The local news today showed another woman servicemember, 34, dead in Iraq of a non-combat wound. Just days away from a planned, 18 day leave back to the States, she's no longer going home to see her devastated family - or anyone else, for that matter. The investigation into her unexpected death is still pending, but really -- how many people die accidentally, or worse, kill themselves just before they're liable to get out of hell? It's a little...ironic, if not completely counter-intuitive (that's, the complete opposite of what you'd normally think, for the non-academic types out there reading this.) It's also particularly tragic, and all the more so if something like military sexual trauma is involved in her death: it has been in a number of others.
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While I haven't done a count lately of how many women have been dying non-combat deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan, however high or low the number happens to be, a percentage of those deaths will turn out to be murders that are botched or intentional attempts to cover up sexual assault; and another percentage will turn out to be suicides by women who have been sexually assaulted or raped, whether by peers or superiors. In the "bubble" of living and working for the military, whether as a servicemember or a contractor - women place themselves in an environment where men are the majority, where calculated, strategic violence is the goal (we call that, "combat"), aggression (directed toward the enemy) is the norm, weapons are ubiquitous, and boredom, opportunity, and mixed feelings about being there in the first place create an explosive brew. Just like KIA versus WIA statistics, for every woman killed or suicided, many more are injured and sexually exploited.
That's the bad news -- but it has to be balanced against the fact that these crimes, and the predators who commit them, are the minority. Many women pass through the military without becoming victims of sexual harassment or predation; but for those who do, it's often a life and psyche-destroying event.
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Paul Reickhoff wrote about military sexual trauma today and women in the military in an excellent post, published on the IAVA Blog, linked here. According to statistics he cites, "Women make up 20% of all new recruits and more than 11% of the forces deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan." Then he tellingly adds:
"The rates of assault are shocking. Almost one-third of women veterans say they were sexually assaulted while in the military. (In the general population, one out of every six American women has been a victim of a sexual assault.) Already, 15 percent of female Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have gone to the VA for care have screened positive for Military Sexual Trauma. But even these troubling figures may not be telling the whole story; experts estimate that half of all sexual assaults go unreported..."
All too true. We've written about Military Sexual Trauma (MST) before on this blog, several times. It's a hot topic right now, not the least because there just aren't many answers out there about what to do for women who have been affected by it. What we do know is that it's a potent terror: women who are victims of MST often develop PTSD, the frequent theme of this blog -- and of those who do, the MST is often considered worse than even their usually concomitant PTSD. Yikes. That gives you an idea of how horrific the experience is for these tough, trained, formidable and admirable warrior women.
I can also tell from who's searching this blog for answers, and what they're looking for, that there's not much out there that specifically addresses the needs of women veterans who have been sexually traumatized by other servicemembers. Fortunately, there are a few programs at the VA that are attempting to address this problem, but sometimes I see them searching here, too, for answers. The answers that would help put these women's broken lives back together may simply be lacking, at present.
In lieu of "answers," what I'd like to offer here is another way of looking at the same problem. With the permission of Jeff Benedict, I'd like to quote at length from a chapter in his book, "Public Heroes, Private Felons: Athletes and Crimes Against Women," published in 1997 by Northeastern University Press (Boston, Massachusetts). Benedict, a longtime journalist, is now an attorney in private practice in Connecticut. The chapter is called "When Women Are the Opponent." As you read the lengthy excerpt from this chapter, try to absorb the great similarities (not perfect as an analogy, but as close as we're gonna get, for the present) between two arenas in which men are systematically trained and rewarded for aggression.
As Benedict repeatedly points out, and I will have to add as an obvious caveat too, the majority of men who are involved in either pursuit -- professional sports or the military -- can behave appropriately towards women in their midst. The problem is not with the majority; it's with the minority, who for one reason or another cannot.
As you read this passage, I've highlighted what I find the biggest issues to be. Every time Benedict mentions, "athlete" think "warrior" instead, and see if the analogy doesn't work. Again, we're not talking about MOST men who are in this situation; we're talking about the minority who are the problem. But the problems these few create are so horrifically soul-destroying to the women who experience them, whether servicemembers or contractors, that much more needs to be done on the part of those who watch over women in the military, to protect them from predation from the few who seek to harm. The consequences to the women who are affected's lives and psyches are just too great to ignore or overlook or neglect any further. It's definitely a case where "prevention" of this type of suffering is far more effective than a nebulous "cure" that seems sadly, at this hour, out of reach.
Editor's Note: Given the length of the excerpt, I'll go ahead and create it as a separate blog post, linked here.
