The Military: The Truth about Women, Suicide, and Sexual Assault.

The Military: The Truth about Women, Suicide, and Sexual Assault. 

The military. When most people hear this word they think of our soldiers, freedom, and war. But when I hear it, I think of sexism, sexual assault, and suicide. I am a soldier in the United States Army and I am a woman. I have served for the last 8 years and in my time I have been sexually assaulted, dealt directly with sexism, and have lost a few of my women battle buddies to suicide. While advocacy and support have helped create some change we still have a long way to go. Suicide rates are easier to track but sexism is from personal experiences and sexual assaults do not have clear data due to under or no reporting. 

 

On October 26, 2016, ten women became the first female graduates from the United States Army's Infantry Basic Officer Leader's Course at Fort Benning, Georgia. This was a long time coming and looks very promising for future female soldiers. Unfortunately the majority of male soldiers do not agree with this and it increases the chance for sexual assault. Many male soldiers feel superior to women soldiers and continue to feel the need to assert their dominance and express their violent behaviors. For 2015 the DOD reported that there was 6,083 reports of sexual assault for allegations involving service members. This is only the reported ones and many more do not due to what happens to many women and men when they do report. An example would be a Lieutenant Vorland who while in Iraq was sexually harassed by a high ranking male officer and filed a formal complaint as per the rules. In turn, the male officer was not reprimanded and the victim was discharged with a general discharge for "unacceptable conduct" and blamed her for the incident due to her acting inappropriately and agreeing to consensual sex (even though she was a lesbian) and by her having to reveal this it in turn got her kicked out due to the "don't ask, don't tell" still be enacted. 

Pictured above is LT. Vorland 

Researchers know veteran suicide rates are rising, but until recently, "studies haven’t factored in gender. Now, research has found that the rate of suicide among female veterans is nearly six times greater than it is among female civilians, a far greater disparity than is the case for their male counterparts" (Kaitlyn Landgraf 2016). We conduct sexual harassment, sexual assault and suicide prevention classes every quarter as a way to advocate and try to prevent these things from happening but from my experience, it does not help at all. I do not like talking about my sexual assault experience but I will say that he was an older, higher enlisted soldier who was about to retire and I was a young, E-1 private and female. I got myself out of the situation before it got worse but I was so shocked and disgusted and even was questioning what happened because I did not think it really happened that I did not say anything to anybody for 2 days. I came home and told my husband even though I did not want to even tell him. I called our acting commander (due to our unit and commander being deployed to Iraq at the time) and I let him know what happened. He said he would go up the ladder and let whomever know that needed to. I waited and waited to hear something and when I finally did, it was from another sergeant who should of never known what happened. I was told that I needed to stay away from him and to not go into rooms alone with him. They told him to stay away from me and not talk to me and if he needed to go into a room where I was to bring someone with him so that I could not say he did something wrong. He told them that I came onto him and that he felt uncomfortable so that is why he went along with it. They did not even make him apologize and I was forced to not come to work with no pay for 3 months because that is how long he had left until he retired. Even though it has been 7 years since this happened, it still bothers me to this day and ruined some of the trust I had for any of my male higher ups. These issues are real and serious and something needs to be done because the DOD is not doing enough. 

 Date Posted: 11/21/2016

http://time.com/4340321/sexual-assault-military-discharge-women/

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/752270/dod-releases-fy15-annual-report-on-sexual-assault-in-the-military

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/NE/20160713/NEWS/160719887