Rapes Reported by Servicewomen in the Persian Gulf and Elsewhere

http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=3300

Rapes Reported by Servicewomen in the Persian Gulf and Elsewhere
by Eric Schmitt, New York Times

February 26th, 2004
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 — The United States military is facing the gravest
accusations of sexual misconduct in years, with dozens of servicewomen in the
Persian Gulf area and elsewhere saying they were sexually assaulted or raped
by fellow troops, lawmakers and victims advocates said on Wednesday.

There have been 112 reports of sexual misconduct over roughly the past 18
months in the Central Command area of operations, which includes Iraq, Kuwait
and Afghanistan, military officials said on Wednesday.

The Army has reported 86 incidents, the Navy 12, the Air Force 8 and the
Marine Corps 6.

Military officials said that the bulk of the charges were being investigated
and that some had already resulted in disciplinary actions, but they could not
provide specifics. They said a small number of the reports had turned out to
be unfounded.

In addition, about two dozen women at Sheppard Air Force Base, a large
training facility in Texas, have reported to a local rape-crisis center that
they were assaulted in 2002. The Air Force Academy in Colorado is still
reeling from the disclosure last year of more than 50 reported assaults or
rapes over the last decade.

The latest accusations are the most extensive set of sexual misconduct charges
since the Navy's Tailhook incident of 1991 and the Army's drill sergeant
scandal about five years later. In response, Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld this month ordered a senior-level inquiry into the reported sexual
assaults in Iraq and Kuwait, and how the armed services treats victims of
sexual attacks. The Army and Air Force have opened similar investigations.

The issue came to a boil at a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill on
Wednesday, where Senate Democrats and Republicans sharply questioned the
Pentagon's top personnel official and four four-star officers for what the
lawmakers said were lapses in the military's ability to protect servicewomen
from sexual assaults, to provide medical care and counseling to victims of
attacks and to punish violators.

Lawmakers said they were particularly appalled by reports that women serving
in roles from military police to helicopter pilots had been assaulted by male
colleagues in remote combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, where immediate
medical treatment and a sense of justice seemed to be lacking.

"No war comes without cost, but the cost should be born out of conflict with
the enemy, and not because of egregious violations by some of our own troops,"
said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican on the Armed Services personnel
subcommittee.

Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, voiced concern that senior Pentagon
leaders had not sufficiently addressed the problem. "I don't get a sense of
outrage by military leadership," Mr. Nelson said.

The Pentagon's personnel chief, David S. C. Chu, assured the lawmakers that
the Defense Department was treating the issue seriously and that "all policies
are on the table" as part of the 90-day review, whose findings and
recommendations are due by April 30.

He said the immediate priority would be to provide better care to assault victims.

In an effort to blunt criticism that the defense officials were not doing
enough to address the issue, the Pentagon moved up the release of a
Congressionally mandated survey conducted in 2002 — a period before most of
the latest rash of complaints occurred — that found that the number of
servicewomen who said they had been sexually assaulted had declined to 3
percent from 6 percent in 1995, when the last survey was taken.

But some senators questioned the survey's methodology and timing. "Why in the
world did it take two years to take a survey?" asked Senator John W. Warner, a
Virginia Republican who heads the full committee, noting that politicians
routinely ordered overnight polls for their campaigns.

The latest sexual assault scandals have burst into full public view largely
because of a recent series of investigative articles by The Denver Post and
growing pressure from lawmakers, especially from women in Congress like
Senator Collins and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas.

But the numbers of reported assaults revealed on Wednesday exceeded the scope
of what the Post articles had described. Christine Hansen, executive director
of The Miles Foundation, a victims' advocacy group in Newtown, Conn., told
senators at the hearing that it had received reports of 68 cases of sexual
assault, mainly from servicewomen in Iraq and Kuwait.

The women's complaints ranged from the lack of emergency medical care and rape
kits, to incomplete criminal investigations into their reports to retaliation
by peers for reporting an assault, she said.

"We may just be beginning to see what the problem is," Ms. Hansen said in a
telephone interview after the hearing.

The reported assaults have produced action and reviews in the Army, Navy, Air
Force and Marine Corps.

At a budget hearing before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday,
Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee said in response to a question that many
sexual assaults went unreported. "We don't want that," Mr. Brownlee said. "We
want an environment where these young women will feel free to report."

Senior officials from all the services said they were reviewing and, in some
cases, increasing their training. Gen. William L. Nyland, the assistant Marine
Corps commandant, told senators that beginning March 1, all newly enlisted
marines will receive sexual-assault awareness and prevention training. Marine
officers already receive the instruction.


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