military culture of rape and dadt

[niyad]

Culture of Rape

February 15, 2011 by Natalie Wilson ·

Linda Franklin, an active duty U.S. Marine sergeant, was beaten and strangled in 2007 by her then-partner, a staff sergeant. She notified the military brass about the crime, following procedures to the letter, trusting that he would be punished. Instead, a year later she found herself reporting to her attacker; he had been promoted to her ranking officer. Franklin—not her real name—was ultimately labeled a “domestic abuser” herself by a committee review board because a police report misinterpreted a witness’s testimony.

To Franklin, the ruling was just another example of the military’s old-boys’-club mentality. Her career as a Marine had been punctuated by less violent, but no less disturbing, sexual harassment by fellow Marines—usually her superiors. After she corrected a senior officer’s sexist language, for example, she suffered a nasty backlash. She never formally reported these incidents.

Franklin’s case is not unique. According to a 2003 study by the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, at least one-third of all women veterans have experienced rape or sexual assault during their service. Thirty percent of military women experience domestic violence. In way too many cases, the victim is punished for reporting while the perpetrator goes unpunished.

A nine-month investigative series by The Denver Post in 2004 documented how numerous soldiers had escaped imprisonment for sexual crimes over the previous 15 years, some of whom even reentered the civilian world with no lasting criminal record. In fact, in Franklin’s experience, the military punishes soldiers for DUIs more regularly and more harshly than for sexualized violence.

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http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/02/15/culture-of-rape/


we have people who say that the answer to this horrendous situation is to keep women out of the military. I say, since the rapes are generally committed by straight men (and not the gays), and the numbers are horrible--the obvious solution is to kick the straight men out of the military.