words. She can't see, either, yet her dark brown eyes are open and alert, and she turns them toward people who stand by her bed.

Teen may regain her sight

Redeployed wounded, the part of the surge no one talks about

CHUCK CLAMON With a mix of medication prescribed after suffering head and spine injuries in Iraq, the sergeant first class says, I feel helpless. I could care less about actually leaving the house now. (Post Andy Cross )

DENNY NELSON The 19-year Army veteran and Bronze Star recipient was sent to Kuwait while he was still using crutches. (Post Andy Cross )

AMY DUERKSEN The 19-year-old s family calls her suicide in Iraq friendly fire - because they failed to take care of a fellow soldier. Her diary talks of her rape at a training session before being deployed.

The battle within
Soldiers who struggle with pained bodies or troubled minds still get deployed, sometimes on crutches or antidepressants, by an Army pressed to fill the ranks in Iraq and Afghanistan.
By Erin Emery and David Olinger
The Denver Post

In the weeks before Christmas last year, a brigade of battle-bruised soldiers left Colorado's Fort Carson for its third round of war in Iraq.

Sgt. Colin Barton was getting Botox shots in his forehead to kill the relentless pain from a brain injury. Army doctors said he should not wear a helmet — a safety requirement for the flight to Iraq. The Army sent him anyway.

Sgt. Joshua Rackley, recovering from his eighth knee surgery, was classified as permanently injured. The Army sent him anyway.

Master Sgt. Denny Nelson and Sgt. Joseph Smith didn't have time to recover from predeployment surgeries. Nelson hobbled with crutches; Smith wore a post-surgical boot. Sgt. Tim Graham brought a sleep-apnea machine. Sgt. 1st Class Walter Overton had a shoulder injury and couldn't lift his gear. Spec. Joseph Leon was popping morphine pills to dull the nerve damage to his groin.

The Army sent them too.

Five years into the war in Iraq and six years after the invasion of Afghanistan, the Army is sending soldiers with physical and mental injuries back to war, at times overruling physicians' classifications of soldiers as "nondeployable."

Facing demands unprecedented in the history of the all-volunteer force, the Army has deployed soldiers with slings and crutches and some who need machines to help keep them alive through the night. Thousands are taking pain, sleep or antidepressant medication, with sometimes deadly consequences.

The pressure to send marginal soldiers grew with the "surge" of troops to Iraq in January 2007, an effort that Army leaders say has succeeded in stabilizing the nation's government and reducing sectarian violence.

Yet from the onset of the Iraq war, deployment pressures have been evident. An Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center analysis shows that 43,000 service members — two-thirds of them in the Army or Army Reserve — were classified as nondeployable for medical reasons three months before they deployed.

Through May, about 206,000 soldiers, plus about 63,000 in the Army National Guard and Reserve, had gone to Iraq or Afghanistan at least twice, Army data show.

TRAVIS VIRGADAMO The night he was given back his gun in Iraq, he killed himself, his grandmother said. The teen was on Prozac when he was deployed and had been previously been on suicide watch, she said.

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http://www.denverpost.com/previous2/home/ci_10293242

Preacher killed wife, stuffed body in freezer, police say

Preacher killed wife, stuffed body in freezer, police say
Story Highlights
NEW: Anthony Hopkins denied bail at initial court appearance

Preacher is charged with murder, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and incest

He was arrested after delivering sermon at his Alabama church

Case began when daughter told police she'd been sexually abused

(CNN) -- An evangelical preacher killed his wife several years ago and stuffed her body in a freezer after she caught him abusing their daughter, according to police and court documents.


Anthony Hopkins appeared in court Thursday to face murder, rape and incest charges.

Anthony Hopkins, 37, was arrested Monday night at the Inspirational Tabernacle Church of God in Christ in Jackson, Alabama, just after he had delivered a sermon to a congregation that included his seven other children, officials said.

He faces charges including murder, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and incest.

Hopkins was denied bail Thursday when he appeared before Mobile County District Judge George Hardesty. The case is set for arraignment next week, Hardesty's clerk said.

The case began Monday, when the daughter, now 19, went to the Mobile Police Department's Child Advocacy Center and reported that she had been sexually abused by Hopkins since she was 11 years old, according to an affidavit filed in support of a search warrant of the preacher's home in Mobile.
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/07/31/preacher.freezer/index.html

2,212 reports of military sexual assaults in 2007 alone

Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach said she was raped by a fellow Marine. A Marine has been charged in her death.

Attacker 'still comes after me in my dreams'
A lawmaker says she was shocked when told 4 in 10 women at a veterans hospital reported being sexually assaulted while in the military. "My jaw dropped," Rep. Jane Harman says. "We have an epidemic here." A government report indicates the numbers could be even higher. One woman today told a congressional panel: "I was raped while I slept." full story

Story Highlights
Official: "My jaw dropped" after women described rape, sex abuse in military

Hearing prompts allegations of "cover-up" after top Defense official doesn't show

Mom of slain pregnant soldier: Victim shouldn't have burden to "generate evidence"

Woman describes rape: "He still comes after me in my dreams"

In 2007, Harman said, only 181 out of 2,212 reports of military sexual assaults, or 8 percent, were referred to courts martial. By comparison, she said, 40 percent of those arrested in the civilian world on such charges are prosecuted.

Defense statistics show that military commanders took unspecified action, which can include anything from punishment to dismissal, in an additional 419 cases.

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Civilian sex assaults by Afghan soldiers ignored

Don't look, don't tell, troops told

Civilian sex assaults by Afghan soldiers ignored

Jun 16, 2008 04:30 AM
Rick Westhead
Staff Reporter

Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been ordered by commanding officers "to ignore" incidents of sexual assault among the civilian population, says a military chaplain who counsels troops returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The chaplain, Jean Johns, says she recently counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped by an Afghan soldier, then wrote a report on the allegation for her brigade chaplain.

In her March report, which she says should have been advanced "up the chain of command," Johns says the corporal told her that Canadian troops have been ordered by commanding officers "to ignore" incidents of sexual assault. Johns hasn't received a reply to the report.

While several Canadian Forces chaplains say other soldiers have made similar claims, Department of National Defence lawyers have argued Canada isn't obliged to investigate because none of the soldiers has made a formal complaint, says a senior Canadian officer familiar with the matter.

"It's ridiculous," the officer says. "We have an ethical and moral responsibility to pursue this, not to shut our eyes to it because it would make it more difficult to work with the Afghan government.

"We're supposed to be in Afghanistan to help people who are being victimized."
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http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/443954

Jamie Leigh Jones rape case can go to trial against Halliburton-KBR

Judge: Woman's rape case against Halliburton can go to trial

Judge: Lawsuit against Halliburton by woman claiming rape in Iraq can go to trial

Staff
AP News

May 09, 2008 21:34 EST

A woman who said she was raped by co-workers while employed by a contractor in Iraq can take her claims to trial, a federal judge ruled Friday.

Jamie Leigh Jones filed a federal lawsuit last year, saying she was attacked while working for a Halliburton Co. subsidiary at Camp Hope, Baghdad, in 2005. Her lawsuit claims that after she endured harassment from some of the men where she lived in coed barracks, she was drugged and raped by Halliburton and KBR firefighters.

Jones, a former Conroe resident, said a KBR representative imprisoned her in a shipping container for a day so she wouldn't report the assault.

Attorneys for Halliburton, KBR and other subsidiaries that have been sued have disputed Jones' allegations. KBR split from Halliburton last year.

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Naval Academy student testifies she was raped in dorm

Mid testifies she was raped in dorm
At a preliminary hearing in Washington, defendant's lawyer calls charges 'incredible'
By Josh Mitchell | Sun reporter
7:26 PM EDT, April 22, 2008

WASHINGTON - A Naval Academy student testified in a military courtroom Tuesday that a fellow midshipman entered her dormitory room after a night of drinking last fall and raped her. But the defendant's attorney called the charges "incredible," pointing out that there was no DNA evidence to support the charge.

The testimony was part of the first hearing for Mark A. Calvanico, 21, of Secaucus, N.J., a junior charged with rape, indecent assault, indecent acts and conduct unbecoming an officer.



Tuesday's Article 32 hearing at the Washington Navy Yard was held to determine whether Calvanico should face a court-martial. An Article 32 hearing is similar to a grand jury proceeding. The investigating officer will make a recommendation to Vice. Adm. Jeffrey Fowler, the academy superintendent, who will decide whether the case goes to trial.

The academy has been criticized for its response to alleged sexual assaults and harassment, and the school, in Annapolis, recently began requiring that midshipmen receive more training about sexual misconduct.
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Women at War

Women at War
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos


The American Conservative

Apr 17, 2008

April 7, 2008 - A high point of Kayla Williams’s service as a noncommissioned Army officer in Iraq was receiving a commendation for her support on missions in Baghdad. Low points included getting molested by one of her own men and being asked to mock a naked Iraqi prisoner in an interrogation cage in Mosul.

Riding a line between woman and warrior, “bitch” and “slut,” Williams, 31, was not alone. The Bush administration’s “long war” has forced the military to shock integrate more than 180,000 women into Iraq and Afghanistan over the last six years. The consequences have been both impressive and ugly and do little to put to rest decades of debate over women in combat.

Critics say the rush to put women into combat-related roles for which they weren’t trained has made them more vulnerable, exacerbated male-female tensions in theater, and advanced a controversial policy while most of the country wasn’t looking.

“We have large numbers of women who have been willing to come into the Armed Forces, who are willing to do jobs for which we have a shortage of young men,” says one retired Army colonel, now in the private sector, who declined to be identified because of his ties to the defense community. “I think the women under these circumstances do the best they can.”

Veterans who have spoken to TAC say most female soldiers have exceeded expectations. But the experience of the largest contingent of female soldiers in modern history is not unclouded. The rate of single motherhood among women on active duty is 14 percent, and nursing mothers are being deployed four months after giving birth. Reports of sexual assault are climbing, as are suicides and the number of women—now over 36,000—who have visited VA hospitals since leaving the service. As of February, 102 female soldiers had died in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Army, which represents most women in theater, won’t release figures on how many are evacuated from the field due to noncombat injuries, illness, or pregnancy.
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http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/ArticleID/9853

'I want women to be better protected' by the military

Mother of slain Marine: 'I want women to be better protected'
Story Highlights
Maria Lauterbach wanted to spend career in Marines, she says in video

Lauterbach accused fellow Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean of rape

Laurean faces murder charges in Lauterbach's death

Marines should have transferred Lauterbach to another base, her mother says


From Susan Candiotti
CNN National Correspondent

DAYTON, Ohio (CNN) -- Early on, Maria Lauterbach knew exactly what she wanted to do in life.


"After high school, I am going into the Marines," a smiling Lauterbach, dressed in her high school soccer uniform, says in a video made available exclusively to CNN. "I'll probably be doing that for 20 or 25 years, and then hopefully after that, becoming a cop."

Lauterbach became a Marine, but her dreams were cut short.

Her body was found buried in the backyard of a fellow Marine, Cpl. Cesar Laurean, near Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in January. Watch Lauterbach talk about her future plans »

Mary Lauterbach, Maria's mother, wants to know why the Marines didn't do more to protect her daughter from Laurean, whom Maria Lauterbach had accused of rape in May 2007.

"My concern is I want women to be better protected," Lauterbach, of Dayton, Ohio, told CNN. Watch how mother wants answers from Marines »

Laurean now faces murder charges. He fled the Camp Lejeune area on January 11. The FBI says he went to his native Mexico, and a cousin of Laurean's reported seeing him in Zapopan, Mexico, in mid-January.


Mary Lauterbach has sent a list of more than 30 questions to the commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, Gen. James Conway, through her congressman.

She says she's unconvinced her daughter's rape allegation against Laurean was treated seriously.

Maria Lauterbach was 20 years old and eight months pregnant when she was reported missing after she failed to report for duty at Camp Lejeune in mid-December.

Her body was found nearly a month later beneath a fire pit in Laurean's backyard. It is unclear whether he was the father of her unborn child.

After Maria Lauterbach accused Laurean of rape, she was moved to another office, and military protective orders were issued to keep the accused from the accuser. But Mary Lauterbach and her congressman, Rep. Mike Turner, say the Marines didn't do enough to protect her.
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/07/murdered.marine/index.html