14,000 men in the US military were raped last year. Little to none of them reported it.

[Dizchu]

If they haven't done it already, I'm expecting them to blame it on "gays in the military". I think it's comparable to prison rape. Otherwise heterosexual men (and women) that resort to homosexual rape after extended periods without interaction with the opposite sex.

Though considering the amount of involuntary and voluntary celibates outside of prison and the military, I'd have to say it's a result of a (mostly dominant) active sex drive before the prison sentence/military service.

 

[Aesir23]

I was in the Military for 8.5 years, and the biggest problem has always been (and continues to be) that they get Commanders far too involved in sexual assault allegations, which they shouldn't be involved in at all. It puts the Commander in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If they report the sexual assault, they're admitting that their unit is fucked up, which can ruin their career. If they don't report it, they're covering it up and only making the problem worse. They need unbiased investigators to get involved, not Commanders.

One stat I will take issue with, however, is this: "Unfortunately, the military has a history of discharging servicemen for personality disorders (31,000 from 2001 to 2010), allegedly to avoid the cost of treating PTSD or traumatic brain injuries."
I was a Commander, and I can tell you that guys WILL fake personality disorders in order to get discharged, I saw it happen on a few occasions, and it was most often with guys who were literally just out of Basic Training (hadn't seen any combat or suffered any brain damage). Some people join the Military and realize they made a mistake and want to get out of their contract ASAP, and getting booted for having a personality disorder is way better than getting booted for doing drugs, refusing to obey orders, etc. because it doesn't reflect as a bad conduct or dishonorable discharge, and since Psychiatric disorders are actually covered under the ADA, it doesn't affect their future job prospects nearly as much as you might think.

I'm sorry to joke in what is a very serious topic but...

You mean guys don't try to get out of the military by doing this?

 

[Thaluikhain]

If they haven't done it already, I'm expecting them to blame it on "gays in the military". I think it's comparable to prison rape. Otherwise heterosexual men (and women) that resort to homosexual rape after extended periods without interaction with the opposite sex.

Though considering the amount of involuntary and voluntary celibates outside of prison and the military, I'd have to say it's a result of a (mostly dominant) active sex drive before the prison sentence/military service.

Huh, yeah, it'd get blamed on the end of DADT.

Though, I'd question that it's due to lack of female interaction, rather than just an extreme example of abuse and bullying.

(There are plenty of women in the US military as it happens, and they have more chance of being raped by male US personnel than killed by the enemy)

 

[Dizchu]

Though, I'd question that it's due to lack of female interaction, rather than just an extreme example of abuse and bullying.

Yeah that's a very big factor in it to. Most people desperate to relieve their sex drive for a bit would jack off.

(There are plenty of women in the US military as it happens, and they have more chance of being raped by male US personnel than killed by the enemy)

I think that's very much a part of the same problem. Do women report it more often? I'm guessing there's (slightly) less stigma and more encouragement for women to speak out. But I don't know the statistics. Military service is a hostile environment even without having to deal with enemy combatants.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I think that's very much a part of the same problem. Do women report it more often? I'm guessing there's (slightly) less stigma and more encouragement for women to speak out. But I don't know the statistics. Military service is a hostile environment even without having to deal with enemy combatants.

Same problem with people covering it up, unfortunately. There was one case I remember, a woman was raped, had her nose broken, douched with an acid solution, shot more than once, set on fire, and then left to crawl around looking for help until she died.

Ruled a bad case of suicide. Not joking.

Gotten to the point where female personnel were suffering dehydration, because they were hiding from the men and unable to go out and get water.

 

[Dizchu]

Same problem with people covering it up, unfortunately. There was one case I remember, a woman was raped, had her nose broken, douched with an acid solution, shot more than once, set on fire, and then left to crawl around looking for help until she died.

Ruled a bad case of suicide. Not joking.

Gotten to the point where female personnel were suffering dehydration, because they were hiding from the men and unable to go out and get water.

Jeeeez. I thought the military's eagerness to cover up stuff like that only applied to "brown people". I don't know how anyone can sign up when your own squad is a bigger threat than enemy soldiers.

 

[kyp275]

The US military, like depressingly many institutions, prefers to sweep problems like this under the rug.

I don't know about lumping everyone into a singular entity. IMO this is primarily a problem on the officer side of the fence.

One problem is that, unlike the militaries of many other nations, things like this are mostly dealt with under the normal chain of command, though it might vary by branch.

Uh, which nation's military handle things like this outside of the COC? Every major military I've looked more or less have the same policies. While the exact procedure probably have some minor variation by branch due to the different agencies involved, it's all the same once you get to a certain point - the UCMJ applies to all branches.

There is a rather obvious problem there, though I had heard they'd acknowledged this, not sure if it'd been addressed yet.

They tried to take the authority out of the CO's hand, got shot down. They got pushback from the DoD complaining that would be detrimental to the CO's ability to command their unit.

Well, I might be in Canada but I am extra glad that I never volunteered now. The part that is disturbing (well one among many) is how the power and authority structure is being abused to keep it going and quiet. Bad enough that it's your peers in the same rank, you might at least have a social standing to refuse or fight back in that case, but if it's your CO? The guy who holds the key to your future, your career or maybe even your safety?

Not sure how to take your post(BTW, Canada isn't exactly faring that great either in this department). But I certainly don't think there's some conspiracy to "keep it going". Keeping things quiet is certainly a priority, but that's because most officers like to cover their own ass first.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Jeeeez. I thought the military's eagerness to cover up stuff like that only applied to "brown people". I don't know how anyone can sign up when your own squad is a bigger threat than enemy soldiers.

I think she was brown, though, which is likely to have played a part.

Uh, which nation's military handle things like this outside of the COC? Every major military I've looked more or less have the same policies. While the exact procedure probably have some minor variation by branch due to the different agencies involved, it's all the same once you get to a certain point - the UCMJ applies to all branches.

As I understand it, in the Australian military, serious crimes are dealt outside the normal chain of command.

As an aside, in Lt General Morrison's famous "Get out" speech[footnote]Which is a great speech on this issue, though primarily about abuse of women[/footnote] he mentions the NSW police.

Spoiler

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Were they all in the Navy?


All jokes aside, if that statistic is correct then thats horrifying.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

I don't mean any offense, but can someone explain how these things typically happen? Is it a man or a group of men who sodomizes another? Also, doesn't most people in the military carry a pistol? How come the rapist hasn't been shot in any of these 14000 cases?

In garrison, no, almost no one carries loaded weapons, unless they are an MP. In fact, it's really the opposite, guns are significantly more regulated on Military bases than they are in the civilian world. To give an example, on Military bases you can't carry a concealed firearm, even if you have a valid concealed carry permit, and you certainly can't open carry.

Military issued weapons are kept in the arms room until they are needed, and even if you're going to a live fire range, they don't issue you ammunition until you actually get out to the range. It's also worth noting that, except for MPs, the vast, vast majority of Soldiers aren't even issued pistols anymore.

That sucks. What about the other question? What type of rape are we talking about here? Is it sodomy?

To be blunt, I don't know because it never came up in my career, which segways me into playing Devil's advocate here...

I honestly question these numbers. I'll be the first to admit that I haven't read the entirety of the 726 page report on sexual assault in the Military for 2013, but as I said, I spent 8.5 years in the Military, at multiple duty stations and in multiple units, and I never even heard of (let alone had it happen in any units I was associated with) men getting sexually assaulted. By these numbers, if I was in for 8.5 years, that means that almost 120,000 men were sexually assaulted during my time in service, and I never even HEARD of a single one?

I get that's completely anecdotal evidence, but that's also kind of difficult to wrap my head around. No organization, not even the Military, is that proficient at sweeping things under the rug, especially in the days of social media. As far as I can tell, their "38 a day" number (which leads to the "14,000 a year") comes from anonymous surveys asking Soldiers if they had "unwanted sexual contact in the last year", and 1.8% of men said "yes". There are several problems with that stat:
1: It essentially assumes that they are being assaulted by other Military Members.
2: It's an anonymous survey, given to largely 18 and 19 year olds. I certainly wasn't at my most mature when I was 18, and I wouldn't have cared much about making up BS on an anonymous survey for the hell of it.
3: Somewhat similar to 2, I could easily see a Joe having a one night stand with an ugly woman and counting that as an "unwanted sexual contact" on the survey.
4: "unwanted sexual contact" is very vague. If someone slaps you on the ass, it's technically "unwanted sexual contact", but I'm not sure I'd consider it sexual assault, and I certainly wouldn't consider it rape.

 

[kyp275]

I'm not surprised tbh. Testosterone fueled men all put together away from female company and trained to be dominant and impose themselves on situations and people? Not exactly an ideal breeding ground for moral sentimentality and kindness.

It's been happening since the days of Sparta.

Lots of stereotypes, but a bit light on facts.

Away from female company? Wrong. Females aren't "segregated" away, outside of things like living area for obvious reasons.

Trained to be dominant and impose themselves? No. You're trained to be disciplined and proficient in your job. Seriously, movies and TV shows are a terrible source of what it's like in the military.

If they haven't done it already, I'm expecting them to blame it on "gays in the military".

Sigh, I don't even.

I think it's comparable to prison rape. Otherwise heterosexual men (and women) that resort to homosexual rape after extended periods without interaction with the opposite sex.

Again, less movies and TVs. Seriously, outside of extended missions in the field outside the wire(and even then that depends on your unit composition), there's about zero time where there's "extended periods without interaction with the opposite sex".

I'm not even talking about garrisons (where there are an endless avenues for that kind of things around the bases). There were so much civilian contractor/TCN presence on bases in warzones that interacting with the opposite sex isn't really a problem.

I'm sorry to joke in what is a very serious topic but...

You mean guys don't try to get out of the military by doing this?

No, but people do try things like threatening suicides etc. I've seen quite a few of those in the first couple weeks in bootcamp.

(There are plenty of women in the US military as it happens, and they have more chance of being raped by male US personnel than killed by the enemy)

And you're also more likely kill yourself in a traffic accident than being killed by the enemy. I'm sorry, but this statement is rather misleading. Both the type of war we've been fighting and advances in medical technology means that far fewer people are being killed in combat. We've had less troops KIA in over a decade of fighting than in many single battle in older conflicts like WW2.

Military service is a hostile environment even without having to deal with enemy combatants.

Yea ok, when and where were you in the service again? I'm sure you must have something to based that statement on right?

 

[Dizchu]

Yea ok, when and where were you in the service again? I'm sure you must have something to based that statement on right?

Are the examples of news stories posted throughout this thread not an indication of that?
Are the death threats and treatment of Chelsea Manning not an indication of that?

I'm not saying that military service is universally hostile but there are countless examples of it being hostile.

Females aren't "segregated" away, outside of things like living area for obvious reasons.

I'd love to know what these "obvious reasons" are.

 

[omega 616]

I think a lot of it has to do with pride, being a straight guy who was raped ... who do you tell that to?

Men still have that "the rock of the family" so how do you tell anybody that?

Definitely a tough thing.

I remember watching this thing about gangsters and bailiffs living on the edge of the law (in the uk), they would go round to a guys house, kick his head in and leave a "pay soon or else" and that escalates and the last step is rape the guy and take pics of it, if he doesn't pay up, the pics get released and his cred as a hard man goes up in flames. In the story that was told on this programme, the guy paid up the next day, then 3 days later shot himself 'cos he couldn't bare the shame.

 

[michael87cn]

That's a lot of homosexuals raping people. What gives? I thought we were all cool.

 

[kyp275]

Yea ok, when and where were you in the service again? I'm sure you must have something to based that statement on right?

Are the examples of news stories posted throughout this thread not an indication of that?
Are the death threats and treatment of Chelsea Manning not an indication of that?

No, it's not. That's like pulling some crime statistics for any major city and then claim said city is "hostile" because bad things happened. Context is important, and your assertion contains none.

As for Manning, no, I have zero empathy for that traitor. To be blunt, there are some lines you just don't cross, intentionally violating security protocol and putting your fellow soldiers/Marines at risk because of your own personal problem is pretty damn near the top of the fucking list.

Same reason why I have no sympathy for Bergdahl either.

I'm not saying that military service is universally hostile but there are countless examples of it being hostile.

Here comes the backpedalling. Your words, verbatim, is "Military service is a hostile environment even without having to deal with enemy combatants". If someone said "Black people are thugs ", are you really going to accept the explanation "I'm not saying that all black people are thugs, but there are countless examples of them being thugs"?

I'd love to know what these "obvious reasons" are.

Really? Are you seriously suggesting that male and females be forced to sleep in the same room, use the same restrooms, and the same open showers?

Why don't you go to work and insist on using the opposing sex restroom and let us know how that works out.

 

[rcs619]

Sadly, this isn't the first time the issue of sexual assaults in the military has been brought up. The air force in particular is said to have a pretty bad time with this sort of thing. Granted, with the air force you do have a higher number of females who are, statistically, more likely to be raped in the military than a male. It's still appalling though.

They really need to get that under control, and if it takes purging a bunch of enlisted and officers who perpetrated it, or swept it under the rug, then so be it. You start bringing charges against enough people and giving them hard enough prison time or other punishments, then people will get the point that this isn't acceptable in a professional military. Especially if you start nailing officers to the wall en masse for covering it up or overlooking it. As bloated as the US military is these days, we can stand to make some examples out of a few lowlifes.

I get that the military attracts some less than savory people to it by the nature of the job. People that, let's face it, would not function well in society outside of the military. But this is still a first-world professional military we're talking about, and there should damned well be a minimum level of respect and assumption of not being raped by your comrades.

 

[Dizchu]

Here comes the backpedalling. Your words, verbatim, is "Military service is a hostile environment even without having to deal with enemy combatants". If someone said "Black people are thugs ", are you really going to accept the explanation "I'm not saying that all black people are thugs, but there are countless examples of them being thugs"?

The person I was talking to was giving examples of cases where there was hostility within the ranks. My point was to indicate that enemy forces aren't the only concern or contributing factor to a hostile environment. A point backed up by the evidence OP linked to and what thaluikhain linked to.

I'd say that there's "hostility in certain black communities" due to poverty, racism, historical tension etc. I didn't claim that "soldiers" were hostile, rather that people in the military have more to deal with than just enemy combatants. I'm sure you wouldn't deny that tensions get high.

I'd love to know what these "obvious reasons" are.

Really? Are you seriously suggesting that male and females be forced to sleep in the same room, use the same restrooms, and the same open showers?

It was rhetorical. I know WHY they are separated. I think the reasons why they're separated, when exaggerated under circumstances can lead to the kind of issues that have been mentioned by thaluikhain.

 

[Greg White]

I was in the Military for 8.5 years, and the biggest problem has always been (and continues to be) that they get Commanders far too involved in sexual assault allegations, which they shouldn't be involved in at all. It puts the Commander in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. If they report the sexual assault, they're admitting that their unit is fucked up, which can ruin their career. If they don't report it, they're covering it up and only making the problem worse. They need unbiased investigators to get involved, not Commanders.

Things have changed a fair amount since you were in thankfully. The command team has no say-so in the investigations with all of them going directly to CID and they make the determination as to whether or not the allegations are substantiated. Command still has the determination as to whether or not to move forward, but CID will have already reported their findings to higher and it looks highly suspiscious for a commander to not go forward with UCMJ.

They've also done away with the 'good soldier defense.' For those not familiar with military justice, a soldier is allowed to bring out their list of achievements as part of the trial to try and make the case that there is no way that someone who has accomplished as much as this soldier has could have done that.

 

[Muspelheim]

On the subject of Manning, well... It's difficult. He was a soldier, and I assume that you're under oath in the U.S. Army, particularly when you manage intelligence. He broke an oath and put his colleagues at risk.

On the other hand, I don't like how things have developed to become "The problem isn't civilians being killed by careless gunship fire. The problem is this becoming known, and people being upset over it".

He commited treason, there is no other way to describe it, and put his colleagues at risk. On the other hand, the material leaked exposed many cases of conduct that, frankly, is not befitting a democratic state that values human rights. Cases that the citizens of a democratic state should be allowed to know about. But it's difficult nonetheless, since it means servicemen who had nothing to do with the whole business will be under threat of retaliation.

I suppose the reason I thought this had a place in this discussion is the odd impression reguarding sex crime in the army is that it isn't a problem until it shows, until it makes things look bad. It should not happen, and therefore it doesn't. Unless you are willing to throw your rank cuffs in the ring, bring up the problem and thus be the problem. No talk, no problem. Although I doubt my interpretation is particularly clear.

(Of course, this is in no way unique to the military. Heavens know this is the bread and butter in some offices, the difference being that sex crime and possible human rights violations is a bit... Worse.)

All that said, things are no doubt changing for the better. It will have to, after all.