Soldiers Charged with Filming Female Unit Members Showering - then distributing the images

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/07/13/iraq.soldiers.charged/

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two U.S. soldiers were charged with misconduct for taking and distributing video and photographs of female soldiers showering, the Army said Monday.

The Army charged Sgt. Gilbert Parker and Spc. Matthew Delia on July 3 and July 7, respectively, according to a news release.

The alleged misconduct happened during pre-deployment training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in the fall.

Both soldiers are National Guardsmen serving with the 266th Military Police Company, 8th Military Police Brigade in Basra, Iraq.

Parker is alleged to have filmed and photographed females in his unit while they showered at Fort Dix, during mobilization training, the statement said. He also distributed the material.

He is charged with committing an indecent act, violating a general order, conspiracy, obstructing justice and distributing pornography.

Delia was charged with conspiring with and assisting Parker, as well as distributing the video and photographs, according to the press release.

If convicted, both men would face imprisonment, demotion and dishonorable discharge.


http://www.insidenova.com/isn/news/local/manassas/article/soldiers_charged_in_shower_scandal/39365/


By Julia LeDoux

Published: July 13, 2009

Two soldiers with the Manassas National Guard have been charged with taking and distributing video and photographs of 21 female soldiers showering during the unit’s pre-deployment training at Fort Dix last fall, the Army announced today.

Misconduct charges were “preferred” against Sgt. Gilbert Parker and Spc. Matthew Delia on July 3 and July 7, respectively, according to an Army release. The preferral of charges is the initial step in the possible prosecutions of Parker and Delia.

Photos and video were taken before the unit shipped out to Iraq in December, the release stated.

The father of one of the female soldiers photographed sent a letter to Army leaders advising them of what happened, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said.

Commanders in Iraq learned of the allegations May 21 and initiated an Army Regulation 15-6 investigation the next day. The Criminal Investigation Command initiated its investigation, which is ongoing, on May 23.

[pepperbear]

1. don't ask, don't tell

:eyes:

[TreasonousBastard]

2. One way to get out of Iraq.

[JohnnyLib2]

3. See, ya let the heteros in.....

:banghead:

[cboy4]

10. +1

[BR_Parkway]

11. +2

[dorkulon]

13. No no, see it's all the women's fault.

:sarcasm:

[CTyankee]

17. I KNEW this would happen if they let women into the military with the men!

Men will be men and it's gonna get bad...

[havocmom]

40. Time to implement Frank Herbert's All Girl Army

He had some interesting points to support the concept.

[nosmokes]

4. Those are the worst charges that could be brought against these vermin?

[Cid_B]

8. What charges would you have brought?

nt

[nosmokes]

18. I dunno, but violating the trust of the unit like that

seems like it should rank right up there w/ treason or something.

[omega minimo]

46. Stupid Fuckin Dickhead charges, perhaps?

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

I won't say what I think should happen to them

[snake in the grass]

6. I wonder...

...if these are the types of "cops" who go on to commit abuses on civilians, when they are released; assuming, of course, they don't get caught during their service time. Luckily more people are armed with video cameras in this day and age.

[Echo In Light]

16. Positions of power/authority tend to attract soulless cocksuckers.

[lpbk2713]

57. Just look at Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Gonzo ...

... ad nauseum.

[Egnever]

7. hmmm something bout this story smells to me

Perhaps my tinfoil hat is too tight

[dorkulon]

15. I'm dying to hear your zany conspiracy theory.

Seriously. Men filming nude women? How unusual.....?

[elleng]

9. HAHAHAHA!!!!!

http://www.planetdvdhouse.com/product.php?productid=36775

[arcadian]

21. That gag was also done in this one:

[gorfle]

12. "This thread is useless...

...without pictures!"

;)

[seabeyond]

28. can you be any more of a fuckin ass.... n/t

[gorfle]

64. Call me a sucker...

Call me a sucker for juvenile pranks. Come on - didn't ya ever watch MASH?

[seabeyond]

65. *sigh*

i am glad to hear it is just a misplaced juvenile (that is for sure) prank type attitude and not a sense of privilige. unfortunately, no..... there is nothing cute or funny. all the men, supposed men, were willing to take those pictures, jack off to the pictures, laugh at the pictures, be vile and crude with those pictures at the expense of all the women. and not a single, not one of those males had the courage or character to say..... that is wrong.

as male posters on this thread have been unwilling to do

you have males, boys, ... doing this with girls and locker room bragging, at the expense of females. things for male entertainment

there are repercussions with this locker room, adolescent movie fantasy that is brought into real life.

not cool

[gorfle]

66. Well, if it helps,

I'd laugh just as hard if it was the girls taking pictures of the guys.

there are repercussions with this locker room, adolescent movie fantasy that is brought into real life.

Yup, there will be, and there should be.

And I still chuckle at it. There's a reason why this sort of thing shows up as humor in movies. Because it's funny!

[seabeyond]

no... it isnt funny, to all the women that have spent a lifetime

dealing with this shit from males, that think it is "funny" at females expense.

this is what you are clueless? about which i have to suppose is your unwillingness towards empathy. no consideration for the females feeling of violation. no... it isnt "funny". it is funny to males, that is all.

it is funny cause we are of a culture that repeatedly, constantly, inevitably condition males that this is their right, and fuck the female.

whites think it is "funny" at offensive jabbing at blacks, gays, ect... the white males tell all of us... too sensitive, tis a joke, lighten up. again, not cool

[Liquorice]

35. Sexism is alive and well on the DU! nt

[Liberal_in_LA]

52. yup

[DavidDvorkin]

39. You inexcusably sexist pig!

You're so right.

[seabeyond]

42. so violation of women is a turn on to you. tell me you are a kid. n/t

[DavidDvorkin]

54. You'll wear your knee out if you keep jerking it constantly.

[Horse with no Name]

43. Howzabout you post a pic of your cock so we can all have a good laugh? n/t

[mtnester]

62. The reverberations of that smackdown

are still circling the globe, and will soon launch into outer space for interplanetary travel.


:)

[gorfle]

63. Here you go!

Here's a picture of my cock, just for you!

[BlooInBloo]

14. And what about that female soldier found dead in her barracks the other day?

I never got the details on that one. :(

[Horse with no Name]

25. or this

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/17/military-rapes-rise-prose_n_176040.html
Military Rapes Rise, Prosecutions Still Low


This sentence says it all:

"Military women are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq."

[BlooInBloo]

32. Sigh.

[Echo In Light]

71. Yet another good reason in a long list to of them to NOT join the military machine

[lukasahero]

73. wouldn't it be better if women could join whatever they want

without risk of sexual assault? Why should the victims limit their activity instead of the aggressors?

[Echo In Light]

74. But what if it's the propaganda of their aggressors that encourages them to join?

I'm against militarization, period. So I don't consider an ideal of womanhood/feminism to involve women adopting and emulating the mindset and characteristics of men when the point is there should be continued cultural info/stream of consciousness re how men of now needn't be replicas of the Good Soldier of many yrs past, and all of the underlining psychology and social conditioning required for that horrible ideal.

[alcibiades_mystery]

19. Video or it never happened!

:evilgrin:

[seabeyond]

29. oooooh, feel like a man now... n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

41. Oy

[Alamuti Lotus]

44. oh back off, it was just a joke

Low-hanging fruit maybe (*), but really the least of your problems.

(*) Now, a better joke or one-liner for this event may be more like "Hey, wouldn't be a problem if the gays were allowed in" or something along those lines. But, no bad on its own.

[seabeyond]

47. no

i wont back off, .... and no, not a joke. as a female i have lived these fuckin "jokes" all my life and the only ones to laugh are the men... tell me a funny black joke, a gay joke about violations committed against them so we can have a good old chuckle. hey... lets joke about a white man being butt fucked in a prison. guys always think that is so fuckin funny.

tell me how funny these women would think it was them being violated in this manner.

men, boys do it to feel empowered, to feel like a man, and they are wusses, weak, lacking ....

[Alamuti Lotus]

50. men are wusses & weak now, eh?

and "lacking <probably some ommitted reference to the virility of our dicks>"...... hmm. No latent hostility there..

And the army was about to be deployed to go kill people in Iraq. Let's focus on that and possibly agree on something.

[seabeyond]

51. if they have to laugh at women being violated, ya... lacking. n/t

[Liquorice]

49. You know, it's really not funny to joke about women being violated in this way.

Try to put yourself in the women's position, or imagine this happening to your daughter. Nope, not funny at all.

[Alamuti Lotus]

53. Well, I have no daughter but I see the point

Google the phrase "military hazing" to see what these idiots do to each other. Now, that's funny, mostly in a macabre way to consider that these unbalanced deviants are then given live ammunition and told to play nice among the locals of al-Basrah or Helmand.

[Cerridwen]

20. Why does anyone think this is funny?

Let me see if I get this right.

My fellow troops think of me as tits and ass. I now get to go into a war zone and trust my tits and ass to their protection. Yeah. That's funny.

On so many levels.

[Liberal_in_LA]

23. I am surprised by how many DUers think this is funny. The story made me angry

[Horse with no Name]

26. It's just about the abuse of women

Why are your knickers in a twist?

[Liberal_in_LA]

55. I see. I stopped reading the thread shortly after I started it because of all the jokes

[Cerridwen]

67. Sad, isn't it?

The jokes remind me of rush and his ilk saying that Gitmo was just like a little frat hazing. They even made a t-shirt. Club Gitmo or some such insanity.

Please don't get me wrong; when friends and I sit around discussing things and we start to get overwhelmed with the scope of hatred and the wealth of disgusting things going on in the world, a little dark humor creeps in. It just doesn't translate well on a message board. Not well at all.

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[City Lights]

22. Support our troops!

:puke:

[Starry Messenger]

27. Except if they are female and/or gay.

neo-nazis and felons step right up.

[Odin2005]

24. Doesn't suprise me one bit given that IIRC 95% of servicewomen are sexually harassed.

and something like 1 out of 4 are sexually assaulted by male soldiers. :(

[Horse with no Name]

30. Read this--3 out of 4

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3848/

>>>snip
• A 2004 study of veterans from Vietnam and all wars since, conducted by psychotherapist Maureen Murdoch and published in the journal Military Medicine, found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving.

>>>snip
• A 2007 survey by the Department of Veterans Affairs found that homelessness among female veterans is rapidly increasing as women soldiers come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Forty percent of these homeless female veterans say they were sexually abused while in the service.

>>>snip
Of the 40 or so female veterans I have interviewed over the past two years, all but two said they were constantly sexually harassed by their comrades while they were serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, and many told me that the men were worse in groups than they were individually. Air Force Sgt. Marti Ribeiro, for example, told me that she was relentlessly harassed for all eight years of her service, both in training and during her deployments in 2003 and 2006:

I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine. I had a senior non-commissioned officer harass me on a regular basis. He would constantly quiz me about my sex life, show up at the barracks at odd hours of the night and ask personal questions that no supervisor has a right to ask. I had a colonel sexually harass me in ways I’m too embarrassed to explain. Once my sergeant sat with me at lunch in the chow hall, and he said, ‘I feel like I’m in a fish bowl, the way all the men’s eyes are boring into your back.’ I told him, ‘That’s what my life is like.’

>>>snip
Furthermore, the military has an abysmal record when it comes to catching, prosecuting and punishing its rapists. The Pentagon’s 2007 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military found that 47 percent of the reported sexual assaults in 2007 were dismissed as unworthy of investigation, and only about 8 percent of the cases went to court-martial, reflecting the difficulty female soldiers have in making themselves heard or believed when they report sexual assault within the military. The majority of assailants were given what the Pentagon calls “nonjudicial punishments, administrative actions and discharges.” By contrast, in civilian life, 40 percent of those accused of sex crimes are prosecuted.

[Odin2005]

34. OMFG!

:cry:

[Laelth]

37. That is unacceptable. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[Horse with no Name]

38. Obviously it isn't

But it sure as hell should be.:(

[Odin2005]

56. Hell, there are some DUers that think having sex with a barely conscious drunk woman isn't rape.

:grr:

[omega minimo]

48. Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.

:pals:

[Odin2005]

72. +1

[seabeyond]

31. why the fuck didnt a single MAN who got these pictures turn the assholes in

why a fuckin father had to do something about it.

[lukasahero]

59. This is, indeed, the question

For all those who hate it when women ask the question "why do men do this" and we have to appease them with the disclaimer "of course not ALL men, I didn't mean you, I meant only the assholes who do these things and you of course aren't one of them..." - where are the men standing up to these assholes???? Oh, yeah, as evidenced by some of the responses here on this thread, they're too busy enjoying the show.

[Starry Messenger]

60. +1

(and thank you to the men on this thread who are standing up)

[Scout]

68. best post in the thread! can I recommend this one? n/t

[seabeyond]

70. the men made two. all the others that lacked character and integrity to know wrong

or didnt have the courage or conviction to end it are who really bother me.

it wasnt some men. it was all the men that received this stuff.

[dysfunctional press]

36. if the women didn't want them to do it- why were they showering NAKED?

and just to be safe, i'll add the :sarcasm: smilie for the 80%'ers.

[prayin4rain]

75. Hahaha exactly.... that's about what we usually hear. n/t

[omega minimo]

45. They should be facing stupidity charges

:evilfrown:

[Blue_Tires]

58. it's funny when it happens in MASH or Revenge of the Nerds

but in real life, it is a juvenile, misogynist and disturbing betrayal of comrades

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

61. and these guys were MPs!

[Bonn1997]

69. I can't imagine how much more media attention the story would get if

don't ask don't tell had been repealed and then a couple of gay guys filmed guys showering.

[maxrandb]

76. Stripes

Was a funny movie...back in the late 80's!!! :wtf:

I've been in the military for 25 years now, and I wonder if we'll ever get past this "fratboy stuff".

But trust me, there have been some major changes for the better. These guys will have a date with the U.C.M.J in the very near future.