This is probably the most under reported military story of 2009. The investigation by Youth Radio International details the suicide of a female sailor assigned to a military working dog group with the United States Navy, Jennifer Valdivia. The piece details a sordid and complicated chain of events in which she was both the victim and perpetrator of abuse during her time in the military that ultimately led to her suicide. This story is made all the more disturbing given the role that dogs played in the AbuGharib incident and it highlights the prevalence of hostility towards women in the military more generally.
A new report is out from Human Rights Watch that details the deaths of more than 1,400 Congolese civilians at the hands of rebel and government forces during UN. backed operations in the eastern part of the country this year. Several thousand women were also raped by both sides as punishment for alleged collaboration with one side or the other. This is not the first time a U.N. Peace Keeping mission has failed to protect civilians.
- 1992 Militias are able to stay in control of the county of Somalia after U.N pull out.
- 1994 U.N. fails to allow its peacekeepers to intervene in Rwanda allowing for the deaths of over 800,000 Rwandans in 100 days.
- 1995 U.N. forces failed to protect the safe haven of Srebrenica, Bosnia allowing the deaths of 8,000 Bosnian men and boys.
This was the headline in a story that ran today in the New York Times regarding sexual misconduct and rape in the military. It is perennial problem that continues to be largely discounted by the U.S. military despite recent steps combat it. The article states according to the Pentagon that fewer than 10% of sexual assault incidents are reported. In 2005, Congresswoman Jane Harman, of the House Armed Services Committee received an unreleased Pentagon study detailing the extent of sexual misconduct in the reserve components of the U.S. Armed Forces. It revealed that 27 % of male soldiers experienced what the report termed "military sexual trauma" which includes verbal harassment as well as touching and other unwanted sexual behavior. The prevalence of women experiencing the same behavior is at 60%. 3% of males reported actually having been sexually assaulted (i.e. raped, sodomized, etc) and 23 % of women reported the same. The GAO recently released a report that the article links to which details the poor implemetation of the Petagon's anti-sexual violence measures. The report also states that services for men who have been raped are almost nonexistent. This conclusion is bolstered by a 2004 Boston Globe story "Sexual Assault in the Shadows" that details how the military has labeled the male victim of rape in the military as being homosexual in the past.
Yesterday it was revealed in a report by the non profit group Aids Free World that it had completed an investigation into allegations of rape in Zimbabwe at the hands of government backed militias. The report states that on at least 70 occasions, militiamen attached to the ruling party raped women in order suppress opposition part political activities. This strategic use of rape has been common in recent times as its perpetrators seek to instill fear in both the women and their immediate families. The living victim then gos on to serve as a reminder if the demands of the particular militia,political party, or religious authority are not met further rapes will occur in the future.
After seeing this group on the Oprah Winfrey Show, I will be donating to their cause. Their mission is to halt sexual violence in war zones and to uplift the lives of women. If you have ever read any my previous posts on sexual violence in combat zones you understand how prevalent and under reported the phenomenon is until very recently. Please go to their website and see the work that they are doing. http://www.womenforwomen.org/
This is an incredibly important piece of film regarding the use of rape in warfare. I will tie the movie into later research once I see the movie. Here is a story from NPR regarding a survivor of the Russian rape of the women of Berlin after World War II and a review of the movie based on a true account: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106687768
This is the introduction to my up coming paper entitled War Sex: The Cultural Implications of the Sporadic and Intentional acts of Sexual Violence Committed by the United States Military Since World War I. I plan to have the paper written by the end of April to coincide with National Violence Against Women Awareness Month.
Sexual violence has had a part to play in every war that the United States has conducted since World War I and probably most conflicts before that. Culturally, it is an extremely painful realization. The U.S. military is often trumpeted as the vaunted legion of democracy and the guardian of the ideals that which democracies represent. Most recently, the prima facia pornography of the photos at Abu Gharib changed that popular understanding to a certain extent. However, this episode was not the United States military’s first foray into the world of sexual violence. There have been accounts of the sporadic commission of rape on the battle since World War I. In fact, the first execution of a U.S. Army soldier on foreign soil was for rape in 1917.World War II, Vietnam, and the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have all been littered with accounts of sporadic as well as planned sexual violence. More important than chronicling each individual act of sexual violence, this paper seeks to explain how sexual violence perpetrated by the U.S. military has affected art, literature, and film in the western world. The exploration of how cultural output of the United States and other western countries has played a role in enhancing the level of sexual violence in the U.S. military will also be explored. In this way, the feedback loop regarding sexual violence that plays out between culture of the United States and its military can be understood. The review of several works of art, literature, and film from each era provides a glimpse at how cultural understandings regarding sexual violence in combat have changed over the last hundred years and how images from one era affect another in sometimes surprising ways.
I attended The Ohio State University and majored in Criminology and International Studies: Security and Intelligence. I have written about the use and impact of sexual violence on the battlefield. In conjunction with those efforts, I have conducted several presentations on the subject for various universities including the University of Calgary and The Ohio State University with Funding from the Mershon Center for International Security Studies.
