{"id":22808,"date":"2011-04-04T11:46:41","date_gmt":"2011-04-04T15:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=22808"},"modified":"2011-04-04T11:46:41","modified_gmt":"2011-04-04T15:46:41","slug":"male-on-male-rape-in-the-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=22808","title":{"rendered":"Male-on-male rape in the military"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newsweek has published an article entitled The Military’s Secret Shame<\/a> about epidemic-levels of male-on-male rape in the military. Now, I know the military hasn’t changed that much in the nearly two decades since I retired that it’s as common as Newsweek makes it sound;<\/p>\n

In the staunchly traditional military culture, it\u2019s an ugly secret, kept hidden by layers of personal shame and official denial. Last year nearly 50,000 male veterans screened positive for \u201cmilitary sexual trauma\u201d at the Department of Veterans Affairs, up from just over 30,000 in 2003.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t doubt that it happens occasionally – we get soldiers from the general society, not from a farm somewhere where they train from birth. <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until 1992 that the Defense Department even acknowledged such incidents as an offense, and initially only female victims were recognized. But last year more than 110 men made confidential reports of sexual assault by other men, nearly three times as many as in 2007. The real number of victims is surely much higher. Even among civilians, sexual assault is a vastly underreported crime. In the military the silence is nearly complete. By the Pentagon\u2019s own estimate, figures for assaults on women likely represent less than 20 percent of actual incidents. Another study released in March found that just one in 15 men in the Air Force would report being sexually assaulted, compared with one in five women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What? Rape wasn’t illegal until 1992? Bullshit. Who do they think they’re talking to? And what are they calling “sexual assault”? Getting kneed in the ‘nads? Or the rapes that they breathlessly recount in the article, the three i read were totally implausible – there would have been ample evidence of the assault which should have triggered an investigation. A drill sergeant who raped a trainee? Really? Drill sergeants get investigated for every word they say – no one would have investigated a rape charge? One guy who was raped with a soda bottle – no physical evidence there, huh?<\/p>\n

Of course, Newsweek says that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should improve reports of these crimes. <\/p>\n

In my two decades of military service, mostly in the Infantry, the biggest exclusive man club in the Army, I never heard of one incident of same sex rape. Like I said, it probably happens, but it’s impossible that it’s as rampant as Newsweek claims. Of course, hiding behind the lack of victim reports make the story less believable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newsweek has published an article entitled The Military’s Secret Shame about epidemic-levels of male-on-male rape in … Male-on-male rape in the military<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}